TaiwanIsNotChina comments

u_s__reamerToday 04:19 pm JST

America's attack on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia cost over 3 million people their lives, not counting the victims of the Pol-Pot Frankenstein monster that rose from carpet-bombed Cambodia.

That surely had nothing to do with the communist North and guerrillas in the South, huh? They were all just conducting non-violent resistance in your mind, weren't they? I have news for you: Vietnamese died willingly defending the South Vietnam governments, say what you will about them.

winstonToday 01:41 pm JST

QUAD is stuck in the mud

Cant move forward or back or expand but slowly sinking

Gotten a bit rancid anyway

I suppose you think the non-military BRICS smells like roses? Not after Russia has had several Vietnams in Ukraine.

Tell_me_bout_itToday 02:51 pm JST

I like how Murica has all these war memorials and cemeteries of Vietnam war, Desert storm etc.

The Vietnam war and Desert Storm were legitimate and legal wars. Try harder.

NayelToday 07:59 am JST

The classy attitude of TOJO and Tomoyuki yamashita and others during the trials shows that there was a big class gab between Japan and USA.

I guess waging aggressive and illegal war can all be made up for by acting classy.

Peter14Today 08:14 am JST

TaiwanIsNotChina

stop just assuming the Americans were too stupid or didn't know how to do nation building. No one has done it better.

After WWII the allies did a great job with Japan and West Germany. Both are success stories.

Could it be that Japan and Germany had a history of education, government and industry?

Afghanistan was a complete failure. The facts are there for all to see. They did the job they were sent there for and after twenty years they failed at nation building. No amount of talk will alter that fact. It is why the Taliban walked back into power and why the country is all but destroyed.

I'm trying to tell you why that happened despite the preeminent nation builder being involved, but please tell us more about how you develop an Afghan fighter jet.

winstonToday 12:14 am JST

Hilarious on all points.

I can definitely think of nations that were more intelligently built and better than by the USA.

Name one. Chances are they were "built" in the 19th century when there weren't such qualms about human rights.

Less than 300 years of existence isn't exactly impressive now is it

Longer than Russia or China's current governments.

The USA is a nation modeled after a nation that crumbled due to it's own corruption and the inability to protect its own borders and the repercussions of hegemonic agenda.

Lol, I'll take the 1000 years of the Roman state over anything you have to offer.

Exactly what's enevitably happening to the USA slowly but surely.

By your own calculation we only have 750 years to go! Your hoped for end of Pax Americana is almost here! Better take your vitamins, though.

I don't think Kuwaiti women have to wear the bee keeper suits and are prevented totally from getting secondary education.

There's really no need to announce you don't think

If you don't have any evidence to offer, you don't have to post.

Mr KiplingAug. 14 11:37 pm JST

Who do you think armed and trained the 1/4 million Afghan army?

Hilarious that some people still believe this. There may have been nearly that number of salaries paid but the number in uniform was much lower. Corruption is a national industry. Those in uniform were not interested in anything other than taking the money. Afghanistan is not a nation state as most of us understand it. Tribe, religion and ethnic group are far more important to most.

That's exactly my point: huge percentages, perhaps over 50% of what is spent in a country like Afghanistan disappears into corruption. You're not going to be teaching engineers in that environment.

asdfgtrAug. 14 11:54 pm JST

That's great and all, but how effective do you think the Soviet entry into the war would have been without the US blockade of the home islands? Without the American boats they needed to get to Japan? Clearly the bomb impressed Stalin enough that he left Japan and South Korea to the US. Do you think a bloodthirsty monster like that would just stop for no reason?

winstonToday 06:16 pm JST

Busy preparing for war like most other countries

How about providing infrastructure, hospitals, medicine, agricultural capabilities and FOOD for your people first, little Rocket Man?

He has China for that

And without China defense agreement North Korea wouldn't exist anyway.

Any USA conflict with North Korea means a conflict with both China and Russia.

Any USA conflict with China means conflict with Russia and North Korea

U.S military is spread thin and it's European allies in a shambles

No thinner than it was in 2000. And what does that say about you that you think it is okay for a country to focus on military while it is receiving handouts? Inb4 invaded country like Ukraine.

asdfgtrToday 10:51 pm JST

@smithinjapan,

They should learn ALL history, from Pearl Harbor to incarceration, to the bombings that caused Japan’s surrender.

Napalming and nuking civilians had nothing to do with Japan's surrender. It's merely an ex post facto justification used by American war crime apologists.

Rather than your opinion on this matter, I place much more value on the words of Brigadier General Carter Clarke:

“We brought them [the Japanese] down to an abject surrender through the accelerated sinking of their merchant marine and hunger alone, and when we didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn’t need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs.”

https://rethinkingschools.org/2013/08/09/army-teaches-wrong-lesson-in-nations-high-schools/

I suspect a lot of these military figures didn't like their contribution being minimized by the bomb and/or want to appear to be checking off all of the 4th Geneva convention boxes signed after the war. What is clear to outsiders, though, is that it secured the Japan and South Korea we know today.

winstonToday 06:30 pm JST

You got your analogy wrong: Russians don't understand that they didn't defeat Nazi Germany alone.

Just the ones that killed 27 million Russians

Your numbers aren't even right:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Soviet_Union

Russia didn't suffer the most in WW2. Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine did.

Peter14

Who do you think armed and trained the 1/4 million Afghan army? How many years do you think it takes to train an engineer? How many engineers once trained want to remain in the country? How much money disappears due to corruption? All the while people will complain that you aren't feeding the citizens. And then you have the terrorism. If you haven't studied Vietnam and the Afghan war in detail, I suggest you stop just assuming the Americans were too stupid or didn't know how to do nation building. No one has done it better.

LegrandeToday 05:29 pm JST

There are a lot of countries where women's rights are curtailed (i.e. Kuwait), but the US would like to have the option of going back, so these type of stories get circulated in the press so that another invasion can be more easily justified.

I don't think Kuwaiti women have to wear the bee keeper suits and are prevented totally from getting secondary education.

RodneyToday 10:44 am JST

people don’t understand that Russia defeated Nazi germany,

You got your analogy wrong: Russians don't understand that they didn't defeat Nazi Germany alone.

Wick's pencilToday 02:46 pm JST

Yes, the US wanted to show off to the Soviets their new weapon.

Then after they are taught why Japan was at war in the first place, they can be taught how in the process of "showing off" the US secured Japan's existence as a single country.

winstonToday 12:00 pm JST

"No matter how great the threat of authoritarianism is to Taiwan, we absolutely will not be scared nor cower, we will uphold the values of democracy and freedom," he said.

Well if thats truly the case then please explain why Taiwan hasn't officially claimed independence ?

There is absolutely nothing in his statement about de jure independence. Taiwanese are happy with the status quo of de facto independence.

a U.S. government-run non-profit that carries out unofficial relations with Taiwan

Unofficial relations

Sounds very important

Given it is an asian tiger, I imagine it is more important than many official embassies.

Taiwan cannot achieve a sustainable free democracy without the help of other nations.

Who says? They literally do this every day.

And they know it

We all know it.

Therefore they are obviously scared and cowering by asking for help.

You are confusing the day to day living with the need to fend off a potential China attack. Of course the later will require help.

Taiwan needs to claim independence asap !

Nobody is going to vote for instant war.

Peter14Today 03:11 pm JST

Someone needs to liberate that enslaved nation, and do it properly. The last time it was just to hunt down terrorists and oppose the Taliban. Little was done to properly train people to do anything other than govern. They needed engineers, scientists, doctors, mechanics that can maintain modern equipment, design and build for themselves like other sovereign nations. Rather than out source to foreign nations who all pulled out when the foreign soldiers left. They had a government that could govern but no means to support the equipment they had, or to build new infrastructure or run as normal nations do.

You have an extra $2 trillion and 1/4 a million troops lying around? Or even a better a functional country in your back pocket? No, the effort was made and the Afghans weren't having what was provided at that price.

elephant200Today 02:57 pm JST

That's ok, they have their traditions and social practice. I think the women of Afghanistan were having more rights than US occupation era.

Said no one ever.

dagonToday 08:43 am JST

There was also the Niihau Incident in Hawaii, which triggered concerns about the loyalty of some Japanese residents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_incident

Niihau, the "Forbidden Island" of mainly pure Native Hawaiians, were maybe sore about 50 years before having US Marines land and imprison their Queen and a bunch of carpet-bagging missionary families become the biggest landowners on the islands.

You seem to have extensive knowledge about the US. Makes me wonder why you know nothing about the 10 million dead in the Pacific War.

ThubanToday 07:42 am JST

The more the US sanctions, the more the world just begins to ignore and bypass the US.

On the contrary, the semiconductor sanctions against China are quite effective as are the sanctions on Russia although more should be done.

RodneyToday 07:19 am JST

Military should only be for self-defense purposes

As opposed to say invading a sovereign Ukraine and attacking cargo ships?

RodneyToday 07:21 am JST

so the FBI is competing with CIA for world dominance

That's right, Rodney. The FBI knows if you've been bad or good, so you better watch out!

ThubanToday 07:36 am JST

NATO member Turkey is refusing to allow the US Navy to enter the Black Sea.

Russia has free reign to inspect potential weapons smugglers.

That may be true but they also can't get their military ships out and are vulnerable to Ukrainian drones as we've seen.

In an ideal world the US navy would be there to prevent this kind of savagery, but unfortunately the Montreux convention seems to render that impossible.

Absolutely savage.

ICBMs can slam into the major cities of Russia and China today with 1950s technology. The US and Japan should focus on hypersonic missiles so they can claim parity, even if they already have it effectively.

quercetumAug. 13 11:22 pm JST

Beijing is in fact more in tune with Taiwan public opinion than most people think. What you get here is just minimal but enough. Taiwanese VP visits U.S. Beijing upset. That's it.

Oh, so Peking knows more about Taiwan than actual surveys conducted in Taiwan? Unlikely.

The counter chess move that Beijing has made is clever. While Lai has gone to the US, the pro-Beijing candidates have also made recent trips, and that has eaten up the news cycle in Taiwan. The message that Beijing is making is that Beijing really objects to a Taiwan separatist visiting the US, but presumably if a non-separatist visits the US, then there will be no problem.

Well, yes, they would like Taiwan to be as subservient as possible so they are distracted from what Beijing is doing. I think unfortunately even the KMT will sign on to weapons deals once they are power.

The other point worth mentioning is that the head of the de-facto US embassy AIT, Laura Rosenberger, will not be meeting Lai publicly, and it is significant that no US officials are scheduled to publicly meet Lai. Of course, who knows what private meetings there are, but public meetings send signals.

This is significant because there are dozens of Senators and Representatives who would love to meet Lai, and if no member of Congress meets Lai this means that Lai is specifically asking for no meetings and is sending a message to Beijing that he can be trusted.

It's a small concession easily reversed. If Taiwan or the US is in a better position to sink the Chinese fishing navy, you could well see official contacts increase.

I would also add that Beijing is too smart t to be played by Lai; first get elected then raise taxes; first get elected then become pro-independence.

They weren't smart enough to prevent the deflation crisis China is in, so not wagering anything on how smart they are on any other issue.

quercetumAug. 13 10:55 pm JST

Basically you need to turn two keys in order to start war and to blow up the world. Taiwan has to push for independence, and Washington has to agree.

No Peking is perfectly capable of deciding it is go time and manufacturing a reason like Russia did in Ukraine. Or even just going in without a reason and saying it is just the continuation of an 75 year old war.

Under Chen Shui-Bian you had a President who was pro-independence, but Washington said no. Under Trump you had the opposite situation. Pompeo was clearly interested in advocating Taiwanese independence, but Tsai Ying-Wen was not interested and has kept the status quo, which is what the majority on the island wants to the U.S.'s dismay.

Sounds like propaganda to me. Taiwan is understandably scared to declare independence because of the 1.4 billion pound gorilla standing next to them.

If Lai was really the “independence fighter” and Trump and Pompeo are both in the Executive Branch, then we will be close or closer to war. If Lai is more level headed like Tsai, then he can at least slow things down.

The US will become bored with the Taiwan issue. Give it another 2-3 years and it will blow away like the Uighurs in Xinjiang, Free Tibet, Hong Kong Independence, the Spy Balloon and so on.

Has the US become bored with the Taiwan issue in the past 75 years? Unlike the others there is a clear military solution: sending more gear to Taiwan or building our own capability in the reason.

The Taiwanese and the Chinese in Taiwan do not want war. Neither does China. For this reason, there will no be war.

Unfortunately there is no democracy in the mainland. Emperor Xi or even the PLA can decide they need a war despite what the public thinks.

The US will move on to using Myanmar or Mongolia or the Philippines to start war with China because Taiwan won't be able to deliver.

Nonsense. The only war potential among the three you listed is if China keeps infringing on the basic territorial rights of the Philippines.

tjguyToday 03:07 pm JST

Otherwise, why waste money on this "technology" that won't be able to put a dent in the climate change problem - even if it is really a problem!

Thankfully people smarter than you are in charge so you can go about your wasteful lifestyle.

virusrexToday 01:00 pm JST

what makes you think they will be out there being productive at 30?

Mostly the professional opinion of people that treat these kind of problems and say the patients can be reincorporated to society in a productive way if properly managed instead just punished to make adult feel better by using their authority.

I've seen what these professionals can do and it is limited to the willingness of the person in question. Going to school is not punishment and the kids will survive being compelled to do so.