79 years ago Japan; today U.S. threatens China

Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands 79 years ago today. At that time the U.S. along with Britain, France and the Dutch, had empire in Japan’s Far East neighborhood. Japan was, in a sense, imposing its own version of the Monroe Doctrine, seeking to kick the four Western powers out of its concept of Japanese Manifest Destiny. The U.S. had been expanding its reach, thousands of miles from the Homeland against Japanese expansion since the mid 1930’s, making an eventual Japanese attack virtually inevitable. This mirrored FDR’s reach thousands of miles east with moral and physical support to the beleaguered Brits against Hitler. And the war came to America this fateful day in ‘41.

While I don’t quarrel with FDR’s machinations to draw America into that global conflict, I do recoil at our Far East aggression today, this time directed at our 1930’s ally China. Sailing warships and flying bombers close to disputed land masses in China’s neighborhood, pledging support to defend Taiwan from Chinese attempts at reunification, and inflammatory media rhetoric that war may inevitable, is not a good way to remember Pearl Harbor Day. China of 2020 is not Japan of 1941, except in one critical way. If you push hard enough for war…you’ll get it.