by Kevin Hench

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The NASCAR team owner who once humiliated an employee by paying him in yen for driving a Datsun to work, lit up the AP wire with his bellicose words.

"Nobody's frightened. We're going to go to war with them, and they should give us their best shot."

"Toyota will not find that the established teams and manufacturers will wither in their path, as has been the case where they have tried to engage elsewhere."

"I expect to hand Toyota their head over the short term."

What, Jack, no references to Bataan?

When Toyota "invaded" the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series in 2004, Roush was not exactly Thomas Friedman preaching the gospel of globalization. (I'm guessing Roush would have particular disdain for Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree.)

"Americans shouldn't buy Japanese cars. When we're faced with the prospect of having somebody come into our world and strip our economy of its essence, and go convey that for interests that are abroad, then we're not doing the right things for our country," Roush said. "If we're forced, based on the fact that we can't be competitive or that their consumers won't buy as many things from our manufacturers and our workers as we buy from theirs, well, then there's a train wreck coming."

While it probably didn't have a heck of a lot to do with Toyota's impressive success in the Craftsman Truck Series, 2006 was indeed a train wreck for Ford Motor Company, with whom Roush has enjoyed a long and presumably lucrative association.

Ford suffered record losses of $12.7 billion last year. (His car company losing $24,000 a minute might explain why William Clay Ford doesn't think Matt Millen has been doing a particularly bad job with the Lions.) Toyota, meanwhile, surpassed Daimler-Chrysler to become the third-largest auto-maker in the world as it continued to encroach on the market share of General Motors and Ford. Toyota will be bringing a ton of cash to the Nextel Cup series, which will be good for the salaries of drivers and their crews — imagine a new George Steinbrenner arriving in baseball — but less good for the existing owners (see Roush, Jack) whose payrolls will invariably go up in an effort to compete.

Moore knows war Legendary NASCAR mechanic and former team owner Bud Moore (63 victories, eighth-best on the all-time win list) bristles whenever he hears sports figures refer to games or races as war. In 1997, he told me, "Anybody that does that has obviously never been within a 1,000 miles of an actual war." He knows of what he speaks, having hit Omaha Beach as a 19-year-old corporal on D-Day. He went on to win the Bronze Star and five Purple Hearts in the European Theater, where he and his jeep driver captured an entire platoon of Nazi soldiers. —Ryan McGee More McGee

Now we could digress into an examination of just how Toyota has been able to become such an American success story — some say good product, some say opening plants in anti-union states — but thankfully this is a sports column. NASCAR is a sport, right?

And the great thing about pro sports is that — until isolationists like Roush get their way — they remain the ultimate global meritocracy. The two best players in the NBA are Canadian and German. The best player in baseball is Dominican. And, beginning this year, Dale Jarrett will be driving a Toyota in the Nextel Cup. Best player, best team, fastest car wins. That's sports. No tariffs, no embargoes, no cowardly protectionism.

One of the towering ironies surrounding Roush's efforts to thwart Toyota has been his courtship of Red Sox owner John Henry to become a partner and infuse the team with some cash. Henry, of course, just signed a Japanese pitcher for over $100M to bolster Boston's rotation.

When they drop the green flag at the Budweiser Shootout on Feb. 10 (on FOX), NASCAR fans will be free to root for whatever car they like. But if they're so wowed by a car on the track at Daytona that they're thinking about buying one, they should consider this: The Ford Fusion is manufactured in Mexico while the Chevy Monte Carlo and Dodge Charger are manufactured in Canada.

The Toyota Camry, the leading-selling car in America for eight of the past nine years, is manufactured in Georgetown, Ky., USA. Just 68 miles, in fact, from where Jack Roush himself was manufactured, in Covington, Ky.

Roush was born April 19, 1942, the day after Col. James Doolittle led a team of B-25 bombers on a daring raid of Tokyo four months after Pearl Harbor. He grew up in an America that was understandably anti-Japanese. He owns and pilots a P-51 Mustang, the high-performance bomber escort that protected B-17s and B-24s in Europe and B-29s over Japan.

But the war is over, Jack. We won. And in so doing, the world won.

You know how I know? There's a gleaming black Infiniti G35 in my driveway.

And a Toyota Camry coming to a track near you.

Kevin Hench is a frequent contributor to FOXSports.com. His grandfather, a marine, died in the Pacific Theater during World War II.