Re: Neil Steinberg - 1996 POW-MIA Article

Date: February 22, 2004

Much thanks to a reader who picked up on a 1996 posting in the AII POW-MIA Monthly Update archives from 1996 commenting on a POW-MIA article written by none other than Neil Steinberg. Mr. Steinberg wrote the now infamous "When Can We Get Rid of Those Black Flags" piece earlier in the month, and, much to his credit, wrote another (thoughful) piece a week later after being inundated with 'educational emails and material' from the POW-MIA family/veteran/activist community

Mr. Steinberg's 11 FEB 04 follow-up piece "Collateral Damage", is well worth reading... and appreciated. Perhaps those who were quick to write him expressing their outrage, will be as quick to write with their appreciation.

Neil Steinberg
nsteinberg@suntimes.com

"We had little choice but to abandon POWs

Author: Neil Steinberg
Chicago Sun-Times

September 22, 1996

Maybe collective memory only goes back to the last war. In Operation Desert Storm, we swept in, kicked butt, swept out. Minimum casualties. We let technology do the heavy lifting.

Thus it was a shock to the system to learn last week that 900 U.S. prisoners of war were not only left behind, alive, in North Korea at the end of the Korean War in 1953, but that our government knew, apparently, and did nothing.

To compound the horror, a Czech defector claims that the prisoners were then used in ghastly medical experimentation. And there is a remote possibility, also terrible to contemplate, that some of them may still be alive.

The immediate questions in the press were, "Why didn't President Eisenhower go in and get those men?" and "Why weren't the American people told?"

Such questions, while natural, ignore the stark reality of the situation. The Korean War wasn't like the Gulf War. It wasn't like "MASH." We have, it seems, forgotten.

The Korean War was a bloodbath. In just three years, more than 54,000 American soldiers died there, or about the same number killed in Vietnam in more than a decade of fighting.

When the North Korean army poured across the 38th parallel on June 25, 1950, we were caught by surprise. The green troops rushed in from bases in Japan could do little but slow the advance.

Soon the North had taken everything but a small toehold around Pusan. But that was enough. Under Gen. Douglas MacArthur's brilliant military strategy, we broke out, the Marines making an amphibious landing at Inchon, outflanking the North Koreans. By late autumn, we had regained the territory lost over the summer, and MacArthur was pursuing fleeing North Korean forces to the Chinese border.

Then the Chinese Communists entered the picture, in massive numbers, pushing our forces back again. The Chinese attacked in waves - endless waves, it seemed - without concern for their own casualties. Eventually, they lost a million men.

The Americans, pulling back, fought with incredible bravery - historian Samuel Eliot Morison calls the 1st Marine Corps' withdrawal from the Chosin reservoir under attack from three Chinese armies "one of the most glorious in the annals of that gallant corps" and compares it to the heroic stands of Greek soldiers in antiquity.

It was a grinding, back-and-forth war. Seoul traded hands four times. Re-taking lost territory, American soldiers would find their captured comrades, hands tied, a bullet in the back of the head.

The fighting settled around the 38th parallel, in fierce battles for hilltop observation points.

Truce negotiations stretched out over two years - the last two-thirds of the war - often breaking down. All the while, our soldiers kept being killed, usually over a few square yards of desolate mountainside.

Prisoner exchange was the big sticking point of negotiations - the communists demanded that all the prisoners we held must be returned; a problem, since the vast majority did not want to go back.

The United States was reluctant to make "forced repatriations" - to drag the captured communists back to totalitarian states they were fully justified in fleeing. It seemed wrong. We insisted that each prisoner be allowed to decide whether to return; three out of four stayed.

Our altruism might be what doomed those 900 men - perhaps the North Koreans kept those prisoners in a grotesque parody of their own soldiers' reluctance to go home. They certainly made great efforts to brainwash captive Americans to their way of thinking. It seems to have meant something to them.

Or maybe they were simply being cruel. Six thousand Americans died in North Korean captivity. The ones who returned after the signing of the truce - a mere 3,700 men, some dazed, some broken, some who sobbed to realize they were free - brought tales of unspeakable horror, torture, executions and brutality.

Now say you're Eisenhower. The nightmare is, finally, over. Say you discover that 900 soldiers weren't given back. What do you do? Start the whole thing over? Bring MacArthur back from retirement and tell him to go after the Chinese with atomic bombs, which MacArthur had wanted to do all along? Maybe you would. And I can't deny that it would be immensely satisfying - in a fictional, Hollywood sense - had Eisenhower sent the Army charging back in to get our boys.

But given the evidence of the preceding three years, that wouldn't have worked, and would only have created more prisoners, more casualties, more heartbreak. Korea wasn't Operation Desert Storm.

And as far as telling the American people, back then the government didn't tell us anything. It was wrong, but that's how they did things then, and, frankly, how they probably still do things.

Public opinion certainly never would have allowed the war to end, and we might still be fighting there. There are a lot of Red Chinese.

We may never know why the North Koreans kept them - it is still a closed dictatorship, run by the son of the man who started the war.

And if our prisoners were left there, we probably can do little more now than we could do 43 years ago - say a prayer and remember them.

©1996 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
Record Number: CHI1054444 "