JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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- Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in Kanto region
- RCS (RCSコーポレーション), Kanto
- Salary: ¥180,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month includes performance bonus
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- Assistant Language Teacher - TOKYO - late-March start
- Interac, Tokyo
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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- Assistant Language Teacher - Kanagawa Prefecture - late-March start
- Interac, Kanagawa
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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BrightEyes
Sailwind,
Perhaps I should use less expensive words next time. You seem to be having some trouble digesting the 10 dollar variety.
You see, this idea:
I'm gathering that anyone the is willing to give their lives in the defense of others no matter what the background for making that choice is something not worthy of respect.
which you attributed to me, is the very antithesis (that means "double-plus opposite" in less expensive words) to what I argued which was:
"some wars are indeed necessary and sometimes it is our moral obligation to do profoundly evil things in order to prevent even more evil things from coming to pass."
So sorry if my big words scared you witless. Next time I'll try to be more gentle. Or maybe I'll take Danman's advice and just type slower.
Posted in: Yasukuni
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BrightEyes
Cleo,
There are so many points that you raise in your post that one hardly knows where to begin.
I suppose the first thing that should be noted is that you have associated me with a position that I never took, namely that not commemorating the war dead would lead to the end of war. I merely asserted that the unthinking commemoration of all war dead certainly contributes to making war more likely. Moreover, that is a position which even if you did not endorse outright, you certainly connived at when you wrote “They're carrying a banner bearing the name of the squad to which their fallen comrades belonged, to the shrine in which they've been told their comrades are enshrined. I see nothing tasteless in that.”
The point here is that there is something not only tasteless but reprehensible about that. These people are not merely remembering the fallen as individual human beings victimized by a cruel fate. They are remembering them as parts of a unit, a machine whose purpose is the taking of human life. They are being remembered as soldiers and sailors, that is to say as trained killers and killers who employed that training striving for the attainment of nefarious ends. When they celebrate that unit, they celebrate both the ends it was intended to achieve and the means by which it was meant to achieve them. In this case both were nefarious, and that is indeed reprehensible.
Your next argument is the product of sheer intellectual sloth. The idea that history is written by the victors has its greatest currency among two groups: losers and fools, among losers because of the obvious political advantage it imparts and among fools because it allows them to pretend to a wisdom they are too lazy to actually attain. When one repeats this empty platitude one reveals one’s ignorance of both history and historiography.
The fact is that the first genuine work of history, Thucydides’s HISTORY OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR was not only written by a loser, but a disgraced one at that. The classic account of the rise of Rome was not penned by any Senator or Consul, but by Polybius, a defeated Greek. The Franks’ invasion and occupation of Gaul was not the work of any German, but rather of Gregory of Tours, a Latin, that is to say, one of the losers. The idea that our understanding of history is shaped only by military victors is sheer nonsense. Even the popularity of this pablum is evidence enough that it is not true, for what victor would be so foolish as to write it down? The simple fact is that some of the most enduring and effective historical narratives are those that are written by the losers.
It certainly was none of the victors of Versailles that penned the tale of the "stab in the back" that cost the Germans the First World War. It was not Santa Anna who urged Texans to "Remember the Alamo." It was no Muslim who concocted the tale of Elijah carrying a message from the Virgin Mary to Prince Lazar, urging him to choose death over surrender on the Field of Blackbirds in Kosovo Polje. As Albion Tourgee wrote when he observed that Southerners were then in the process of successfully rewriting the history of the American Civil War: “Pathos lies at the bottom of all enduring fiction. Agony is the key to immortality. The ills of fate, irreparable misfortune, untoward but unavoidable destiny: these are the things that make for enduring fame.” The idea that, as you put it, “the winner is always right in the end” has never been accepted by the losers nor has it been adopted by neutral observers. It has, in fact, never even had the undivided support of the victors. From Thucydides to Kodama Yoshio, author of I WAS DEFEATED, losers have never lacked for a voice in the historical record. The very simple fact of the matter is that history is written by the writers and victory has nothing to do with it.
The failure to understand that indicates a failure to come to grips with history, a desire to gain enlightenment on the cheap by dismissing it all as a bunch of politically driven propaganda and lies from which one could never learn anything and which one consequently has no reason to study However as Barack Obama has rightly noted, “cynicism is a sorry excuse for wisdom” and that is certainly the case here. For history is full of scoundrels, ne’er-do-wells, and yes, even fabricators whose greatest desire is to distort the record and deceive future generations, but it is also full of heroes, decent men and women, and people of both courage and integrity. It is a record of struggle and war. It is the story of wars fought for no good reason or for nefarious ends, wars in which each side was as bad as the other as well as wars that were fought over real, important issues in which one side was objectively better than the other. The ability to distinguish one from the other is the fruit of wisdom and study. These can be gained only through constant questioning of both the historical record and one’s own assumptions. They cannot be gained through a simple surrender of one’s conscience to a nation or a state. Neither can it be gained by ignoring the fact that some wars are indeed necessary and sometimes it is our moral obligation to do profoundly evil things in order to prevent even more evil things from coming to pass. You have connived in the first and advocated the second. I can agree to neither of these positions.
It is true that violence solves very little in this world, but empty posturing and moral narcissism solve even less.
Posted in: Yasukuni
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BrightEyes
See if you can follow me here, Imagawa:
You always have a choice.
Even if that means that you choose between sacrificing your own life or taking that of an innocent, or worse yet, someone whose cause is just, you still have a choice
Once again: War is not just about some abstract "fighting". It is not about the endurance of hardship and danger. It is about killing. It is about killing real live human being and the infliction of misery and hardship. It is about doing profoundly evil things.
Killing is serious business. If you are engaged in it then you had better be damned sure of exactly why you are doing it.
If you want to make the case that some of those who were involved were victims of their governments as much as of their own intellectual and moral shortcomings then go ahead and try to make that case, but never forget that they are incontrovertibly victims of their own shortcomings in intellect, character or both.
The reason for that is that you always have a choice and anyone who opts for killing lightly, is and ought to be subject to the censure of all humanity.
Posted in: Yasukuni
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BrightEyes
See if you can follow me here:
Yes it does.
War is not primarily about facing danger or about sharing hardships. It is not about risking one's own life. War is first and foremost about killing. It is the science of premeditated violence of snuffing out and destroying the sacred gift of human life to achieve a political objective.
If you think it doesn't matter what objectives one is trying to achieve by such atrocity, well then I fear that there isn't much in your worldview that does or even could matter.
Posted in: Yasukuni
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BrightEyes
Cleo,
I am having some trouble following your logic.
You seem to be suggesting that we should commemorate the war dead regardless of what cause they supported because even though that will likely lead to more wars (which are a bad thing), all war is wrong and no cause is ever morally superior to any other.
That would of course suggest that nothing is wrong under any circumstances. Which would of course make war just fine.
I'm not sure you're making any sense here.
Posted in: Yasukuni
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BrightEyes
Sorry, but you are quite simply wrong.
People do in fact go to war for horrible reasons.
Many, but not all times, most of the people involved think that they are right.
One of the reasons that they do is that they don't actually give the problem enough thought.
They know they'll be heroes. They know if they die they will be martyrs.
They know that because everyone always honors the war dead.
No matter what they fought for.
Asserting that this is proper just makes the problem worse. It makes war more likely.
But better that than that we fail to honor those who gave their lives to advance nefarious ends. That would just be ungrateful.
Posted in: Yasukuni
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BrightEyes
No. They don't.
Part of the reason for that is that bleeding-hearted saps the world over reinforce the culture of militarism by asserting the propriety of commemorating the war dead irrespective of the cause in which they died.
Posted in: Yasukuni
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BrightEyes
These men have the right to express themselves however they choose.
Of course they only have that right because the comrades they are now memorializing did in fact die in vain.
They only have that right because the nation whose advance they sought to thwart overran them and completely occupied their country.
They only have that right because the survivors from their enemy's armed forces, the ones that the comrades they are now memorializing did their level best to kill, gave them that right.
They gave them that right despite the best efforts and strenuous objections of the leaders whose bidding their fallen comrades sereved.
But those are all inconvenient details so lets all just ignore it and pretend that commemorating the war dead is a wonderful thing no matter what cause they fight for.
If we actually judged people by the cause they tried to further by violence then young men might actually think about more than what country they were born into when it someone asks them to kill.
We couldn't have that.
What kind of world would we live in if people actually thought that going to war in the service of a pernicious cause would result in immortal opprobrium rather than honor? That would truly be horrible. People should not be forced to think before they kill.
Better to just pretend that all warfare is honorable and all who die in ti were noble and that every fallen soldier of every cause deserves exactly as much honor as every other.
Posted in: Yasukuni
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BrightEyes
How many greenhouse gases were released into the atmosphere in order to transport these things to Tokyo in the summer?
Useless, counterproductive and stupid.
Posted in: Glacier
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BrightEyes
I don't have any idea how it will play out in the business world, but the inner geek in me is really impressed that the thing can fly. It may prove to be the Edsel of the air, but I still think it's pretty cool.
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BrightEyes
Yes, of course non-Americans should be able to vote in the U.S. Presidential election.
Just as soon as they move to the U.S., establish residency, pay U.S. taxes, register with the Selective Service, spend a certain amount of time living in the country, say about five years, learn about the country and its history, pledge their loyalty to the U.S and renounce all allegiance to any foreign state.
Then I don't see any reason that they shouldn't be permitted to vote.
Posted in: If it were possible, do you wish non-Americans could vote in the U.S. presidential election?
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BrightEyes
There should be no US military presence in Japan.
Now all that has to happen is for Japan to revise its constitution and create an independent defense capacity to deal with any conceivable threat to its security or interests without recourse to aid from the United States.
Or...
Maybe a few crimes committed by GIs isn't such a high price to pay for security without responsibility after all.
But admitting that the free ride is a pretty good deal would be just so ... humiliating.
Much better to whine about the occasional crime when it comes up than admit to one's own political and military impotence.
Posted in: Do you think the U.S. military in Japan is doing all it can to prevent crimes by its personnel?