Japan & the US

Justin Raimondo’s recent statements regarding the behavior of the Japanese during World War II, as set forth both in his regular column and in his response to M. Conklin’s letter, would seem to stray away from promoting anti-interventionism and toward excusing the nefarious deeds of men who qualify as little more than gangsters (note that this is exactly the trap Raimondo warned us against in his column regarding Slobo and his commie fan club).

In his response to Conklin’s letter, Raimondo informs us that Japan never conquered Asia (a fair point made in response to a statement made by Conklin) but then characterizes Japanese aggression against other Asian nations as having "merely established their (the Japanese) sphere of influence to Manchuria, Korea, and the coastal regions of China." Not only is that statement a prime example of the type of doublespeak which Raimondo would normally hold up to much-deserved ridicule, but it would also (by analogy) justify US interventionism anywhere in the Americas the US government sees fit...

I was also concerned with Raimondo’s placement of parentheses around the word "rape" in "rape of Nanking" (which might be seen as an attempt to minimize the very evil deeds of some Japanese soldiers) and his statement that atrocities are in the very nature of war (applied universally, this statement, if accepted, could in fact be used to justify the bombings of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki which Raimondo so justly deplores). The latter statement is also an offense against the Roman Catholic "just war" tradition (of which Pat Buchanan, Lew Rockwell and others have written most favorably), which teaches that atrocities most assuredly should not be in the very nature of war. I hope that any responding to this point will resist the temptation to counter with the obvious statement that the Japanese are not, on the whole, Roman Catholic (after all, as so many of us were taught by the late great Murray Rothbard, some moral principles are of universal application, irrespective of time, country and circumstance).

Justin Raimondo is one of the most articulate, colorful and incisive spokesmen we have on the noninterventionist Right. His opinions regarding the historical relationship between Japan and her Asian neighbors notwithstanding, within both historical and contemporary contexts Raimondo has always been dead right regarding the relationship between Japan and the US It is my hope that Raimondo will not dilute the authority with which he writes of the latter by continuing to offer less than fully informed opinions of the former.

~ Fred Godinez

Justin Raimondo Replies:

I wrote "merely" in regard to Japan's overseas conquests in order to contrast the reality with Conklin's contention that Japan had "conquered Asia" – not to downplay their aggression, but only to correct Mr. Conklin's impression that they had annexed everything from the Bosporus to the Pacific. Similarly, putting quote marks around the word "rape" as in "rape of Nanking" was an ironic comment – admittedly, easily misunderstood: it struck me as odd that a massacre should be described as a "rape," which is usually (but not always) a non-lethal event.

Of course, I could have written that Japan brutally conquered and ruthlessly subjugated Manchuria, Korea, and the coastal regions of China, but then reality is nearly always more complex than the propagandistic mindset allows. It may be politically incorrect to note that there was a considerable amount of support for Japanese rule in Taiwan by the Taiwanese themselves, but it is nonetheless true, as any reader of Bevin Chu's columns for Antiwar.com would soon discover. (Bevin, of course, was against it, but then that's not the point). The Taiwanese elite sent their sons to be educated in Japan, and many of the leading Nationalists were and still are unabashedly pro-Japanese. The same was true, to a lesser extent, in Indonesia (see Sukarno's memoirs and the recent Japanese film "Merdeka"), Korea, and Manchuria.

To point this out is not to justify Japanese interventionism, but to provide some historical and empirical basis for a policy of American non-intervention. The black-and-white history we are given of Sino-Japanese relations, with Tokyo always put in the role of the Bad Guy, is not only historically dubious – it also serves as a cover for the pro-war, pro-Communist foreign policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. From the Japanese perspective, the European powers were in a race to divide up Eastasia amongst themselves: rightly or wrongly, they believed that if they didn't build an empire of their own, they would soon become a part of someone else's empire – and that was a fate to be avoided at all cost. As for Mr. Godinez's characterization of the Japanese as "gangsters" – as an American opponent of interventionism, I am too busy with the problem of how to get rid of our own gangsters to worry about anybody else's.

As an American anti-interventionist, my concern is with the empire-building policy of the US government: I will leave Japanese imperialism for the Japanese isolationists (and there are plenty of them!) to deal with. As an American anti-interventionist, my concern is with getting US troops out of Japan, and out of Asia: but the old bogey of supposedly resurgent Japanese "militarism" is one of the arguments interventionists use to maintain the terms of the US military occupation in perpetuity. As an American opponent of our foreign policy of global interventionism, it is not for me to condemn (or approve) the claims and counter-claims made by various governments. Does Japan have a claim on Taiwan? Does Saddam have a claim on Kuwait (the "nineteenth province")? Is Kosovo a province of the former Yugoslavia, or does it have the right to national self-determination? Is the land of Israel given to the Jews in the Bible, or do the Palestinians have some rights, too? These are all very interesting questions, and I'd love to discuss them with you someday, but they have nothing to do with the basic anti-interventionist position, which is: America should stay out of it. And that is it: that is the sum total of our position. Because once we get involved in saying that, well, Taiwan really ought to be independent, and, after all, the Bible does promise Israel to the Jews, and, by the way, Kosovo really does have the right to national self-determination, then we all become little Wilsonians, and we start traipsing all over the globe in search of wrongs to right. And once we go down that slippery slope, there is no turning back.

Finally, I cannot let the invocation of Murray N. Rothbard's name go without wondering what the universality of moral principles has to do with it. The question, if we put it in context, is: who is going to apply these universal moral principles abroad – the US government? To anyone the least bit acquainted with Rothbard, the idea that he would approve of such a loopy "universalism" is, as he would say, simply "monstrous."

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General Malaise

I find the premise of [Tom Bethell's, "The Warrior Class"] fascinating, if somewhat confusing.

I am a Korean "conflict" veteran. I enlisted in the USAF right out of college in 1951, believing that our WWII patriotism was the correct feeling to have, as told to us "young and impressionables" by our leaders.

The chest-beating emanating from all corners of the capital, Senate, House, and, yes, definitely the Executive, nee, "we are the last remaining superpower on earth," or versions thereof, had a chilling effect on many of us. Braggarts, of any sort, for any reason, have never been liked by those around them – that's human nature...

By any measure, our government(s) have just plain gotten too big and too powerful. One wonders what is going to happen next – with a 1.9 trillion dollar budget for FY02. Much mischief can come out of the spending frenzies... I see "factions" within and without party affiliation. I see new parties emerging everywhere. I'm told that "militias" (constitutionally authorized?) are springing up everywhere. There is a general malaise in the country – I hear it everywhere...

How will this problem be solved?

These are some of my thoughts during the twilight of my life. They are not pleasant, and my retirement is not what I expected it to be 50 years ago.

~ A. Correia

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The LDP

Justin Raimondo wrote, in his July 11th article:

"The LDP had governed the country uninterruptedly (except for a brief interlude a few years ago) since Japan's World War II defeat, and they had come to represent the very concept of defeat in the Japanese mind. Faced with a moral as well as an economic crisis, the Japanese shook off the LDP as casually as a dog shakes off a flea."

...I am just confused by Mr. Raimondo's use of the past tense when referring to the LDP: ..."governed", "had" and "shook". ...Koizumi is a member (and now, the presiding member) of the very same LDP. They haven't been shaken off of anybody.

Not that that makes Koizumi's rise to power any less a revolution. Intra-party factions have always been more important in Japanese politics than in American politics. There is far more difference, for example, between Koizumi's faction and Hashimoto's faction in the LDP than there is between the American Republican and Democratic parties.

And the LDP has at least four major factions. Even if the LDP were the only party there still would be a broader range of opinion in Japan than there currently is in the United States.

~ Clancy Dalebout

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