“as an Asia Pacific nation, the U.S….”… says President Obama in his speech in Japan… not only are we one of the world’s largest Muslim countries, the United States is now part of Asia.
We’re clearly a Pacific Rim nation, but “Asian”? I think not, unless he was thinking of Guam or American Samoa. While Hawaii has a large Asian population, geographically it is 2300 miles from California, and 3800 miles from Japan and is only a small part of what makes up America.
On another level, he probably stomped on several hot buttons in Japan… China and Japan are not historical friends and part of a homogeneous “Asia” (“they all look alike”)… it was U.S. involvement in the Asia region that ultimately resulted in Japan bombing Pearl Harbor.. His comment that America has had troops in Japan suggested that Japan would be grateful for our defense, when the presence of US Troops in Japan since the end of WW2 has been an ongoing source of tension.
