MULTI-CULTI
Oh,
how touchingly multicultural: here is Malkin, who is usually
contemptuous of such politically correct drivel, clothing
her Japanophobia in the dulcet tones of racial togetherness.
But what about the bloodthirsty Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
who, as we now know, had plenty of advance warning of
the Japanese "sneak" attack? We had broken the Japanese
code, and, as
Robert Stinnett has shown in Day of Deceit,
Washington had been reading their military traffic for
weeks: Roosevelt had to have known. Isn't he
"bloodthirsty" for leaving our fleet bottled up at Pearl
Harbor, and using it as bait that the Japanese bit?
FDR,
CONSERVATIVE HERO?
But
none of this even comes into Malkins' purview: ever since
Newt Gingrich and his neocon buddies started praising
the alleged greatness of Franklin Roosevelt, everyone
seems to have forgotten how conservatives used to hate
"that man in the White House," the architect of Big Government
in America. But Malkin never mentions Roosevelt, or his
treachery. She's too busy taking aim at Japanese-American
groups who rightly fear that the Pearl Harbor movie is
bound to stir up an anti-Asian backlash:
"Those
who died at Pearl Harbor would be appalled to discover
that patriotism is a dirty word these days among some
ethnic political activists whose livelihoods depend on
drumming up fear. A new Disney movie set during the Pearl
Harbor attack has leading Asian-American groups once again
crying foul about the evils of American racism –
never mind the evils of Japanese wartime aggression. "
A
BALKAN THING
No
mention is made, naturally, of Anglo-American aggression
against Japan: a near total economic embargo, and a series
of naval provocations in Japanese waters, culminating
in an ultimatum delivered to the Japanese that amounted
to a demand for Japan's complete prostration before the
US and the European colonial powers. As for those whose
livelihoods depend on fear: they will never starve, because
fear of government repression is well-founded. Perhaps
Malkin has forgotten that Japanese-Americans were "interned"
(i.e. thrown into concentration camps and stripped of
their property) Or does she remember – and approve?
I suspect the latter. For her antipathy for the Japanese
seems visceral, a tribal hate of Balkan intensity.
A
MONUMENT TO TRUTH
She
quotes the leader of a Japanese-American group as saying
""No matter how much we look to the future, we keep getting
dragged back to Dec. 7. This movie does that – pulls
us back to that attack." Malkin can hardly contain her
bile, as she vomits up her hatred of all things Japanese:
"And what's wrong with that?" she snaps. She then demands
to know whether John Tateishi, the Japanese-Americans
Citizens League official who spoke out against the "Pearl
Harbor" movie, is opposed to the Pearl Harbor memorial.
Of course, Mr. Tateishi, being Japanese, is far too polite
and cultured to give Ms. Malkin the answer she deserves,
and so I will do so in his place. The memorial can stay,
as far as I'm concerned, only on one condition: that instead
of being a memorial to a lie, it becomes one to the cause
of historical enlightenment. As such, it would require
at least one addition: a statue of FDR beckoning the Japanese
planes, one might even say welcoming them, like friends
whose arrival has been long expected.
AFFRONT
FROM ABROAD?
The
real object of Malkin's hatred, however, isn't Japanese-Americans:
her contempt for them is merely a pale reflection of her
real fury, which is directed at the Japanese who live
in Japan. As Malkin puts it,
"Why
does this small group of Americans expend a disproportionate
amount of resources attacking perceived insults by their
fellow citizens while larger affronts from abroad go unprotested?
Japanese ultra-nationalists continue to whitewash World
War II history – downplaying their soldiers' atrocities
at Pearl Harbor and Bataan, and casting Japan as a faultless
victim of Western imperialism. This should outrage patriotic
Americans of all backgrounds. To appease Japan's right-wing,
Disney is reportedly cutting 'Pearl Harbor' to omit references
to the war's final outcome. (Newsflash: We won. Japan
lost. Sorry to hurt any feelings.)"
LEFT
AND "RIGHT" AGREE
As
if the Japanese (or the Germans) need to be reminded of
the outcome of that war. Don't worry, Michelle: every
time one of our Marines stationed on Okinawa rapes another
young girl, the Japanese are reminded of their defeat.
(Earth to Michelle Malkin: Remember Hiroshima? Does the
word Nagasaki ring a bell?) It's pathetic, really,
when you see how much of a big deal Malkin and her band
of American ultra-nationalists have made of this cut.
The conservative Washington Times ran a piece,
"In
This Movie, No Japanese Villains Were at Pearl Harbor,"
echoing the Disney-Pentagon line that the movie took a
'neutral" stance, and didn't really "demonize" the Japanese.
Malkin and other conservatives bemoaned this as an example
of "political correctness," without realizing that the
reiteration of the "sneak attack" mythology and the iconization
of Franklin Roosevelt make Disney's "Pearl Harbor" anything
but "neutral." But, then, on these two fundamental
issues they agree with the left-liberal makers of "Pearl
Harbor."
THE
LEGACY OF EMPIRE
The
Japanese are finally standing up and refusing to take
responsibility for a war provoked and devoutly wished
for by a liberal Democratic President, the Bill Clinton
of his era, and this is denounced by the ostensibly "conservative"
Malkin – who even darkly conjures up the danger of
Japan's "right-wing." I note, with some embarrassment,
that Malkin gets it all wrong about the nature of Japanese
"ultra-nationalism": no one disputes that the Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbor or that the battle of Bataan was
hard-fought. That, after all, is what war is about. What
is highly disputable, however, is the assumption
that British, Dutch, and French colonialism in China,
Malaysia, and Indochina was a better deal for the peoples
of the Orient than Japan's vision of a "Co-Prosperity
Sphere" – an Eastasian version of George W. Bush
FTAA, albeit one backed up by the Japanese Imperial Army.
In allying with the dying European empires against the
insurgent peoples of the East, we inherited their legacy
– and, ultimately, shared their defeat – in
Vietnam. But, of course, according to Malkin and her conservative
compadres, that was a "good" war, too.
KOIZUMI
= TOJO?
Who
are these "Japanese ultranationalists" who reject the
myth of Japanese war guilt? Does Malkin mean newly-elected
Prime Minister Junichero Koizumi, who, in his maiden speech,
referred to the unfairness of Japan's prewar "enforced
isolation." But of course even mentioning this is to become,
in Malkin's book, complicit in Japanese "wartime aggression."
HISTORY
AND TREASON
The
story of how Roosevelt not only knew but deliberately
provoked the Japanese attack is not an "affront from abroad,"
but the testimony of American historians such as
Charles Callan Tansill (see his monumental Back
Door to War), Charles Austin Beard, Harry Elmer
Barnes, and George Morgenstern – whose
Pearl Harbor: The Story of a Secret War (1947)
outlined and prefigured the thesis proved by Stinnett:
that the President of the United States bears at least
as much responsibility for the atrocity of Pearl Harbor
as Tojo and his Cabinet. Malkin has the nerve to proclaim
that "We need not fear history – only its revisionism
by traitors to truth." But Malkin could care less about
truth, since in continually revising what we think
we know about history the whole idea is to get closer
to the truth. But this she rejects as the subversion of
"traitors" – by which she means, by implication,
Japanese-Americans who have dared to voice their doubts
about this movie.
MIGHTY
MANILA?
Isn't
it odd how Malkin and her fellow celebrants of World War
II revivalism are usually the ones who are continually
warning us about the alleged "threat" from "Red" China?
Yet now we are expected to believe that the real danger
comes from Japanese "ultra-nationalism." But just whom
does she think is our biggest ally in Asia, the only
country capable of providing a counterbalance to the rising
power of Beijing – the Philippines?
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