Letter from President Obama to President Xi On the Occasion of the 70th Anniversary of the End of WWII.

Dear President Xi,
On September 3, your country is hosting a commemoration of the end of World War II on the 70th Anniversary of the day recognized as its termination in the Asia-Pacific. You have invited both me and President Abe of Japan. We both have chosen to refuse – just as we refused to attend the earlier commemoration of the defeat of Fascism in Moscow last Spring.
As you very well know, Jinping, if I may use your given name, this makes the United States look pretty mean spirited. And to put it plainly, your cooking up these events with Vlad pisses me off. The world knows that the Chinese and Russians made unparalleled sacrifices to defeat Nazism in the West and Japanese militarism in the East. The world knows that China suffered almost 20 million casualties and great atrocities exemplified by the Rape of Nanjing. And the world knows that close to 30 million Russians gave their lives in that struggle. The U. S. in contrast lost 460,000 souls, and so it looks pretty shoddy when I do not show up to acknowledge your victory and the great debt we owe China and Russia since your loss of life minimized our own. It looks bad for us. But you know that, and you know it damned well. So do not think for a moment that I do not see through this ‘parade’ on September 3 as an exercise in soft power. But I also warn you that you will not succeed, as I will make clear below.
First let me survey the further damage that I think you and Vlad are trying to do. Let me emphasize that word ‘trying,’ because, I repeat, you will fail. Even as you celebrate the victory over neo-Nazism in the West, we were using neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine and assault Russia. And to top it off we are pushing Abe to rekindle the fascist militarism in Japan, which he is ramming through – successfully I might add – despite the objections of over half his population, taking the form of hundreds of thousands demonstrating against his new militarism. Even South Korea is deserting us over this, and I might say it angers me mightily to see the South Korean President attend your September 3 celebrations. We have warned her that she might not get re-elected if she keeps this up. We have our ways. Ask the surviving relatives of Ngo Dinh Diem.

This post was published at Lew Rockwell on September 5, 2015.