@gentoobro @Hoss @LordOfTheKangs @istvan @lanodan @hj @ProfessionalPetFoodTaster @mangeurdenuage Actually reasonable version of why Korea was a fuckup war: https://faroutliers.com/2008/12/20/mao-as-macarthur-peng-as-ridgway/ .

The guys on top kept making demands of the guys in the field, who kept saying "This is actually impossible, we can't advance and if we advance, we can't hold". MacArthur kept saying "I don't care, just push north, this is gonna be glorious like WW2", and Mao's oldest son was killed in the Korean War, which he didn't want to enter, but Stalin made it a condition of aid; China had just come off their own civil war, with Stalin backing Mao and the US backing Chiang Kai Shek, and were still reliant on Russia.

(It was actually interesting if you look at the real shit instead of the meme versions of these wars. See also https://faroutliers.com/2008/12/23/the-korean-war-as-maos-triumph/ , https://faroutliers.com/2008/12/06/maos-war-in-korea-1950/ , etc. I've been meaning to read "The Coldest Winter" since those blog posts went up in 2008.)