In January of 1968 my ship received secret orders to leave her combat patrol on Yankee Station and steam north at full speed. We were soon joined by a cruiser which kept us topped off with Bunker C so we wouldn't have to slow down on the way to the Straits of Tsushima. No one knew where we were going, but it just kept getting colder and colder as we sped north.

Eventually we were told that the N Koreans had captured one of our ships and that they were holding the crew hostage. Again, America was distracted, Vietnam and the Tet Offensive caught us offguard, and our hastily assembled battle group in the Sea of Japan was insufficient to support any major defensive operation on the peninusula if the N Koreans responded to military action on our part by invading the south.

There had already been 20 years of increasing tension, including a major war, in Korea during the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations. The tension continued during the subsequent Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush the Elder years. Clinton did little during his eight years (he had distractions of his own), and neither did his successor (no doubt due to his distractions) during the next six.

This is a completely non-partisan screw-up, folks, we simply have a tendency to not respond to problems until they boil up into a crisis.