I’ve always held the vast majority of pacifists in complete and utter contempt. Most are fakes and poseurs - greasy hippy boomers, chickenheaded flakey women, college soys… they all claim to want peace but none of them will lift a finger to pay for it and do the heavy lifting. The rest are hypocrites - they were supposedly dead set against Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan… and now they’re howling for Russian blood and want to send your kids to fight and die in the Kraine because they’re all out of young Ukrainian men to do it. Of course, none of them will sign up to go face that Russian Bear they’ve been provoking for the last 20 years.
But even with pacifists, there are a vanishingly small smattering of those that warrant respect and consideration. There’s an old Japanese woman in this documentary who only survived the atomic bomb by being late for school. All her friends and classmates were killed. She is a dedicated pacifist, but her motivations are pure and her intents are noble. She’s still wrong - but understandably and forgivably so.
Should Japan rearm?
Japan never disarmed. The JSDF force always existed for the purpose of defending against hostile invasion - they just weren't ever meant to be deployed on foreign soil, as per Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. That's why there was such an uproar back in the early 90s when the JSDF deployed to Cambodia on that UNTAC peace keeping mission.
ReplyDeleteI'm not much of an anime nerd, but there's a film that came out a few years after called 'Patlabor 2' that sort of talks a bit about this. Its' actually quite good.
Hrmmmmm. Nowadays - in my tactical armchair expert opinion… if ya can’t do offence… you probably can’t do defence either… but whadda I know?
Delete99% of anime is crap… but the 2% of stellar stuff makes up for it! I liked the Ghost In The Shell stuff, Appleseed wasn’t bad… when those guys get it right… they’re hard to beat…👍
I'm a U.S. citizen and proud of it. The Japs are the enemy and always will be. Japan should not be allowed to rearm under any circumstances.
ReplyDeleteConsider the history of WWII, which included https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 where thousands of prisoners were tortured to death and used for biological experiments.
There's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre, which the Chinese should keep in mind.
We dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, and knowing what I know now, I would have advocated dropping a third just to let those Japs know who's in charge now.
I used to think the exact same way, Jack.
DeleteI dunno if I still do or not. Those guys literally went from medieval horse mounted cavalry and edged weapons… to fighter planes, aircraft carriers and machine guns in 80 years.maybe the rapid transition made for losing things along the way, like morals, ethics and humanity?
We aren’t the same people we were 80 years ago either… not saying you’re wrong… but there’s a LOT going on with those guys. The world is changing.
Yes, I doubt very much they'll come after us again (they learned that after the first time) and I think they need to protect themselves. It's not our job.
ReplyDeleteShould Japan rearm?
ReplyDeleteonly if it wishes to remain
Japan
Not sure how effective the Japanese military can be in the future seeing as their average age is increasing each year by a huge amount. If they don't start having babies soon the Japanese will disappear as a culture/society entirely.
ReplyDelete