[lit-ideas] Re: China and Africa
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2005 19:48:03 -0400
> [Original Message]
> From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 10/4/2005 7:35:01 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: China and Africa
>
> Andy wrote:
>
> > Last bit of pessimism before I mend my ways, one more reason to think
Iraq
> > was not such a good idea and to look for peace with honor asap: it was
the
> > Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor that gave small Asian countries like
> > Vietnam the idea that they, too, didn't have to knuckle under to
> > imperialist powers like France.
>
> For the record, Japan did not, of course, invade Pearl Harbor. But
> before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan had been at war with China,
> beginning with the trumped up 'Manchurian Incident,' for nearly ten years.
>
> In 1940, Japan, now an ally of Germany and Italy, invaded and occupied
> the northern part of French Indo China. (When they moved into the
> southern part the next year, the US cut off exports to them.) The
> Japanese conquest of Indo China, the Philippines, and Burma, were
> ostensibly to liberate them, but in fact, they would have become
> Japanese colonies.
>
> Ho Chi Minh became a Communist some time in the early 1920's. At the end
> of World War II, he was the head of a government opposed to French rule.
> In 1946, fighting broke out between the French and Ho Chi Minh's
> Vietminh, which ended with the French defeat at Dienbienphu.
>
> It's pretty unlikely that the devastation of Japan inspired confidence
> in many Southeast Asian countries, given that Japan had not only lost,
> but had earlier occupied some and planned to occupy others. Japan was
> nobody's inspiration or model. The successful anti-Imperialist movements
> were all, as far as I know, Communist led.
>
Japan bombed (not invaded) Pearl Harbor. They did it to disable the U.S.
navy from getting in the way of their aspirations in the Pacific. They
never intended to conquer the U.S. They were interested in Manchuria
primarily. It doesn't matter that Japan lost. Many wars are started by
the loser. Germany started a second war after losing the first. What's
important is that an Asian country stood up to a Western superpower. You
say yourself that by the end of WWII Ho became head of a government opposed
to French rule. The Vietnamese lost 3 million people and were prepared to
fight to the last person to save their country. Japan was also a
superpower in its own right before WWII.
Andy Amago
> See: Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, etc.
>
> Robert Paul
> Reed College
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