Posted on 04/21/2004 1:11:26 PM PDT by quidnunc
Almost unnoticed by the American press, the aftermath of Japan’s hostage crisis in Iraq is developing in a direction which may have permanent and serious positive implications for American foreign and military policies.
Prime Minister Koizumi’s response to the kidnapping of the first three Japanese taken hostage in Iraq marked a watershed in Japan’s posture for dealing with external threats. Prime Minister Koizumi simply refused to “go Spanish” in the face of terror threats against his citizens. As the Wall Street Journal notes (link requires subscription), Japan had previously embraced the notion that the lives of hostages must be paramount. In the words of former Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda, who capitulated to Japanese Red Army airplane hijackers, “human life is heavier than the Earth."
Having watched the Red Army metastasize into a far larger and bloodier threat in the aftermath, Japan has learned some lessons. The specter of a nuclear-armed North Korea lobbing missiles over the Japanese Archipelago has also done wonders for the strengthening of the Japanese national spine.
Despite large public anti-war demonstrations and tearful pleas from relatives of the hostages, the public has been strongly backing Koizumi's tough stance.
Now, a steady stream of news, much of it leaked from governmental sources, is hinting that the first three hostages may have faked their kidnapping. If and when these suspicions becomes provable, the public backlash in Japan against the anti-war left could be fearsome, and drive Japan’s foreign policy even further toward muscular collaboration with American defense efforts. Given Japan’s formidable economic and technological resources , the coalition of the willing would benefit substantially for a long time to come.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Hopefully just in time to confront Red China.
The Japanese have always seen somewhat contemptuous of Koreans, North and South, sort of the way a *sophisticated* New Yawker* might view an Ozark hillbilly, or a staid and formal Prussian look down his nose at his Bavarian cousins.
Except for one guy. A couple of years back there was an incident on a Japanese subway platform, and a Korean threw himself to certain death in front of a train to try and save a stranger, who as averages would have it, was Japanese. The result on Japanese society was far-reaching and profound, of the sort of national galvanization we felt here following JFK's assassination, or after the 09/11 plane hijackings and crashes.
That's not at all to say that Nippon is not indeed mightily pissed at NK for the kidnapping of its citizens. But expect the resoponse to be one that the Japanese have carefully considered and measured, rather than an instinctive and reflexive one.
Issa would be proud.
aki no kaze tsurugi no yama wo kuru kaze ka
[does this autumn wind
come from the Mountain
of Swords?]
Kobayashi Issa, 1804
I just wanted to add my "Bravo!" to you, AmericanInTokyo.
Some reading on WWII in the Pacific Theatre is all you need to see that a Japan that keeps to themselves and only donates money is by far the ONLY Japan that we want to deal with.
I have great respect for them, but I feel that we must keep them militarily hobbled for as long as humanly possible.
I didn't read the whole thread, but this bullet of faked kidnapping really got my attention.
Who was to benefit from the fake?
It must be remembered, however, that Spanish Prime Minister Aznar never let us down. The Spanish voters were the ones who let us down and the Japanase voters have not voted in their next election yet.
Here at home, John Kerry, the other Democrats and the liberal news media are doinmg everything they can to make America "go Spanish" this November.
I don't know for sure. Maybe someone, some good Freeper with that info, will reply to us here ....I didn't read the whole thread, but this bullet of faked kidnapping really got my attention.
Who was to benefit from the fake?
The antiwar lefties in Japan have a cloying sanctimony similar to, but an order of magnitude greater, than the ones on campus in the States. It has led them to ally, respectively, with the Communists in Red China and North Korea and Vietnam, all of whom hate the Japanese as much as they hate the U.S., and a plethora of extremely violent radicals such as the Red Army Faction and even such weird ducks as the Aum Shinrikyo, the folks that let off sarin in the Tokyo subway. In short, everything anti-Western and anti-U.S., neither of which represents a majority opinion in Japan. In this they resemble nothing so much the French or the wilder-eyed campus radicals at Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Madison, and Ithaca.
There is, in addition, an anti-U.S. right in that country who is still fighting WWII, who loathe these people with all the fervor of a Nazi street-fighter toward the Communists in Germany in 1935. If there is trouble to be had in terms of nascent Japanese militarism, it is here that it is to be found, IMHO. And fortunately the average Japanese thinks that both sides are full of kuso.
the rachael corrie supporters of the world... the OMG, it's a quagmire! proponents... the No blood for oil gang...
I would imagine they probably already are wink wink nod nod!
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