Forgotten No More

Forgotten No More
by Michael R. Allen

Tuesday, October 5, 1999

Given the intrepid efforts by the United States government to hide inconvenient facts about foreign operations, the newly-unearthed truths about a Korean War incident came as no great surprise. American soldiers killed as many as 300 South Korean refugees after falsely believing that North Korean soldiers were hiding among the civilians. According to the Associated Press, which broke the story last week, six American veterans remember the incident in detail, but the US Army has no official records on the incident.

But what does one expect from the Pentagon? If the military can dilute publicity about its ongoing operations in Iraq and Yugoslavia, as well as its role in the 1993 Waco raid, it becomes a piece of cake to cloak its role in the events of half a century ago.

The scoop: In the early weeks of the Korean conflict, from July 26-29, 1950, US troops participated in a three-day massacre of innocent South Koreans. As North Korean soldiers approached a small village called No Gun Ri, the villagers fled. American planes flew in and fired at the refugees, who were wearing white clothing. (The Air Force pilots often deliberately attacked refugees suspected of being enemy soldiers, according to declassified documents.)

Nearly 100 people were killed before the refugees scattered. Waiting for them was the 7th regiment of the US Army’s 1st Cavalry, which directed the refugees to an area under a bridge. The soldiers then waited for nightfall and proceeded to slaughter the people they had directed to “safety.”

“We just annihilated them” explained Norman Tinkler, a former machine gunner who was present at No Gun Ri.

As many as 300 refugees -- most of them women, children, and the elderly -- died from gunshot wounds under the bridge. When the bodies were removed, not a single North Korean soldier was found. This sort of widespread slaying of noncombatants would occur in another US war eighteen years later: in Vietnam at My Lai, nearly 500 civilians were killed by the West's most civilized butchers. The old just war theory dictates that only combatants can rightly be attacked by their opponents. By covering up No Gun Ri, the US military abandoned the Western tradition of just war, forever.

The US Army claims to have no records on the incident, and South Korean officials have suppressed attempts to investigate the shootings. In 1997, survivors filed a claim with the South Korean government, but it was rejected. Suing the US government is next to impossible; it enjoys the immunity that so-called robber-barons could never have bought.

Though the international statute of limitations has run out, something must be done to punish the U.S. Government. It ought to sell a few of its office buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue, liquidate the departments inside, and give the proceeds to the victims of the No Gun Ri killings. Compensation is the only moral course.

History proves that the United States intervened on behalf of the authoritarians in South Korea to battle the Communists in North Korea. That the intervention was unconstitutional and unnecessary is obvious. No war was declared by Congress, and the Communists had not planned to invade America.

Yet, the overarching goals set forth by the “wise men” of the post-World War II era demanded the US stop every tin pot Communist dictator from Moscow to Havana, so the intervention was necessary to the planners at the State Department. If a few boys on both sides lost their lives fighting a futile war, so be it. Global Communism had to be replaced with good, old American corporate fascism.

Thus, the US intervened in the conflict between the two Koreas for roughly three years, 1950 to 1953. To what end? To this day, the United States has soldiers stationed in South Korea, ostensibly to keep the peace between the nations. If the Cold War was ever about a permanent world peace, there is no evidence to demonstrate that. Korea proves that the anti-Communist military activities were about American military dominance in the world.

The Korean conflict, dubbed the “forgotten war,” was the first of many horrible, undeclared US-initiated wars which still continue unabated. Thanks to the Associated Press, the bloody details are again remembered. Americans should be indignant at their government for this massacre, and the lies that ensued. Americans should also look at the No Gun Ri massacre as a precedent for a more recent event.

At the Waco raid, the federal agents were working closely with the Army’s elite Delta Force. Eighty Americans were destroyed, all because the man they followed had been accused of committing small-scale crimes. The people who were burned to death at the compound were not seen as humans, but potential enemies of the state. As such, they paid a terrible price.

The No Gun Ri incident set a precedent for unjust warfare. The tactics used there have been learned by domestic law enforcement, as well as by subsequent military corps. To include the innocent in conflicts that are inherently unjust is a travesty in a country that once embraced a liberal rule of law. America must say “never again,” or watch as the innocent abroad and at home suffer a lawless US military.

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