Text 16709, 58 rader
Skriven 2011-04-11 14:28:22 av Roy Witt (1:387/22)
  Kommentar till text 16643 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
Ärende: Names will never hurt me...
===================================
10 Apr 11 06:15, Bob Ackley wrote to Roy Witt:

 RB>>>> Probably for the same reason as in Europe. It's a great staging
 RB>>>> area for anything that develops in the southern Pacific: plenty of
 RB>>>> room, friendly, stable government. Hawaii and Japan are too far
 RB>>>> away to be really useful as bases for that region.

 BA>>> If that idea had much merit there'd be US installations all over
 BA>>> Taiwan, there aren't.

 RW>> Since the Chinese claim that island as a part of China, there's a
 RW>> good reason for that.

 BA> Nobody except China recognizes that claim

Even so, the US is reluctant to do much there.

 BA> - or its claim to own Tibet.  In any case there WERE US installations
 BA> on Taiwan, AFAIK they've been shut down.

That was before the Chinese were a world power. My uncle was stationed on
'Formosa' when Chiang Kai-shek was the leader of free China.

 BA>>> OBTW, staging bases at Guam, Samoa and Australia are a bit too far
 BA>>> from China to be able to have much effect.  Okinawa was doable - a
 BA>>> bit of a stretch, but doable - but Japan isn't going to allow the
 BA>>> US to use those bases against China.

 RW>> There are two air bases in south Korea...not out of reach from there
 RW>> and the government is more than friendly as long as China continues
 RW>> to back north Korea.

 BA> Many people want those bases closed and the US troops brought home.

Not many south koreans among them.

 BA> The Japanese government is pracrtically a wholly owned subsidiary of
 BA> the regime in DC.  You did know that the Japanese Constitution was
 BA> dictated by Douglas MacArthur, did you not?

Even if the Constitution was imposed, Japan found its way to freedom,
peace and democracy after paying the valuable cost of defeat in war. As a
result, Japan has become a decent nation. So the imposed Constitution has
been right for Japan. Left to the constitution they came up with on their
own continued the Emperor's sovereignty and differed little from the 1889
Meiji Constitution, which eventually allowed elected political leaders and
bureaucrats to drive the nation into wartime militarism in the Emperor's
name.

Just because it was imposed on them doesn't mean it was a bad one. And it
is subject to change, just as our own constitution is.

                R\%/itt

  Fox News was not used as a source for information in this message!

--- Twit(t) Filter v2.1 (C) 2000-10
 * Origin: SATX Alamo Area Net * South * Texas, USA * (1:387/22)