Trashing the Troops
By Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu
FrontPageMagazine.com
March 13, 2006

It is now becoming a repeated but no less discomfiting phenomenon in American politics that when support for the war cools, snide attacks on soldiers grow. When troops came home from Korea – never a popular war in the post-WW II euphoria - they were considered “suckers” by many for going to the war that wasn’t. Harry Truman, who sent troops to fight, denigrated the war, calling it a “police action.” From that point forward Americans gave it little attention or credibility.

As a result of intense, bitter fighting Korea in three years ate up almost as many American soldiers as Vietnam did in a decade. But upon return, soldiers found a country that had gone on without them, simply ignoring their sacrifice. Hollywood managed to make two good films on Korea – Pork Chop Hill and The Bridges of Toko-ri. The next time film portrayed Korea it was in the anti-war satire M*A*S*H. That is the only image of the Korean War most Americans hold today if they recall it at all. Little wonder veterans feel that they were in the “Forgotten War.”
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