• Robert Taylor
  • 15
  • Nov
  • 09

President Obama was in Japan this weekend, talking with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama about the importance of the US-Japanese alliance and Obama’s policy of “engagement” with Japan.

But what stood out the most was Obama’s refusal to discuss an issue that is increasingly angering many Japanese: the presence of US troops and bases in their country.

Once we brush the fluffy rhetoric of the American-Japanese “alliance” aside, a closer look reveals that Japan has actually been more of a US subject than friend since the end of WW2.

Since the end of the bloodiest (and unnecessary) conflict in human history, the US has stationed thousands of Marines in Japan, for the purposes of “regional stability.” A disproportionate amount of the US military presence in Japan falls on one of the poorest and tiniest parts of Japan, the island of Okinawa.

Okinawans, who are ethnically different than the Japanese, inhabit a small island where there are 14 US bases that take up 18% of the island. Although Okinawa makes up about 1% of Japanese territory, two-thirds of the 40,000 Marines occupying the country are in Okinawa.

There are significant complications that can arise when thousands of young boys are stationed in an area with a completely different language, culture, and legal norms.
For over sixty years, Okinawans have had to deal with excessive noise and environmental pollution and sexual assaults, rapes, drunk-driving and hit-and-run accidents, and property damage by US troops that nearly all go unpunished.

Whenever these “unfortunate accidents” occur, the US refuses to allow any Marines to be tried in Japanese courts and are immediately whisked back home or transfered to another foreign base. Okinawans have made protest after protest to the Japanese government, to no avail.

These are all legitimate grievances, and it’s easy to imagine how angry Americans would be if a foreign power had over 40,000 of their soldiers who are all immune from local laws mingling and partying around San Diego for over 60 years.

Obama loves to talk about “engagement,” yet when this issue was brought up by the Prime Minister, his lips were silent. That empty silence is the callousness of a two-faced emperor who preaches “peace” and “engagement” out of one side of his mouth but brings death and destruction out of the other.

It is absolutely urgent, for the sake of peace, financial stability, and the soul of our republic to end the criminal occupation of Okinawa. US out of Japan!*

*And while we’re at it, the US out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Germany, South Korea, Africa, South America, and California as well!

_

For more of Robert’s work, please visit his Libertarian Examiner blog.

  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

» You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

You say Potato, I say Ahmadinejad - Hala V. Furst, 27 September 2008
Dream - Hala V. Furst, 19 January 2009
Line in the Sand - Hala V. Furst, 19 June 2009
Home Girl - Hala V. Furst, 1 March 2009
Spooky - Hala V. Furst, 31 October 2008
  • justin_borden
    Let us just see what would happen if we pulled all troops back home discharged them, cause we dont have a war here. hell why stop there lets just disband the millitary as a whole we are on a content basically be ourselves what do we have to fear from other countrys... oh yea they have planes ships and bomb that can reach anywhere in the country. Do like wheat bread let them blow up kansas there is nothing there dont like gay marrage blow up New Hampshire. We need the service members that are abroad as well as here. You should thank one some time cause hell you could be japanses right now if it were not for them. OR maybe german but then we would have some good beer and brats. I do agree that Obama ahould step to the plate and do something. He cant ride the blame Bush train if he wants to stay in office for 8 years.
  • Thank you, Justin! You are making a lot of sense. We should definitely disband the military, since the existence of a professional military is the absolute death of liberty; it is the germ of every political disease.
    When Robert MacNamara asked a Japanese general if they had any plans to invade the US, the Japanese general laughed out loud and said, "Of course not, their would be a rifle behind every blade of grass!"
    This anecdote represents the best and only moral form of national defense there is: the people themselves. You ever wonder why Hitler never invaded the Swiss, despite the fact he wanted to be known as the "butcher of the Swiss?" Because they have a highly decentralized political system, and every single adult is armed to the teeth.* They also had booby traps set on major bridges and roads, and Hitler realized that it would be far too expensive to invade. We need rifles in every home, not a trillion dollar "defense" budget.
    As for the "we'd all be speaking German argument," did occupied France speak German? Poland? Czech? No.
    And as for thanking those who served, never. I don't blame the soldiers who thought they were serving their country when they were/are only serving the state, but here is an important question: if it is wrong for me or you to kill, why is it okay to do it while wearing a government uniform?

    *and there's a low crime rate, peace, and prosperity. One more anecdote: during WW2, the Swiss had a 500,000 man militia ready if anyone was stupid enough to invade. When one of top Hitler's generals asked the Swiss president what they would do if Hitler invaded with a million men, the Swiss pres said they would shoot twice and go home. THAT is defense.
  • Japan may have struck first, but like every US war, they were provoked. The US had control of the Philippines and had them surrounded in the Pacific, were selling China planes that were killing Japanese, and imposed a cruel oil embargo on them. Japan, in desperation, attacks a US colony at Hawaii, an island much closer to Japan than to us. FDR got the war he wanted, and lied over and over again to do so ("Human Smoke" has a great pacifist look at the beginnings of WW2).
    We have nothing to fear from China. In their long history, they have been the victims of invasion and have rarely if ever been imperial. The more we trade with them the better, because as the great Frederic Bastiat said, "if goods don't cross borders, soldiers will." If you look at any period of peace in history, it has been achieve by the spread of trade and (non-state funded) markets.
    Japan is one of the richest countries in the world; it can easily defend itself. And what about the 50,000 troops we have stationed in South Korea just waiting to be tripwired inches off of China's borders? It seems to me these Asian deployments are nothing more than provocations for more conflict; and more conflict equals more F-22s to sell and an excuse to justify the garrisoning of the globe.
    There is no reason, strategic or otherwise, to EVER deploy US troops on foreign soil.
  • I still don't think we can qualify the war with Japan as "unnecessary." For the many things that one could say in our conduct of the war that followed, it remains irrefutable that they attacked first.

    One thing to consider with our troops in Japan - they are right next to one billion Chinese with a couple hundred generations of animosity. I think the small provisional force we maintain there is one of our few deployments that make strategic sense.
blog comments powered by Disqus