Quote: (09-21-2015 03:07 AM)porscheguy Wrote:
Even if the Japanese people are opposed to rebuilding their military, IMO, it's the right thing to do.
It's not about rebuilding the military. They already have one but they call it part of the 'police', i.e. if a large number of 'illegal immigrants' who are 'breaking gun laws' arrive, these 'police' can 'arrest them using whatever force is necessary'. That's pretty much the limit of what Article 9 can possibly be construed to allow.
What the prime minister has done is simply declare it means something else. According to him, so long as you talk long enough about the topic, the word 'duck' can mean 'a device you use to eat ice-cream'.
He has declared that the Article permits "collective self-defence". Kind of like "substantive due process", or "a red green-light". This involves defending an ally if it is attacked. So basically, so long as at least one soldier of an allied expeditionary force is shot at, they can attack. It's as close as they can possibly get to simply having a conventional military with full offensive capabilities but without the right to fire the first shot themselves (they need a belligerent allied soldier to get shot at first).
He knows full well that what he's doing is unconstitutional, but that the only mechanism the constitution has to stop him is a soldier suing the government on deployment, and the case going all the way to the Supreme court and getting struck down. He also knows that it will take something like 4 years to happen, and that the court is so impotent it will probably let it slide in spite of its constitutionally mandated duty to strike it down. So he doesn't care, kind of like how the US government doesn't care about the 4th amendment and there is no way to force them to comply. All the legal scholars agree that it's blatantly unconstitutional, but those scholars have no power to put anyone in handcuffs.