Now Can We Stop Pretending You Don't Hate Britain ?

Revealing comment over on one of the posts at Cuthbertson Mansion:

I'm wary about making generalisations about Japanese people but I agree there's little evidence to suggest their troops were any more aggressive, cruel, or vindictive, as the propaganda would have us believe.

In terms of sheer callous ruthlessness, I think the RAF Cammand/Churchill combination takes a huge amount of beating. If we had lost WWII after dropping anthrax and gas over Germany I don't think the world would be muttering about Japan now...

What did I say about the Left being unable to argue without moral equivalence ?

I'm sure you don't need to be told that this is utter BS. Britain never used either anthrax or gas. Experiments were certainly carried out with anthrax, but it was never approached deployment, while Churchill considered using gas twice - once against German invaders, once in response to V2. In other words, only when there were serious, direct threats to the homeland. In neither case was gas actually used. Needless to say, while some of the rules of war are open to interpretation, there's none which makes thinking about something illegal.

With the Japanese things were a little different. Their biological experiments used Chinese prisoners. In fact, the unit concerned, Unit 731 has its own memorial in modern Tokyo - something unthinkable in a British context. What's more they really did try to spread plague through Chinese cities (albeit completely ineffectually). Those Western prisoners that were not immediately executed were used as slaves, kept malnourished and without medical care. The treatment of Asians was far worse - consider the Rape of Nanking, the use of 'comfort women' and the like.

Short summary: the attempted equivalence between Britain and Japan is asinine. PC's blog is haunted by a shedload of L3 who can be trusted to turn the Seetheometer up to 11 every time Peter comments disparagingly about terrorists, murderers and the like, yet the post has been up days now and not one of the L3 has thought to speak out against it. Calling paedophile killers scumbags, that's beyond the pale, but libelling Britain ? Who cares ?

It seems to be a common problem on the left. Check out this topic on Two-Minute Hate aka Don't Have Your Say. It's supposedly the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising , yet check out the blurb and it quickly mutates to whether Briatin should apologise. Say what ? True, it's Poland's PM who came out with that gem, but really…. The Nazis invaded Poland, the Soviets delibratly halted their advance until the Nazis crushed the rebellion, the Yanks (penertrated by Soviet agents at the highest level) refused to intervene and it's all Churchill's fault ? Churchill was just about the only guy who tried to help. The realities of logistics and geography meant Britain could do little. But try telling some of these people that:

As a an Englishman at that time I felt totally ashamed at how we made promises and then abandoned them so quickly. I realize it was virtually impossible to realistically intervene but then don't falsely encourage. To compound matters never since then has any British leader had the courage or decency to apologise or offer reparations. Tony Blair should do both immediately, and apologise for the delay too.
Jim Nicholls, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada

Yep -even though you couldn't actually do anything, it's still your fault.

Those who did not die in the rising had Stalin's camps awaiting them. All while the UK was agreeing new post war borders for Poland without consulting Poland's government. The UK betrayed Poland whatever the military realities on the ground.
James Scobbie, Scotland

'Whatever the military realities'…. I think the word is 'self-fisking'

Of course, when a Western leader did stand up to the Soviets the Left at least stood right behind him. Remember how the Left cheered when The Gipper called the USSR an evil empire ? Or how about Academia having so many Ronald Reagan chairs in International Relations ?

Naaah. Churchill's a rat for not opposing the Soviets, Reagan's a nut for opposing them. Instinct tells me that the specific issue is kind of a surrogate here. Whatever happens, Britain in particular and the West in general is always bad.