Quote: As far as Japan becoming a peaceful country I'm afraid my respnonse is going to play into the hands of some of the more aggressive elements in this discussion.
Actually Tad, my question was "how did they become a modern country?" But that's OK, you answered that quite well. Feudal Japan became Imperial Japan. Their culture of obedience helped with the transition after the surrender in WWII. What we have in the Middle East is a culture of violence and terrorism. It's a foreign idea to most Americans and we aren't able to understand the "fanaticism". So we find ourselves in a mess similar to the one we were in forty years ago, fighting an enemy that we don't understand, in a culture that we can't relate to, and trying to do it on our terms. So we have "beaten Saddam Hussein" but the fighting continues. The enemy is a guerilla group that exists even though we have "installed" a Democratic government. Now the Iranian leadership is spouting the same old anti-western rhetoric, but now with nuclear weapon ambitions. If we are to learn from history, what's the lesson here?
Contra todo mal, mezcal; contra todo bien, también
