http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/0 … l?hpt=Sbin
Over the Okinawa flip-flop, apparently. Doesn’t bode well for the US military base in Okinawa. (Although I suppose, probably this means Japan can’t get rid of the base, so candidates won’t explicitly vow to get rid of it, instead saying vague things like “look closely at the relationship”.)
To be fair, there’s more at stake than Okinawa. North Korea is acting up again, reminding everyone there’s a reason why thousands of US soldiers are stationed in Japan. Okinawa and Japanese nationalists are naturally going to be pissed, but its safer for all parties involved, to have MORE troops in the region.
While some close minded Japanese might say, “who cares, it’s only Korea,” - every time NK tests their long range missiles, they shoot them TOWARDS or OVER Japan. If Kim is gonna go out, he’s gonna take a few potshots at Japan with him… and if NK invades SK, you can be damned sure China - both of them - will mobilize their military to pick a side. Not saying it’s WW3… but it could be a nasty regional conflict.
As much as I can sympathize with them: Okinawa is being incredibly shortsighted. And China will NOT stand for a fully militarized Japan (gee… wonder why) - so it’s basically gonna be the US and Australia carrying the weight. The PM has understood this and taken the fall. He’s ended his career, so that others can have theirs.
America isn’t happy about this either… we’ve already got two losing wars, a military that’s overstretched, and broke economy to pay for all this… and it’s hard selling to Australians, that Japan is a close national ally worth going to war over, when Japan does things like violate Australian waters to hunt their whales. :roll:
Yes… Yes… there’s Guam. But it takes longer for bombers to reach Korea from Guam… and in a war with NK, hours can mean the difference for millions in SK.
NK might kidnap any Japanese person as next Megumi. <.<
There are a lot of reasons why the US military base in Okinawa has to stay - as Narg alluded to. Japan did some really really bad things to China once upon a time, and they’re much much smaller. Never mind the fact that North Korea is all screwed up and growing increasingly desperate.
The problem was, this particular PM explicitly made a commitment to get rid of the base, and a lot of Okinawans don’t like the fact that the base is there. Then – whoops, that’s actually completely impossible! So he flip-flopped.
If he hadn’t flip-flopped so directly, he probably wouldn’t have lost his job over this. Then again, it’s possible he never would have won without making the claim that he did.
Japan should just elect this guy and be over with it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOuumGX-6uc
He’ll be so horrible, Kim will look like a saint. 