134: Quit War, Or Quit Humanity (2)

By Joe Kim
 
【Time to Think】
Many people understand that “war and killing” are wrong.
 
They understand this, yet most of them would override that principle when it comes to “protecting our family and ourselves in an instantly urgent life-or-death situation.”
 
Now, let’s pause here for a moment and think about this.
 
Wars rarely arise from an instantly urgent life-or-death situation. Rather, wars are deliberately waged after nations make conflicting demands and fail to compromise. It often takes years, or even decades, for conflicting demands to escalate into wars. [See #9]
 
Those years and decades mean we have the time to think. This is precisely why the vast majority of wars don’t suddenly arise from an instantly urgent life-or-death situation. They are deliberately waged.
 
We’re systematically deciding rather than calling the shots on the fly. Elected politicians make decisions, and the people determine whether to accept or reject those decisions with our votes in elections. We’re clearly making a choice.
 
Unfortunately, it’s fair to say that most Americans readily accept the advancement of war capacity. Perhaps, the majority of the American people believe that the US mainland won’t be attacked even if the US engages in wars. We have difficulty imagining the enormously costly US military losing a war or many of our citizens falling victim to enemy attacks, especially here at home.
 
In contrast, Japan is constitutionally forbidden to maintain armed forces, as it outlaws all wars. This is truly a noble constitution that the Japanese people can rightfully boast about to the world. [See #64]
 
But, regrettably, Japan is, in fact, no exception.
 
Despite being called the “Self-Defense Forces,” they are, in reality, a military in all but name. What’s more, Japan’s military is often ranked between 5th and 7th in the world. And its military spending is on track to become the 3rd highest in the world by 2027, behind only the US and China.
 
And so, Japan continues, quite unabashedly, to violate its own Constitution.
 
A constitution is a rule created and enforced to regulate the behavior of a ruler, preventing the ruler from crossing the boundaries of the people’s fundamental rights--as happened in Japan during World War II.
 
The ruling Liberal Democratic Party and other conservative parties persistently circumvent the language and spirit of the Constitution through deceitful reinterpretations. Moreover, they insist on amending the Constitution to fit the needs of the ruler when it stands in his/her way.
 
By continuing to heavily support such parties [See #129], citizens are, in essence, accepting the advancement of war capacity.
 
We call this “making a systematically deliberate choice to advance war capacity.”
 
Therefore, the argument that “this war was inevitable due to an instantly urgent life-or-death situation” has no logical standing.

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