Let me translate. John Toland, because he refused to kowtow to the Neocon line of historical explanation, was not a serious historian. Is that pretty much your position?
In other words, Japan had no choice in the matter. They could not pursue conference or compromise.
No compromise was being offered other than "my way or the highway" by the western powers.
The Japanese position in China was based on mass slaughter, atrocities against Chinese civilians and the use of concentration camps.
You mean like the American position in the Philipines?
The Japanese position in China was based on defeating China in 1895 and Russia in 1905 and taking over her privileges in China. The new war from 1937 was based upon attempting to install a government friendly to Japan.
The US and European colonial presence in China was based on negotiations from a position of military strength against a Chinese government that wanted trade to be purely one-way.
Rather, the Western position was based upon forcible trade centered on the distribution of narcotics backed by military power with a country which was not interested in commercial intercourse. For an American perspective, they would be equivalent to Columbia and Mexico warring against the US to allow free distirbution of Cocaine and Marijauna and taking Miami and Long Beach as entrepots to enable the distirbution of illicit drugs in the continental US.
A straw man. The West's preferred method was not mass slaughter of civilians. Imperial Japan's was. Your moral equivalence game will not wash.
I'm sure third worlders everywhere would beg to differ with this assessment of the impact of western Colonial warfare.
"The shift to guerrilla warfare, however, only angered the Americans into acting more ruthlessly than before. They began taking no prisoners, burning whole villages, and routinely shooting surrendering Filipino soldiers. Much worse were the concentration camps that civilians were forced into, after being suspected of being guerrilla sympathizers. Thousands of civilians died in these camps. In nearly all cases, the civilians suffered much more than the guerrillas." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine-American_War)
The British method of subjugating Ireland and Scotland was to forge alliances with Irish and Scottish families that wanted change of government in Ireland and Scotland, and of using these families as proxies to gain political control over those territories.
You mean like the Japanese putting Emperor Puyi on the throne of Manchukuo, or cultivating relations with leading native families in the Philippines, Indonesia, and India?
And how could you fail to remember the English cause and response to the potato famine in Ireland, or the campaign of enclosure in Scotland to rout the Highlanders, or the origins of "kidnapping" on the streets of Glasgow? When you ignore all that, sinister and treacherous dealings with disgruntled nobles to betray their own people all sounds so benign and peaceful.
They had a thousand options: in their arrogance they chose the one that would put their Empire to an end.
Yes, because an even greater empire was in the making, one that would direct the actions of not some mere corner of the world, such as the Japanese desired in East Asia and Oceania, but of the entire globe and all peoples within it, and still does so to this day. That would be our country, lead by our erstwhile East-Coast WASP Internationalist elite and their feal servants who they admitted to the halls of power. How do you, a Catholic, come to the aid of this gang of bloody-handed criminals who have done nothing but subvert our constitution and our standing in the eyes of the world?
Take it to DU.
No, my position, as before, is that he was not a serious historian because he just made stuff up when he couldn't find sources to substantiate his claims. His work is not history, but historicized fiction.
No compromise was being offered other than "my way or the highway" by the western powers.
I'm sure you know this is a completely false claim.
Japan had a choice of invading Manchuria or not invading Manchuria.
You mean like the American position in the Philipines?
No, I mean completely unlike the US in the Philippines - the two situations couldn't be more different, in point of fact.
The new war from 1937 was based upon attempting to install a government friendly to Japan.
No, the new war was to create not just a client state but to provide Lebensraum for Japanese nationalists by slaughtering Chinese civilians wholesale and appropriating their property.
One might as well claim that the Nazi blitzkrieg of Poland was simply to install a friendly government in Warsaw.
Rather, the Western position was based upon forcible trade centered on the distribution of narcotics backed by military power with a country which was not interested in commercial intercourse.
Not only do you simplify British policy here, you conflate US policy with UK policy.
For an American perspective, they would be equivalent to Columbia and Mexico warring against the US to allow free distirbution of Cocaine and Marijauna and taking Miami and Long Beach as entrepots to enable the distirbution of illicit drugs in the continental US.
No, it would be analogous to the Mexican navy blockading the Gulf until the US agreed to export all kinds of goods to Mexico with only minimal duties.
The US did not use the implied threat of blockade to flood China with US-manufactured narcotics. You realize now, I hope, how bizarre and off-base your analogy sounds.
I'm sure third worlders everywhere would beg to differ with this assessment of the impact of western Colonial warfare.
They can say what they like, but they cannot alter the historical record.
America's overseas warfare was radically different in purpose, method and result than Japanese. It would behoove me to point out that the people of the Philippines made common cause with the US against the Japanese in the Second World War. If the USA's policy toward the Phlippines as an overseas territory was indistinguishable from that of Japan's why would millions of Filipinos have risked their lives fighting against Japan on behalf of their evil US masters? Why wasn't the Japanese invasion of 1942 seen as a joyful liberation from the evil US? Why is MacArthur a revered figure in the Philippines to this day?
To any American who does not hate his own country and his own countrymen, the answer is obvious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine-American_War
Wikipedia as a serious historical source? It's sub-Toland.
America took prisoners of war - including irregulars - in the Philippines. The US did not employ "concentration camps."
You mean like the Japanese putting Emperor Puyi on the throne of Manchukuo, or cultivating relations with leading native families in the Philippines, Indonesia, and India?
Not really. The issue is not whether Japan employed the usual political machinations that every power always does - the issue is what Japan did that was extraordinary and atypical. The English did not round up and kill over one million Irish in a 10 year period and import one million English over a 5 year period.
And how could you fail to remember the English cause and response to the potato famine in Ireland, or the campaign of enclosure in Scotland to rout the Highlanders, or the origins of "kidnapping" on the streets of Glasgow?
The English "caused" the potato famine now? Is that like Louis Farrakhan's theory that AIDS is deliberate germ warfare by the US government against its own citizens? Yes, the English completely failed to adequately address the famine, and yes the English decided to enforce property law in the Highlands - but that hardly compares to an active campaign of deliberate genocide.
Yes, because an even greater empire was in the making, one that would direct the actions of not some mere corner of the world, such as the Japanese desired in East Asia and Oceania, but of the entire globe and all peoples within it, and still does so to this day. That would be our country, lead by our erstwhile East-Coast WASP Internationalist elite and their feal servants who they admitted to the halls of power.
Drama and archaism combined with inexact language do not equal argument.
The United Kingdom was an Empire: it ruled 22% of the earth's surface beyond its original sovereign territory.
For the US, the number is significantly less than 0.5%, almost all of it gained by peace treaty and not deliberately conquered.
The US is not an empire - and the Edward Said/Noam Chomsky argument that economic and political influence equals conquest is, quite frankly, stupid.
How do you, a Catholic, come to the aid of this gang of bloody-handed criminals who have done nothing but subvert our constitution and our standing in the eyes of the world?
Nothing in my Catechism tells me that I am obligated to hate my native land and my Catechism specifically forbids me from lying about America or about anything else.
And, as a Catholic American who loves his country and doesn't like engaging in the sins of lying and detraction against it, I can also point out that nothing you've described "subverts" the Constitution in any way.
The US Constitution leaves foreign policy entirely in the hands of the Executive and the Senate. It does not contain any strictures regarding the conduct of foreign policy.