Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
I agree that's what should have been done. It's not clear how to follow through 150 years after the fact, though. Ban editorial comment peddling the Lost Cause myth? Have the federal government vet the curriculum of every school board in the South?
It's easier to impose guilt and shame on a society scrabbling for food in the devastated landscape of war, where people are starving and desperate to make a new start, than it is on a relatively secure and prosperous population, generations later. What if people don't want to feel guilt? Do you point a gun at their face until they acquiesce?
And a counterpoint to Germany is Japan. Its army was smashed, its cities burned to ashes, its emperor captured, and the country occupied by American troops who wrote a new constitution from scratch. And yet today very few Japanese acknowledge any responsibility or guilt for the country's monstrous crimes in SE Asia. In fact, many (like Americans in the South) regard their country as victims.
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*bewildered face*
Japan is not a counterpoint, it's a point... to my argument.
They never had to fess up for their crimes. The United States needed a quickly rebuilt and emboldened Japan to act as a counter-weight in the context of rapid communist expansion in East Asia. As such, they didn't want to mess with decades long introspection. They needed a strong, nationally proud Japan to dominate the region.