[Terpfen]

"First you ask me to use a crystal ball and tell you what a militarized Japan might find worth using that military to get...or regain. Now you ask me to affirm that Japan isn't a potential North Korea. I simply can't do that, because who knows what the new Japan would bring to the table that would change its basis for intervention?"

I never attempted to use you as a crystal ball. I'm simply trying to discern the reasoning you used to arrive at the conclusion that a Japan with an improved military is a bad thing.

I know full well the "we're the best" nature of how the Japanese think. However, to use that as the basis for arguing that Japan should be left within its cage, given the current situation in east Asia, is a little too shortsighted. The idea isn't to make Japan a military superpower, it's to restore a counterbalance that has existed in that region for centuries.

Koizumi knows who's got the nukes pointed at Japan, and it isn't the United States.

[LibertarianInExile]

We'd be putting a scalpel in the hand of a quiet crazy that has the same fundamental mental illness as the others in the ward--and the others have scalpels already. Maybe we want to keep an even keel in the psycho ward and he's all for us doing that right now. But who knows when he'll act off his rocker, and what damage he'll do then?

I'd rather just keep my thorazine dart gun in hand, and be happy that at least one of the crazies can't cut me up.