Abbotts foot in mouth thread...

[3.14159]

Here's another "sign" that our dear leader opens his mouth without ever bothering to check what is actually happening in the real world.

[1061]

He is making George W look like Einstein

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/07/09/appalling-and-insensible-china-rebukes-abbott-praising-japans-wwii-skills

[ronrat]

[David]

I'm going to take Abbott's corner here. The whole idea of soldiers from the "good" team (i.e. us and our allies) being brave and honourable and soldiers from the "bad" team being bloodthirsty brutes is comically infantile, and yet that is the position that China is taking here. Of course Japamese, Nazi and Italian soldiers in WW2 were on average no less "brave" than ours were, and Abbott is hardly a blundering idiot for pointing that out. Of course, I'd prefer that he and others would stop fetishising war exploits altogether, but that's not really the issue at hand here.

[3.14159]

Your wrong David.
Chinese view the Japanese in much the same way we view Hitlers Germany.
They unleashed an expansionist war on a back-ward and peaceful country using methods most "civilised people" would find abhorant.
If you do not understand this I suggest you should do some research before calling the actions of the Japanese army "honourable" and no worse than anyone elses soldiers.
They invaded a peaceful and back-ward country and committed unspeakable atrocities on the inhabitants.
China has every right to be pissed at the insults our numb-skull P.M was pedalling.
~
http://www.history.com/topics/nanjing-massacre

In late 1937, over a period of six weeks, Imperial Japanese Army forces brutally murdered hundreds of thousands of people–including both soldiers and civilians–in the Chinese city of Nanking (or Nanjing). The horrific events are known as the Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanking, as between 20,000 and 80,000 women were sexually assaulted. Nanking, then the capital of Nationalist China, was left in ruins, and it would take decades for the city and its citizens to recover from the savage attacks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War#Jinan_Incident

Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces with gas masks and rubber gloves during a chemical attack[citation needed] near Chapei in the Battle of Shanghai.
Despite Article 23 of the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907), article V of the Treaty in Relation to the Use of Submarines and Noxious Gases in Warfare,[67] article 171 of the Treaty of Versailles and a resolution adopted by the League of Nations on May 14, 1938, condemning the use of poison gas by the Empire of Japan, the Imperial Japanese Army frequently used chemical weapons during the war.
According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno, the chemical weapons were authorized by specific orders given by Japanese Emperor Hirohito himself, transmitted by the Imperial General Headquarters. For example, the Emperor authorized the use of toxic gas on 375 separate occasions during the Battle of Wuhan from August to October 1938.[68] They were also used during the invasion of Changde. Those orders were transmitted either by Prince Kan'in Kotohito or General Hajime Sugiyama.[69]
Bacteriological weapons provided by Shirō Ishii's units were also profusely used. For example, in 1940, the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force bombed Ningbo with fleas carrying the bubonic plague.[70] During the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials the accused, such as Major General Kiyashi Kawashima, testified that, in 1941, some 40 members of Unit 731 air-dropped plague-contaminated fleas on Changde. These attacks caused epidemic plague outbreaks.[71]

[HAL]

I understand it very well.

[partypie]

David, you should look up war crimes in the south west pacific before excusing Tony Abbott. Many of them, including the Tol massacre in early 1942 did not make it to the war crimes tribunal as the protagonists committed suicide. As the daughter of a member of the AIF who suffered untreated PTSD and committed suicide in his 50s despite leading a productive and honourable life, Abbott's comments come as a new low.

[David]

I'm already well aware of the many Japanese atrocities in South-East Asia, PP and 3. I'm also aware of appalling Allied atrocities in the same war (and probably blissfully unaware of many more). Neither fact means that individual Japanese or Nazi or Soviet or Australian or American soldiers were not "brave", did not conduct themselves with "honour" or do not deserve to be remembered. Neither does it mean that their or their governments' war crimes should be whitewashed, excused or downplayed. I stand by what I wrote.

[1061]

David do you have butter/marg on your bread?

[stui magpie]

The japanese were a bugger to fight. Yeah they did some horrible things to people, nothing overly honourable in a lot of stuff they did but by god you had to have some grudging respect for a group who collectively went at it so hard.

This was the nation who had the kamikaze. Suicide pilots. They treated prisoners badly (and I had an uncle in Changi) at least partially because they believed that if you allowed yourself to be captured alive you had no honour. The only way to beat them in the end was to nuke two cities. Stories persisted of Japanese soldiers who kept up the fight for years after the surrender.

They were like a nation of honey badgers when it came to war.

As far as the chinese go, I take everything the chinese say about the japanese (and vice versa) at the moment with a large grain of salt. That's all politics and posturing.

[AN_Inkling]

It was a poorly considered comment and an entirely unnecessary one. Was our current relationship with Japan really forged on the battle field? Hardly.

Aside from that argument over which side was more or less honourbale in any particular war are usually ridiculous. Mostly you'll find the victors were much more "honourable". Japan cover up their atrocities and don't teach them to their children? No surprise. Does China teach theirs about Tiananmen Square? Do we come completely clean about everything our soldiers may have done? No to both.

[3.14159]

[pietillidie]

What an absolutely idiotic and internationally offensive comment by Abbott; the bloke has all the global comprehension of a blind Antarctic cave fish. Or George W. Bush.

And for anyone who understands regional sentiment, it was downright frightening. The dill is lighting matches in a TNT factory like an utter sociopath.

If you think ailing elderly Australians are upset over this—and rightly they should be for goodness' sake—imagine how the countries which were brutally invaded and colonised by Japan feel. Are South Koreans to say they admired "the skill" and "honor" with which Japanese soldiers enslaved and raped Korean women, and worked Korean slaves to death?

My generation of Australians may have little inherited resentment against Japan, which is a good thing, but if you think the situation is the same in South Korea and China, you're an effing idiot who shouldn't be commenting on the matter, let alone making public international pronouncements.

Of course, you can rightly disagree with the nationalism of all sides in the region, as I do being someone who sees nationalism as a poisonous and damaging force, but you can't deny that the hatred runs deep and is permanently at risk of boiling over.

As we speak, South Koreans are trying to win further wartime compensation from Japan, protect their territorial integrity in active disputes with Japan, correct inaccuracies in Japanese textbooks and historical scholarship, shield North-South Korean relations from Japanese warhawks, and more. Right now.

These things might seem minor to Abbott, but I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that a poor sequence of events could very easily see South Korea turn on Japan, and there would be nothing the US and its internal South Korean political allies could do about it. Nothing. And the sentiment in China is reportedly even more negative!

What a dangerous fool Abbott is. You haven't seen nationalism explode until you've seen it explode as part of historical, unresolved hatred of the type Abbott is blissfully unaware exists in the region.

Every time he holds a foreign policy press conference it's like watching a drunk idiot staggering around the dance floor only to collapse in a pile of his own vomit and be dragged out by bouncers.

[Wokko]

What we consider brutal and barbaric from the Japanese soldier, was in their eyes honourable. They followed Bushido, and were following their own code of honour and therefore were honourable. We of course don't see it that way, but there has to be some acceptance of cultural relativity.

[pietillidie]