James Na on the 9/11/05 Riot

James Na, author of The Asianist and Buns and Gutter Guns and Butter (oops, mistake fixed!! Heh.) and OFK reader, has I site I probably “refreshed” every six to eight seconds last October. Some grafs:

The leftist ruling Uri Party has been divided by the new “Battle of Inchon.” Some counseled moderation while others within the party lauded the protesters as showing a “deep ethnic purity” and denounced the opponents of the protest as “ultra-rightists.” President Roh Moo-Hyun of South Korea, who came to power by pandering to momentary anti-Americanism in a close electoral contest, has tread carefully over the controversy. While criticizing the violent protesters as being “unhelpful” to the US-South Korea alliance, he has failed to condemn them unequivocally, likely in order not to hurt his standing among his leftist political base.

While some observers of the South Korean political scene have expressed fears that the congressional “intervention” may inflame more anti-Americanism, the letter struck a right note of American indignation and concern. With polls showing a substantial majority of South Korean public still favoring the presence of US forces in Korea and opposing the toppling of the statue, it appears the anti-American left in South Korea finally over-reached.

Roh and his allies, who have benefited from the tacit toleration, if not outright encouragement, of ugly and lawless acts of anti-American violence in recent years, have been put in a difficult position. The letter is a reminder that it may no longer be possible to play the two-faced game of inciting anti-Americanism for domestic political benefit while reassuring moderates, conservatives and the American audience that the US-South Korean relationship is on a sound footing.

By “some commentators,” James probably means The Marmot, and here’s what I had to say on the same subject:

This is not just about views of MacArthur or Incheon, or the feng shui merits of having his statue on the hill. It’s about a violent attack on a symbol of America, deliberately scheduled to take place on 9/11. This could only have been meant as a rhetorical statement of approval of the mass murder of Americans. Not all of the anti-American violence in Korea recently has been rhetorical, as you know, and few of those behind it have met with serious punishment during Roh’s presidency. And while it may lack the same symbolic potency, the hateful malice of 9/11/05 was no less vile than that behind a cross burning. By just how much of a margin did we avert a direct confrontation between these violent thugs and returning American veterans?

. . . .

As we have seen all too often, Roh is a weak man who instinctively aims for the middle ground between opposing views, almost without regard for the objective merits of each side’s view. We have seen North Korea play this insight brilliantly during the six-party talks. Congress, it seems, has finally figured this out. It perceives Roh’s blindness to the excess of young left-wing Koreans, perhaps because they are his electoral base. It realizes that Roh will take the support of the United States for granted unless it shifts the debate by making its demands public. It probably does not mind embarrassing Roh, or sending a message to Korean voters that the alliance is terminable at will.

James concludes that this is not a reason to withdraw our forces from Korea, and I agree. The MacArthur protestors by themselves represent a small minority that threaten to grow only if interested Americans and South Koreans fail to confront their lies effectively. There is some sign, as James notes, of that happening because the red-vests overreached.

However, the fact that the red-vests are not reason to alter our force structure in Korea doesn’t mean that anti-Americanism overall isn’t a sufficiently strong force in Korea to have important political and military implications. You can’t fight an effective war if you lack broad popular support. Which raises the question of the U.S. public, its obviously low threshhold for casualties, and the anachronism of the United States projecting power into an area where a conflict would cause the almost immediate loss of thousands of our troops. My question continues to be this–how much power projection value do ground forces add that can’t be added by air and naval power? Does that added value justify the much greater risk to those ground forces?

Thanks for the tip, James. Great minds think (mostly) alike.