How many Japanese Prime Ministers visit war temples? That being said, this is just par the course for US gunboat diplomacy.
I don't suppose you believe that the area would be completely free of crime if the U.S just packed up and left?
I'm not seeing it widely reported. I think the deification of the military post 9/11 is a bit creepy. I grew up in a military town and most of my childhood friends were military dependents...I neither hate nor romanticise the military. I was even a naval officer candidate (aviation if anyone cares) that unfortunately graduated during the Clinton cutbacks, and there wasn't a spot for me. I ultimately didn't serve, but only until I was informed post-MEPS that I wasn't needed. I joked it was all for the best, as I later consulted for a Serbian startup that probably wouldn't have hired me had I bombed their country. My main issue with the military is a libertarian one: Why do taxpayers pay for the maintenance of 800+ bases, often in places where they are not wanted?Bigtexx is of the opinion that WW2 justifies keeping them in Japan, but that doesn't jive with our official reason for being there (North Korea and China). It looks an awful lot like occupation to the Okinawans. It's an expensive enterprise and doesn't exactly engender goodwill abroad, especially when your troops rape and murder locals.
I'm also no softee on Japanese war crimes or their unwillingness to apologize for them or admit to them. But no one justifies US troop presence in Japan because of Nanking or Battan or Pearl Harbor. My country's military is in a place where we haven't been at war in 70 years, where we aren't wanted by the people there, and where our enlisted men seem to be unable to keep their hand to themselves. It would be immoral and cowardly NOT to question why they are there.
No, but how would you feel if a Japanese military base was stationed in your town and one of it's personnel raped someone from your local area?
Okay does that eliminate the pride that Okinawans and Japanese people have and not desiring another sovereign nation's military base stationed in their own sovereign nation? Could you understand them being more harsh on an American from that military instillation committing a rape more so than a local? Don't Americans do that all the time. Aren't we more offended when a Mexican illegal rapes one of our women?
Is that why Obama deported a record amount of illegals during his presidency? The United States is deporting illegal immigrants at nine times the rate as 20 years ago. Come again?
We won't leave Okinawa and we shouldn't leave Okinawa. The military footprint could be handled much better than it has been, but unless Japan is willing to provide for their own defense and to an extent that would make their neighbors very uneasy, those bases are necessary.
And yet the illegal immigrant population holds steady. This means they are entering the country at 9 times the rate they were 20 years ago. Our taxes are being spent to take care of this problem.
So what explains a Mississippi school being segregated until what... 2016? I mean the situations are not similar. US and Japan are allies now. WW2 and all the world leaders from that era are gone. It's clear that's a bad point to make. US isn't at war with Japan and there aren't even tensions. And it's a big issue in their politics.
They are there because a group of castaway sailors landed on the island and then built themselves a cabana where they could dance with the local girls. I though everyone knew this.
Thats kind of my point. Even after the first bombings and nukes, the Japanese leadership did not want to surrender. The Japanese seem to act as though the 1930s and 1940s never happened, much the same way Mississippi hasn't ratified certain amendments.
