There are times when you read something so clearly wrong-headed that you have to wonder at the underlying assumption set over which the author’s world view was constructed. In the UK Guardian today, Eri Hotta examines the diplomatic history leading Japan to strike Pearl Harbor 67 years ago and concludes that their actions were inevitable because of high-handed US policy:
The second world war in the Pacific finally came about for many different reasons. But it was, above all, the sense of encirclement and humiliation that united the deeply divided Japanese government. Feeling defeated by a series of failed approaches to the US, including an overture to hold direct talks with Roosevelt, prime minister Fumimaro Konoe resigned on October 16, making hard-line army minister Hideki Tōjō his successor.
The high-handed tone of the Hull Note of November 26, demanding Japan’s withdrawal of all its troops from China, was a final blow to the moderates in Japan’s government, who still hoped for diplomatic negotiations.
This, of course, was after Japan had already annexed Korea (1910) inserted itself militarily into China (the Manchuko travesty – 1931, the “Rape of Nanjing” – 1937) and then-French Indochina (1940). And, it’s worth remembering, the attacks on Pearl Harbor were only part of the general assault throughout the region, including Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philipines and Malaysia.
What Ms. Hotta seems to be saying is that it would have been better to “give appeasement a chance”. Because that had worked so well for Europe, facing a similarly expansionist, militarist, fascist regime.
As if that weren’t bad enough, Ms. Hotta – apparently a Japanese national married to a liberal Anglo-Dutch “intellectual” - goes on to derive contemporary policy recommendations:
With almost 70 years of hindsight, Pearl Harbor should offer some lessons for US foreign policy today. Despite obvious differences between Pearl Harbor and recent Islamist terrorist tactics, they show the common desire of self-proclaimed Davids to topple their Goliaths in a clearly lop-sided battle. These Davids depend on western technologies to overcome imbalances of power, and are driven by a sense of real or imagined humiliation.
It’s not unusual to note that there are two sides to every disagreement. What’s unusual, after nearly 70 years of hindsight, is a failure to underside that one side was clearly wrong.
Ms. Hotta owes herself a moment of quiet introspection to follow her thinking all the way home to its conclusion: Seventy years ago that would have meant a thousand-year Reich with “lebensraum” to the east and no Jews in the neighborhood. Today that would mean a re-energized “caliphate” in the Middle East with no Jews in the neighborhood.
This is apparently what’s taken for “liberal” thought in Evropa.
BBD, if I were to say that you were a disagreeable pedant and gasbag, that might – potentially – be a smear. To note that a person is what in fact she is cannot, by definition, be such. Such behavior is to commit a category error and is the hallmark of a weak intelligence and/or characteristic of those who feverishly erect strawmen, the better to demolish them. And feel even better about themselves afterward, if that’s possible.
I suppose it’s cheaper than therapy.
Guppy said:
Putting aside the notion of unilateral actions with the facts cited at #44 above, our president, as even his domestic critics concede (the ones worth listening to, anyway) acted in what he understood to be the national interest. A constitutionally sufficient majority of both houses of Congress agreed with him. France and Germany, for reasons of their own national interest, no doubt, did not. Her implication is a false syllogism which concludes that our European “allies” liking us is more important than our own national interest.
So, as for “reading skills,” well: Something about motes and beams comes to mind.
Oh. You’re back.
Never get tired of playing the fool, do you?
Bad BobDeux … You’re going to give everyone here a distaste of you if you accuse Lex and his commenters of being “hacks and jingoists.” This sounds like code for accusing them of racism, that universal and tired meme that liberals use instead of reasoned argument.
Personal ad hominem insults are a poor substitute for respectful differences of opinion. Grow up. It’s time.
Marianne