America as Japan's whore again.

Last week I was talking to a guy who has lived in the States in New York and Washington. He was willing to talk about politics---US of course---and said that Americans were worried about only small, nearly unimportant things when considering who to elect as president. He said that he believes that the U.S. president is in reality the president of the world. Therefore, things like Iraq should not be one of the biggest issues in an election, but far down the list. In his opinion, we should have attacked North Korea, which is a much more important issue to the world, meaning Japan.

American as Japan's whore. We should not worry about the thousands of Americans killed in Iraq, and tens of thousands of Iraqis, as these are unimportant things in the world. The big, overwhelmingly important thing is that the U.S. should send its people to be killed solving Japan's problems.

I have heard this many times from various Japanese. The common theme is that the US has some absolute duty to fight for Japan. Japan can't you see, because of its (American written) constitution. Article 9 which prevents Japan from having a military even though it has one. (In the wide sense of the word military, not narrow. Or visa versa.)

So in many ways it is good that Abe is going nutcase rightwing and defending the Japanese Imperial Army's atrocities. This way, Japan can go the final steps to ensuring its military can get Japan into another war and hopefully keep the US out of it. Japan can get its own men killed if it wants to go to war. They are not superior to Americans or anyone else, so why should their lives be protected by others giving theirs?