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Comment by ii41 | Hacker News Reader

It's wild that people say this. Japan attacking China (and later the Western colonies, and later the US) knowing that it could not win was one of the most important events in the 20th century. There isn't a country as infamous as Japan for starting wars it cannot win.

Also that attack happened on Sept 18, this very day, in 1931.

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Arguably China was in quite a sorry state at the moment Japan started attacking it & they were quite successful as a result.

It was the western colonial powers & most importantly the USA that they attacked & could not have realistically won against.

Not so wild when you realise that it's not the 1930s, and Japan isn't being led by an imperialist & expansionist regime. I'm not denying any past aggression from Japan, my grandparents fought them, but the situation is quite different now.

Based on historical and current events (USA) it takes roughly a couple of years for a country and its leaders to flip from pacifist to aggressive.

Japan is very much still jingoistic today, and Jingoism is what drove the Lugou bridge incident and the seconds sino-japanese war. While it was imperialism that drove the invasion of Korea and Manchuria in 1931, with a real need for resources and to give land and slave to industrialists, the 1937 war was totally dumbfuckery from jingoist sentiments. Basically Trump, but supported by 85% of the population.

That's why fascism doesn't work btw. They end up believing their own lies and do the most egregiously idiotic shit.

WW2 was over more than 80 years ago. Neither Japan nor China still have the same regime they had when this happened.

All of the people responsible for that are dead now. Every single one. Maybe there are still 100k people alive that were ~5yo at the time, but I don't think we can hold them culpable.

> There isn't a country as infamous as Japan for starting wars it cannot win.

Except against Taiwan, Korea, Russia (1905), Manchuria.

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