Thirty years before, Korea had come through the most devastating war in its history, and that on the heels of being plundered by Japan for half a century. The nation was in ruins. And today, Korea is as sound and stable as any Democracy, it is prosperous, Korean film making is on the rise, and in terms of internet usage it is more “on line” than the United States. So I saw the “work in progress”, not exactly the midway point between despair and celebration, but near enough so that the path that linked both was still visible.

One of the things I learned about was the Korean disdain for the television series “MASH”. This rested on several complaints. First of all, since MASH was put together by educated, progressive and politically correct Americans, it was only natural that Koreans were portrayed in the series as cheap Hollywood stereotypes. They were the Pathetic Victims, Quaint Superstitious Elders, and Stony Faced Uncaring Generals. They weren’t people, they were plot devices. The Pathetic Victims were there to be saved from the war by the Caring Americans, the Quaint Superstitious Elders were to be indulged by the Sensitive Americans, and the Uncaring Generals were to be undermined by the Peace Loving Americans. Koreans knew better. They knew that the Korean war was their story, and we Americans were the subordinate characters thrown in for plot purposes.

Secondly, not once in the entire run of the series was it ever clear what the whole thing was really about. The Korean War was presented as a monstrosity without purpose, apparently a huge slaughter-fest being conducted for no other purpose than the glorification of the generals on the opposing sides. Now, in a way, this can be excused because in the 1950’s, a great many people were unaware of the true nature of Communism. But it was pretty evident in the Korea of my time, and is tragically obvious now, with South Korea school children text messaging each other on cell phones while their north Korean counterparts crawl after the ox carts hoping that they can scrounge up bits of dropped food to supplement their starvation level rations. Today, if you are Korean and starving, it is because you made the mistake of being born north of the line which the Republic of Korea, along with the US and other allies, managed to hold against the communists. If you were born south of that line- good job, you have a future without limits!

And thirdly, MASH managed to dodge entirely the real stories of that war, the Korean stories. They suffered more than we did, and faced choices far more terrible than we did. When communist forces entered Seoul, the front was collapsing and Korean leaders knew that every hour they could hold back the onslaught improved the chances that enough American forces would arrive to keep a foothold in Korea before it was overrun. Destroying the bridges of the Han Gang, the major river through Seoul, would buy that time. But the bridges were crowded with refugees fleeing the invasion. Had this been a MASH episode, the Good Doctors would surely have prevented the Uncaring Generals from demolishing the bridges, and by the end of the episode we would have learned that demolishing the bridges wasn’t even necessary. But this was reality, and it was necessary, and Korean generals, who were Very Caring, decided that for the sake of the nation, the refugees on the bridges would die.

They weren’t the first people to face this choice, it’s happened over and over -- in World War Two, Norwegian commandos sunk a ferry with Norwegian civilian passengers aboard, because they believed that the material the Germans were moving on that ferry was vital to the building of an atomic bomb. And in the 1820’s, the Greek Army supplied ammunition to the enemy they were fighting, the Turks, because they feared that an isolated Turkish force, running out of ammunition, would tear apart the Parthenon to salvage lead. When Hollywood gets on its soapbox, it tends to shy away from this kind of tragedy, where none of the protagonist’s choices can be good ones, only less bad.

So here we have half a century in Korea: thirty years before my time, a war far more horrible that most Americans understand it to be, and today, twenty years after, a time of prosperity that the survivors of that war, in the immediate shattered and bloodstained aftermath, could hardly have dreamt. Half a century, and the verdict is clear: the decisions were the right ones, the sacrifices not in vain. Part of the tragedy is that it took so long for this to be so obvious.

What will we know in fifty years about today’s war? Where will Iraq be? On the one hand, they have it a lot easier than the Koreans did- Iraq has far more infrastructure today than Korea did in 1953, and a large supply of a very marketable resource. On the other hand, Koreans have an amazing work ethic, and are not handicapped by the primitive mindset that grips most of the Middle East. But no one can say the Iraqis are ill-equipped materially. Whether they make it or not is really up to them. We cannot make them a success, any more than we “made” Hyundai a global manufacturing superstar, but we can help create the opportunity.

We can point out the way, clear the obstacles from the path, and hope they take it. And there will be then, halfway across the twenty first century, gray haired men and women with bitter memories that refuse to fade, tempered by the knowledge that the prosperous and free nation rising in Mesopotamia is one which they helped birth. Or we can abandon them, and in fifty years time, when the world is moving beyond oil, they compete with the Vietnamese for the right to make sneakers at ten cents an hour.

When I was in Korea we were very aware of the sacrifices made. There were monuments and cemeteries, and places with names in English- Gloucester Hill is one I remember- told the stories. One night we lost three men on a river crossing exercise, and so we had a taste of the pain. But we could also see for ourselves the everyday lives of the Koreans, improving each year, and we knew enough about the north to know that it really, really, was all worth it. I would like to know that Iraq is also going to be worth the cost, but reality does not indulge us with quick and easy answers- this may take another few decades. But while it may be that we fail to reach the goal- especially if we give in to voices of fear and misguided passion, and worse, those who would oppose this campaign only to promote their own political agendas– it can never be said honestly that the goal is not a noble one.

There is another point of view from which the sacrifice can never be “worth it.” Wars exact a toll in blood, and the cost is never fairly distributed. Iraq would be easier to swallow if every American family lost just .01% of a person. But people only come in whole units, and as per the three issues that MASH missed, each and every one of them we lose is 1) real and not a caricature, 2) part of a purpose, and 3) faced with very hard choices they have to make, knowing all the choices are only bad and less bad.

The choices are at every level. The General has to decide whether to take a town or not, the Private has to decide whether to peer around a corner or not. And at the end of the day, based on those choices, families are either struck hard, or not struck at all. For those that pay the cost, the knowledge that good was done can never be more than partial recompense. Hence, Memorial Day: one day a year for a nation to acknowledge that a very small subset among them has paid far more than their fair share, allowing most Americans to dodge the bill.