I’ve been calling for withdrawing our troops from South Korea for a few weeks now. I thought I was alone, but Bill Safire has been making the same argument in the New York Times:
A majority of South Korea’s voters, who owe their freedom over the past half-century to the U.S. military, are angry at the continued presence of 37,000 American troops on their soil. Last week, they elected a leader (Roh, pronounced No) who wants a repeat of Clinton’s fruitless 1994 cave-in.
First, begin withdrawing our troops from South Korea.
Because the U.S. is not an imperialist power, it does not belong where a democratic nation decides America is unwanted. Moreover, our ground forces have never been there to resist an invasion by an army well over a million, but as a tripwire to make certain American air and sea power would be used immediately to help the South’s army resist aggression.
Few realize that the deterrent of the past has now been reversed. After a half-century, we no longer need a tripwire of troops to force our decision to defend Seoul from ground attack; our primary concern is to defend our homeland from nuclear missiles. We would have far greater freedom of action to take out a dangerous nuclear facility in North Korea if our nearby ground troops were not hostage to massive counterattack across the old DMZ. This denial of a local American target would not be lost even on the irrational tyrants in Pyongyang.
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