When war is not war

[wurlycorner]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-33754932

I'm not making any point about whether it was/wasn't/did/didn't happen/is/isn't terrible etc. (I don't know enough about japanese history tbh) I just find the ability to 'spin' to such extremes rather interesting!

Mr Tamogami believes that Japan did not invade the Korean Peninsula, but rather "invested in Korea and also in Taiwan and Manchuria".

invasion = investing?

I ask him about the invasion of China in 1937 and the massacre of civilians in the capital Nanjing. Surely that was naked aggression?
"I can declare that there was no Nanjing Massacre," he says, claiming there were "no eyewitnesses" of Japanese soldiers slaughtering Chinese civilians.

no eye witnesses to a massacre...
So are we to conclude that successful massacres never happen, only unsuccessful ones?

[Sailor]

invasion = investing?

Sometimes it's called 'liberation'.

[kordafish]

It's breathtaking how some people have the ability to put "spin" on horrific acts of war or genocide etc , what's next the total denial of two world wars

So what "spin" can be put on America dropping the atomic bomb An act of of aggression against a peaceful, international law abiding Empire Think not

[mercutio]

History has a way of being blind to these sort of things and whether you like it or not he is probably right if there are no witnesses then there is no proof, the party in the balkans should have told you that!. It told me i have said before i could walk you to quite a few places where these things never happened!

[kordafish]

Srebrenica 8000 Bosnian Muslims killed! Worst act of genocide in Europe since WW2 you would think that mankind would learn from its past mistakes, sadly no!!

[simonc]

It's very interesting Iain, but you ask any person under the age of 20/25 in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia about Japanese atrocities in China and Korea and all you'll get is a blank look. Most of them don't seem to know about the invasions of their own countries either, which is rather baffling.
It seems like an entire generation is being 're-educated' or perhaps not-even-educated as to what went on.
Strange times.

[Sybil Fawlty]

Srebrenica 8000 Bosnian Muslims killed! Worst act of genocide in Europe since WW2 you would think that mankind would learn from its past mistakes, sadly no!!

This is why history is re-written, so the spin can be used again and again to justify cruelty and we do not get to learn from past mistakes

[lewd lude lover]

Slaughter, rape and horrific brutality bubble just below the surface of most cultures. They show them in different ways but they all have their kinks. Coupled with short memories... That generations dont know about such things is no suprise. Many Indonesians know nothing about the hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered in '65 by the murder squads of the government and its not talked about. It happend though and it'll happen again.

History is, after all, writen by those who win; mainly because those who lose are dead or enslaved. Harsh buzz

[Doggo]

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. War is not war
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
War's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
War alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever warred.

[Donald]

At least you didn't use #18.