Trump Needs To Shut Up In Asia
As an American who lives in Japan, I pay close attention to what’s happening in my neighborhood. And by my neighborhood, I mean Asia as a whole. I follow Japanese politics almost as closely as I follow American politics.
And right now, Donald Trump is making extremely dangerous and inflammatory statements.
The Japan Times has just reported that over the recent months while discussing the threat posed by North Korea, Trump lamented that Japan didn’t shoot down the missiles. To quote the article:
The U.S. president said he could not understand why a country of samurai warriors did not shoot down the missiles, the sources said.
And no, this is not a quote from The Onion. When I first heard about it, I hoped it was. I couldn’t believe that even Donald Trump could be this stupid. But this is ignorance on an unbelievable scale.
Now look, I get that for most Americans, the only image they have of Japan is schoolgirls, giant robots, Godzilla, and samurai. And that’s fine.
But Donald J. Trump is not most Americans. He’s the President of the United States. And he needs to start acting like it. That includes understanding what other countries are like.
For instance, the samurai? They haven’t been a thing since…oh, 1877 or thereabouts. This is like going to the United States and asking why soldiers aren’t wearing Civil War-era uniforms, or wondering why the town sheriff isn’t dressed like The Man With No Name.
Second, let’s assume for just one brief moment that the past hundred-plus years of history never happened and Japan is still a samurai nation. What in pluperfect hell are samurai going to do against a missile? Throw spears at it? Shoot it down with arrows?
I just hope he doesn’t ask why the Japanese government doesn’t unleash the freaking Gundams.
But wait, there’s more.
Just before leaving on his big Asia trip, Trump already stepped in it while appearing on The Ingraham Angle. And his reckless words could have profound consequences for the region.
The Japan Times reported in another article that Trump warned China it would have a ‘big problem’ if it didn’t do anything against North Korea. And not a problem from the US, a problem from Japan:
Japan is a warrior nation, and I tell China and I tell everyone else that listens, I mean, you’re gonna have yourself a big problem with Japan pretty soon if you allow this to continue with North Korea
This. Is. Dangerous.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is currently trying to revise Article 9 of the constitution. For those unaware, Article 9 declares that Japan renounces war as a means for resolving conflict and will not maintain any military forces. They do have the Self Defense Force, which is considered an extension of the national police force.
But Abe wants to revise the constitution. The openly revisionist lobbying group, Nippon Kaigi, wants to take it a step further and return to the fundamentals of Imperial Japan (many members of Abe’s government are affiliated with Nippon Kaigi).
As you can imagine, this does not sit well with China or South Korea. Japan’s reluctance to issue apologies for (and sometimes outright deny) its wartime atrocities is a sticking point with China and South Korea and when Abe is pushing to revise Article 9 while at the same time associating with people who want Japan to be an aggressively militaristic imperial power as they were in the past, that’s going to make things even more contentious.
Now here comes Trump throwing more gasoline on the fire. He just openly threatened China: do what I say, or you’ll have to deal with Japan.
This will further fuel anti-Japanese sentiment in China and South Korea and heighten tensions between the three nations at a time when cooperation is more important than ever.
Donald Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous and it could lead to disastrous consequences. This man is incompetent, ignorant, and completely unfit to serve in the office of President. If the Republican Party doesn’t wake up and do something about this dangerous moron, we may all pay the price.
