Japan halts Iraq troop dispatch

CNN ^ | November 13, 2003 | AP

[yonif]

TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- The attack on Italian forces in Iraq will force Japan to postpone its dispatch of troops to that country until sometime next year, a top government spokesman said Thursday.

Japan was hoping to send its first batch of troops to Iraq to help rebuild the country by the end of 2003. But Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said the security situation is not yet stable enough.

[bonesmccoy]

Your skewed and biased reports are hardly the work of a scholar reporting objective fact. They are, in fact, the words of a racist who generalizes political thought to an entire nation's people.

How sad that you denigrate a people based upon mistaken generalizations that are based in the assumption that a race acts as one.

One would not condemn all German citizens for the actions of the SS.

One would not condemn all Jews for the actions of a few who condemn non-Jews.

One would not condemn all Americans for the actions of a few soldiers in Vietnam who murdered civilians at My Lai or in other locations.

One would not condemn all Chinese for the actions of their army in Tibet.

So, why do you condemn all Japanese for the actions of the out of control Japanese soldiers sixty years ago?

The only answer I can find... is that you're a racist.

[bonesmccoy]

"worthy cause"...

Yes, and the Japanese gov't seems to acknowledge that because of their commitment of billions of yen.

On the other hand, they did not need to engage in this fight because the fight is between the Jews and the Arabs... and the US got sucked in... why should the Japanese?

Still listening for your explanation...

[Blue Scourge]

Well, just when you think Japan is about to get back in the saddle they get scared cause the horse kicks a little.

[bonesmccoy]

Not really... you just killed 500,000 people who were your strongest allies.

The people in Southern Japan had more connection to the US than any other region of Japan.

By destroying the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Truman administration basically killed the GOP/Republican allied areas of Japan. Those cities had more people immigrate to work on Republican controlled land in the 1880-1930 time frame than any other area.

So, basically, Truman altered the demographics of the vote in Japan for the next 100 years... Sunday's vote on Koizumi is proof that it worked.

The US GOP is real good at letting their allies get fried.

That is why the GOP loses after two terms and sometimes after one.

The GOP can not afford to make this mistake today.

If it does, it will convert it's control on a federal level into a disasterous outcome in one year.

Such a destructive politic will destroy the conservative philosophy's hope in this generation.

[bonesmccoy]

I agree

[bonesmccoy]

Uhm...that's not how I would interpret this... I interpret this to mean that the Japanese are quite satisfied and comfortable with their own national security.

Since the US forces are so strong, there is little that the Japanese military can really do to effectively help and certainly, given the issues with North Korea, there is little excuse to send forces away from Japan when it is clear that North Korea is ready to launch missiles against Japan today.

[Wolfhound777]

I think I like Italy, Spain, Britain & Poland.

Me too. Need to add Australia to the list. They have been with us since the beginning of Operation enduring Freedom.

[bonesmccoy]

I have been following Japanese newspapers and found a website called Nichi Bei Times (www.nichibeitimes.com) with a message board.

The message board has had very strange messages which pop up temporarily and appear to be erased by a moderator.

These messages appear to be posted by a person who is feeding Al Qaeda propaganda as part of a psyop game.

AQ operatives may be posting to US internet boards from foreign IP addresses.

Regarding the "soft underbelly" of the Japanese, the reality is that the Japanese are interested in conflict resolution AND conflict avoidance. So, if the Iraqi government personally requested assistance from the Japanese and provided the security, I suspect that Koizumi's government would be there.

However, in this regard, it is a third party (the US gov't) requesting aid for a second party (the Iraqi people). Since the parties are now fighting, the Japanese choose not to stand between the sides.

That is not irrational or weak.

It is logical and a strong stand... they are basically telling the US Administration that they need better assurance that their investment of men and money does not go to waste. They are not interested in sending their aid and men while the US gov't leaves.

[Ichneumon]

The only way we can get defeated by the terrorists is through defeatism.

We need to find someone who can do an FDR impression to intone, "the only thing which can bring defeat is... defeatism itself."

[bonesmccoy]

We're not Japanese...so they're not sticking their necks out for us.

It's like the US not sticking their necks out for the British during the Falklands.

[slym]

Not just Japan... now South Korea as well. Breaking news as reported in New Zealand:

South Korea Freezes Troop
Activity In Iraq
stuff.co.nz
11-13-3

"South Korea said yesterday it was drafting plans for the deployment of no more than 3000 troops to help with peacekeeping and reconstruction in Iraq - well short of the 10,000 requested by Washington."

SEOUL -- South Korea has ordered a halt to all operations by its troops in southern Iraq until security is fully guaranteed in the area, the Japanese Kyodo news agency said today.

Kyodo, monitored in London by the BBC, said in a dispatch from Seoul that the South Korean General Staff had ordered its troops to stand down on Thursday, a day after a suicide bombing that killed 18 Italians in the southern Iraqi town of Nassiriya.

It gave no details.

[bonesmccoy]

Hey Libertina... do you know ANYTHING about the Japanese govt's constitution?

I'm elated that the Japanese kicked in millions of Yen, stood by our nation in multiple United Nations fights, provided staging assistance in the war on terror, and then made the first post-world-war-2 commitment of military force...

why are you attempting to paint their commitment as "nothing"???

Got another agenda?

________________________________________

In Tokyo on Thursday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda indicated the government has abandoned plans to dispatch SDF troops to Iraq by the end of this year due to the deteriorating security situation there.

''We could send the troops if circumstances permit,'' the chief government spokesman said. ''But they do not.''

Fukuda's remarks came in the wake of Wednesday's suicide bomb attack on Italian forces deployed in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah that killed at least 18 Italians and nine Iraqis.

South Korea, which has already deployed about 450 noncombat troops to Nasiriyah, ordered the troops to halt all activities until security in the region is fully guaranteed, South Korea's Joint Chief of Staff said Thursday.

Japan has been planning to send SDF troops to Samawah, also in southern Iraq, where the security situation is considered to be relatively better than the Baghdad area. Samawah is about 80 kilometers west of Nasiriyah.

The envisaged team consists mostly of Ground Self-Defense Force personnel. The plan is for the troops to provide Iraqis with humanitarian and reconstruction assistance such as electricity, safe water and help in building administration systems.

Under a specially enacted Japanese law on the SDF dispatch, the government is prohibited from sending the troops to combat areas in Iraq.

[bonesmccoy]

they never said that there were going to deploy massive amounts of military force...they were going to send in construction and humanitarian teams...

what in the heck do you think they were going to send?

We're the ones defending Japan... they don't have much of a "delta force"...

[CMAC51]

>> Uhm...that's not how I would interpret this... I interpret this to mean that the Japanese are quite satisfied and comfortable with their own national security. <<

You mean that Islamic Fundamentalism won't affect Japan in the future if it isn't halted. One Asian rim country after another is being affected. Japan doesn't have immunity.

>> Since the US forces are so strong, there is little that the Japanese military can really do to effectively help and certainly, given the issues with North Korea, there is little excuse to send forces away from Japan when it is clear that North Korea is ready to launch missiles against Japan today. <<

The US strength has nothing to do with it. The benefit of Japan's participation is to broaden the coalition visible to the Arab street. As for North Korea, one US carrier group provides more security to Japan than the entire Japanese military. What are the little Japanese Army guys going to do? Catch the missles as they fall? Pitiful!

[bonesmccoy]

pitiful?

More like, US said no military... so for 60 years, we've paid and supplied the Japanese their security...

... I'm not surprised that the Japanese have chosen to postpone the deployment of their team...

[Mortimer Snavely]

"How sad that you denigrate a people based upon mistaken generalizations that are based in the assumption that a race acts as one. "

Ware ware Nipponjin wa, ichi oku san byaku man isshin!

"One would not condemn all German citizens for the actions of the SS."

Ware ware Nipponjin wa, Doitsu jin no Yûdo jin mondai ga wakatemasu. Doitsu jin ga kawai so. Kangoku jin wa, Nippon ga, onaji mondai. Soshitara, Nipponjin ga, Doitsu jin ni, takusan itawari arimasu yo ne. Honto ni, onaji mondai, desu ne?

What you don't understand, dear little bonesmccoy, is that yes, one can certainly appreciate Beethoven and Schiller and still hate the Nazis, but in Japan one cannot, as in cannot, criticize anything Japanese without being a racist. At the same time, as Shintaro Ishihara and his fellow Nihonjinron enthusiasts constantly proclaim, the USA is considered to be hindered and crippled because of the wide variety of races who are US citizens.

It is indeed encouraging that if a Japanese today were to cite Hiraizumi Kiyoshi, or seriously discuss “The Heavenly Task,” “The Moral Way,” or “The Sovereign Path,” most everyone he knew (excepting my first Japanese boss) would think that “his potato been bakin’ too long.” But much wartime propaganda remains. The suppression of the individual for “harmony” is usually explained as “the Japanese way.” The old delusions of Japanese racial supremacy and uniqueness still provide the boundaries of usual discourse. These delusions impede reasoned, thoughtful inquiry. The institutionalization of this propaganda is an intellectually dishonest, academic fraud known as Nihonjinron, or “theorizing on the Japanese.” This is better understood as racist bilge masquerading as scientific inquiry into all branches of Japanese studies.

Nihonjinron differs from serious, scientifically valid research in that three major assumptions are posited, instead of investigated. First, it is assumed that the Japanese are an ethnically homogen eous group, unchanged since prehistory. Second, it is presumed that the Japanese differ radically from all other people. Last, all non-Japanese research and analysis is rejected as invalid.

Nihonjinron fulfills that category of grandiose delusion known as totalitarian ideology. It is a closed system of ideas and the only acceptable intellectual exercise in it is the use of its own ideological system. Also, all natural thought, that is, basic common sense, is subordinated to it, and outsiders are treated in a way that conceals other emotions.

Nihonjinron stems from mid-Meiji attempts to construct a Japanese national identity. German social philosophy provided Japanese power elites an example of the use of scholarly language to lend validity to outrageous delusions. Nietzsche despairingly observed that “the question ‘what is German?’ never dies out.” In Japan, the question “What is Japanese?” became the focus of an intense propaganda campaign. Kawakami Hajime, in 1911, wrote the most articulate description of the institutionalized myth of the Japanese identity. Kawakami described the Japanese individual as solely a device for national growth. Now familiar contrasts between Western “individuality” (kojinshugi) and Japanese “nationality” (kokkashugi), between the “Western” structure of the individual (jinkaku) and the “Japanese” structure of the nation (kokkaku) were first articulated at this time. To Kawakami, the “uniqueness” of Japanese identity lay in the fusion of the individual’s private identity (shi /watakushi) with the national (Imperial) interest (kô/oyake). In Germany, this idea would later be expressed as Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Führer.

I cannot possibly speak to you with any more sympathetic feelings than I am now. I used to think the same way as you do now.

Go to Japan, live there, pay taxes there, learn the language, and work 18 hour days six days a week for a Japanese company, for at least five years.

Trust the evidence of your senses while you are there. Gather facts, abstract from the facts, form concepts from those abstractions, and then do further research.

I'm going to let you slide on the "racist" remark. You don't know me, and you don't know what you're talking about.

As a matter of fact, I consider the Japanese to be amongst the most ill-governed people in the world, for they have no other option than becomeing subjugated corporate serfs. They have my sympathy. Lots of it. More than you can possibly imagine.

[Mortimer Snavely]

PS: Learn the language. I wrote a lot of stuff in Japanese for a reason. Think about it. It's important.

[bonesmccoy]

Writing in Japanese does nothing to promulgate effective discourse in this forum.

I'm reminded of the comments in "A Japan that can say No"...

"I have written this elsewhere in a book, but when Japanese read Chinese, they put in arrows and symbols to change word order, but Chinese read it directly and understand the meaning of the sentence immediately. English is the same kind of language, which is read one word after another. In sum, this means that Americans have a different sequential order in thought processes. Therefore, no matter if you use interpreters, it is impossible to interpret in the same sequential order as the thought processes that that generated the words in Japanese. Thus, when a message is to be delivered, it is regrettable but true, that the sequential thought process of Japanese is in the minority in the world. When communicating with occidentals, who are in the majority, if things are not communicated in an order they can comprehend, they do not understand what we are saying. It is necessary that we be cognizant of this disadvantage that Japan has in this area. "

[AmericanInTokyo]

Thanks bm-san, for thinking "out of the hako" on this one. Good thoughts, all of them, and aint a thing I can take issue with. Plus, thanks for the enemy psyops tip that I'll check out. IMHO, the President needs to speak to the American people again, this time for a good thirty minutes on the essence of PSY OPS and how that is precisely what we are under by the terrorists at this time. Then challenge the nine pathetic if not dangerous Democrat ostrich detractors to point out anything in his talk they would differ with, and if not, to shut up, and git with the program. Bring it on.

The American people have the will, so do the Japanese, but they have to be reminded of that fact, given encouragement, and shown what the alternative is AGAIN!!

[bonesmccoy]

AIT,

The psyops activity in California has been occuring in West Coast urban areas for many many years.

The internet just brought the activity into a position to be more readily identified and tracked.

I know it might sound reactionary, but some of us believe that communists and liberals are sometimes working in tandem in this area to advance socialist agenda.

Our group of quiet civies has been tracking this activity, some which appears to track or parallel with Communist Chinese activity or could be related to North Korean Communist infiltration in the area.

The nexus created by Pan-Pacific US-Japanese trade ameliorates the risk of war between the two nations and builds profit for both economies. The benefit to the US-Japanese trade relationship is that both nations improve economic efficiency when peace and good trade exists.

The people who do not benefit from a strong US-Japanese relationship are the people in Communist China (who would rather the Japanese partner with them and want to continue to dump cheaper slave-labor produced goods on the US market).

Taiwan wants good synergy between So. Korea, Japan, and the US. So, the location of Katrina Leung in LA was particularly problematic and shows the existance of Communist Chinese spy networks operating on the West Coast of the US.