Japan just fine with the free ride

As much as people criticize Abe, he does have a tough job to bring Japan into reality by recognizing that Japan does need a military (it has one, but we must play word games and call it Self Defense Force) and cannot just rely on the US and recently Australia.

Under Japan's current reading of its US written constitution, it cannot engage in collective defense. For example, if Japan went to war and the US was defending it, the Japanese military could not use force to defend an American ship, or aircraft, or soldier under attack by Japan's enemy. 62% of Japanese polled see nothing wrong with this. America as Japan's mercenaries, now with Australian help. Poll here.

Maybe Abe knows what he is doing by denying WW2 crimes. Perhaps there is no other way to get Japan to come into reality. Or, it could be that people are smart enough to see that with the US getting into military messes more and more often, that they don't want to be involved at all. And why should they? Pay a few bucks to the US to give the Americans a change to spout the nonsense that it is cheaper to station US troops in Japan than the US and get a low cost defense. If the US government places no higher value on the lives of its military men and women than to send them to possibly die for the second richest country on earth and expect no reciprocity, then why should Japan?

It really should be entirely up to the Japanese. The US should not be involved anyway. I would love to see the US withdraw from Japan and tell it to solve its own problems and defend itself. American men and women should not be involved in any war defending a so-called ally that would not risk a single drop of Japanese blood to defend them.