[lit-ideas] Re: China and Africa
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2005 22:31:28 -0400
> [Original Message]
> From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 10/4/2005 8:18:18 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: China and Africa
>
>
> > 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.
>
> I won't confuse you further with the facts, but that Germany started
> another war in Europe after losing the previous one
My point was that it's often, maybe even usually, the loser who starts the
war. (Holding true for Iraq too.)
is disanalogous with
> the hypothesis you put forward, viz., that the Vietnamese (especially Ho
> Chi Minh) were somehow inspired by Japan's 'standing up to' a Western
> power. (In fact, the Japanese militarists believed that the US was by no
> means as willing or able to win a war than was Japan. I really would
> kindly suggest you read about the history of Japanese militarism from
> the late 1920s on.)
History is not always 100% in agreement as to what caused what because
people in the moment are not always in agreement. Some Japanese
congratulated themselves on taking out the U.S. in Pearl Harbor. Others
believed they merely awoke the sleeping lion. The Japanese were taken
aback with Doolittle's raid on Tokyo.
>
> What's important is not that Japan (by losing all its territories?)
> inspired small East Asian countries to try to escape from Colonial
> domination, but that indigenous, Communist-led movements did so without
> the alleged inspiration of Japan.
>
This is like arguing that hanging people stopped pick pocketing, or that
the death penalty stops murder. The fact is, an Asian power, much more
like the Vietnamese people than like the white man, bombed and severely
crippled a white power. To say that had no effect on the Vietnamese psych
is wishful thinking. The Communists certainly were a factor, but nothing
changes that from then on in the Vietnamese people knew that it could be
done, it had been done, even if incompletely. Once a genie is out of the
bottle, there's no putting it back in. And once we were gone, the
Communists were suddenly irrelevant.
> Japan had already conquered Manchuria, i.e., had defeated the Chinese
> there, by 1932. After that, Japan had far greater ambitions.
>
Yes it did. The U.S. was not on the agenda, however. At least not on the
immediate agenda. They were after supremacy in Asia.
Andy Amago
> Robert Paul
> Reed College
>
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