[lbo-talk] "Knee-Jerk Anti-Imperialism" Re: Two Takes

[andie nachgeborenen]

Who is it who can't read? I wrote "you're wrong that "Pearl Harbor"made WW II in the Pacific anything but an imperialistslaughter on both sides. " in  reply to your claim that the imperialistwar was "justified by just war theory"  * * * 
A point I carefully described as independent of internationalism.* * *  and that you regardedUS victory as "preferable."* * *  That from an internationalist point of view, yes. I said (I repeat for the nth time) that liberal democratic imperialism was preferable to Japanese quasi fascism. **** My point was that a deliberatelyprovoked attack is no sort of justification and that the twoimperialist rivals were *equally* engaged in slaughter.* * *From the point of view of just war theory, provocation mitogates but does not excuse. A reasonable nation is supposed to be able to remain grownup in the face of provocation.   I also reject your Gore Vidal derived fantasy story about the Day of Infamy being a setup; I love Vidal, but he's not a hiistorian. Charles Beard, whose work on this I do not know, is apparantly out of his deoth; he's also not a military/dipolomatic historian. The consenus of the experts is against you. The idea that Japan did no real damage at PH is absurd.* *  toyour claim that "virtually all" socialists supported theimperialist slaughter in the Pacific, I can assure you that*no* socialist in the tradition of the Third International(I exclude Stalinists, of course) supported the war againstJapan whether or not they supported defense of theStalinized "Soviet Union" against Hitler. * * * So who the hell are you talkinga bout? Not Stalinists and not Trotskyists -- wasn't that virtually all socialists at the time? There weren't any (western) Maoists, and if there has been any they surea s hell would have supposed a war against Japan (any help you can get!). ****
I might add that many bourgeois Asian nationalists, from thegreat Subhas Chandra Bose, to the Burmese Thakins, tothe great Aguinaldo, to many Indonesians, and even tosuch a significant Chinese nationalist as Wang Chin-wei,supported Japanese imperialism against its Anglo-French-Netherlandic-American imperialist rivals.* * *  Yah, the Japanese got a certain amount of milage out of that "We are Asiatics" line. But I said the Reds didn't buy it.  jks

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