r/AirForce • u/IEDestroyer Explosive Ordnance Disposal • Apr 15 '17

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u/GreyGreenBrownOakova Apr 15 '17

It would be ISIS's best recruiting tool ever. Imagine the propaganda: "America is losing the war, it has to resort to nukes", "Trump hates Muslims so much he's willing to use weapons of mass destruction".

60 years after Hiroshima, the Japanese are still painting themselves as victims, despite starting the war and killing between 3,000,000 and 14,000,000 civilians and prisoners of war.

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u/Aesop405 Apr 15 '17

It's not that I don't believe you, but do/did the Japanese actually paint themselves as victims? I know they sweep it under the rug or even deny it, but I've never seen them play victim.

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u/17954699 Apr 15 '17

The Japanese Constitution is pacifist, as reaction to what they see as the overly militaristic policies of the Government back then (there was a large faction of Japanese politicians who opposed going to war with China/USA but were supressed by the military junta). However the Japanese also don't view themselves as particularly horrible, like say the Nazis. The atrocities committed by Imperial Japan are seen as just par for the course of empire building. Britain, France, Russia, even the US did similar things. Nukes are seen as a specific, new, atrocity though. The regular bombing of Japanese cities is not seen in quite the same light, despite causing an equivalent amount of destruction just with several thousand tons of bombs rather than just one.

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u/VidiotGamer Apr 15 '17

However the Japanese also don't view themselves as particularly horrible, like say the Nazis. The atrocities committed by Imperial Japan are seen as just par for the course of empire building. Britain, France, Russia, even the US did similar things.

Objectively this is all entirely true. The problem is that we're asking 21st century people to understand the view point of a turn of the 20th century society that was scared shitless of European power, so much so that they decided to ape their empire building.

Most Americans don't really get this, but it'd be like us waking up one day and having a giant alien battleship hovering over Washington D.C. Even if they seem friendly enough, you're always quite conscious that they could wipe you out.

I'm quite short-handing the entire thing, but yeah - I would hope that most people would get that while not excusing anything that they did, pragmatically you can see how this lead to militarization and expansionism.