Defending America's Role in the Korean War

In “Elsenhower the Dove” (September), Douglas Brinkley writes of “the unnecessary cost of lives in the Korean War” and mentions Americans having been killed “in a useless conflict.” I suspect that these are Brinkley’s sentiments and not Ike’s. The lives lost in Korea were not squandered; they had helped defend South Korea against naked aggression by North Korea. Any visitor to South Korea would argue that the conflict was anything but useless.