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US Warns Japan over Relocation of Futenma Airbase
Hillary Clinton says Tokyo must honour 2006 agreement as tension over US military role in region grows
The US yesterday told Japan the planned relocation of a US marine airbase and thousands of troops based on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa was not up for negotiation in a further sign of growing tensions over the future of the US military footprint in east Asia.
The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has told Japan it must honour an agreement reached in 2006. (Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images) Reports said the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, told the Japanese ambassador to Washington, Ichiro Fujisaki, that Japan must honour a 2006 agreement to move the Futenma airbase - located in a crowded city on Okinawa - to the island's remote east coast.
Fujisaki told reporters the discussion had centred on "the importance of US-Japan" ties, but Clinton reportedly made it clear that the US expected "swift implementation" of the existing accord.
Last week, the Japanese prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, said he needed more time to determine the base's future following electoral promises to lessen the Japanese dependence on US foreign policy.
The original $10.3bn (£6.4bn) relocation plan would also see the transfer of 8,000 marines and their families to the US Pacific territory of Guam by 2014.
Discussions about the relocation began well over a decade ago amid mounting opposition to the US military presence on Okinawa, which hosts more than half the 47,000 US troops in Japan.
The bases are routinely blamed for noise and air pollution, and residents live with the threat of a catastrophic accident.
Although serious crimes are relatively uncommon, attitudes changed after three US servicemen were convicted of raping a 12-year-old Okinawan girl in 1995.
The Japanese defence minister, Toshimi Kitazawa, said Tokyo had set itself a May 2010 deadline to decide the base's future, but added that he hoped an agreement would be reached sooner.
Japan's decision to postpone a decision has been met with an exasperated reaction by US military officials.
Last week, General James Conway, the commandant of the US marine corps, said the delay was "unfortunate", adding, "The Futenma replacement facility is absolutely vital to the defence that we provide for the entire region."
Hatoyama's indecision is also harming his popularity at home, about six months before upper house elections that could give his Democratic party of Japan control of both houses of parliament.
In a poll published by the Mainichi newspaper yesterday, 68% of respondents said they were concerned about ties with the US.
The Futenma debacle and Hatoyama's handling of the economy saw his cabinet's approval rating slide to 55%, down 9% from last month, the poll revealed.
Almost four months after his party swept to power in a landslide election victory, Hatoyama appears no closer to reaching a decision on Futenma.
He could choose to honour the original agreement, but the delay suggests he is more sympathetic to moving the base to another part of Japan.
The social democratic party, a junior partner in Hatoyama's coalition government, supports moving the base out of Japan and has threatened to leave the coalition if the existing accord is implemented.
Barack Obama's irritation was evident earlier this month when the US president snubbed an offer from Hatoyama to explain his thinking on Futenma's future on the sidelines of the climate change summit in Copenhagen.
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29 Comments so far
Show AllYeah! Don't you Asians know who runs the world?!
UHHGG! This woman. Uglier than Madaline Albright. Meaner than Leona Helmsley. More arrogant than Paris Hilton. Feeding this lady is an incredible waste of food.
We're not only down the rabbit hole, behind the looking glass, and in 1984, we're also in Oz where we find our own main characters with no heart, no courage, and no brain - and the Wicked Witch of the West.
Arrogence by that marine general and his rant about the "defence" of the region by the usa is double speak for what has been an occupation force since ww2.Tony
Apparently Japan has wore off its grave apprehension of our all-mighty power,
as displayed when 220,000 were instantly vaporized in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
So 3,000 nukes is not enough, should we up it to 4,000?
The problem when people like General Conway ( what an appropiate name for a General of the MIC; con way) is that when they mention defense they never tell the truth about whom they are defending!
exactly.
the funny thing is :
NO ONE in the world needs American "Defense" = since it's FAR from being a "defense" -- but actually an OFFENSIVE IMPERIAL project.
ALWAYS more the problem than being ANY solution AT ALL.
Yeah, you can imagine the shudder in fear when the U.S. military shows up in a foreign country and tells the locals: "We are here to defend your country!We are here to bring you freedom and democracy"!
What the USA often proclaims as "defense" of "peace and freedom" is really of course EMPIRE and Dominance and Exploitation.
"defending" Asia? japan? from what, from whom?
the only one that had to be defended against. when all is said and done -- is to defend Asia FROM the USA. PERIOD.
it is the USA's MEDDLING in the affairs of Japan at the turn of the last century , its economic and trade blockades of japan that precipitated japan's becoming mainly a Militaristic nation that seeked "exit points" to enter into china and other asian countries when the USA and western powers choked off Japan for not bowing to Western and USA dictates. the consequence:
what was a quarrel between china and japan before world war 2 MORPHED into the second world war.
the imperialism of japan INTO a weakened china before world war 2 was ITSELF a result of US and Western power led Connivance AGAINST china - and which included JAPAN in order to divide china into "spheres of influence" , and the left-over result was that japan - still having the backing of the USA and other wester imperialists became arrogant enough to start a war with the WEAKENED china...and THAT was the one that morphed into world war 2 in the pacific region.
IN EACH OF THOSE instances - the USA meddling and imperial hand is the COMMON factor.
asia needs ONE thing and one thing only in DEFENSE and that is
defense FROM the USA imperialist.
Wow, when push comes to shove, the Japanese are still to be treated like little children. Time to grow up folks and stop infantilizing yourselves. I agree, show some pride and kick the SOBs of the island. It's amazing that the US can get away with this kind of behavior to one of its closest allies.
actually it just reveals that = as you say , when push comes to shove...and any nation actually stands up to the USA - the
"glove" comes off from its facade of "democracy, freedom, liberty"
and what comes out is just what General Smedley Butler revealed in 1933:
a "NATION OF WAR AND MONEY RACKETEERS AND GANGSTERS for CAPITALISM".
what comes out is - 80 years later - what the Former CIA "economic hitman" John Perkins , CONTINUES from what Butler defined with:
"what most americans don't understand or admit is that we are living our lifestyle only because it is merely a PART of a VERY , VERY VICIOUS system of exploitation that Dehumanizes and Enslaves People Everywhere".
so of course HIllary and her generals are now THREATENING japan.
just as they would try to THREATEN russia or china or some poor small, weak, defenseless country that doesn't exactly bow to the USA Chamber of Commerce, the Pentagon, the Congressional/Industrial/Corporate Complex ...
ALL BOUND under ONE FLAG -- US IMPERIALISM.
Yep. The US Empire is using its' Soprano tactics. Those mafia tactics always work until they don't. They don't work when the marks get protection from another "family".
The asian family is incredibly patient. In an all out war the combined might of Asia with South America against the nordic countries would leave a European and Noth American graveyard. Even if we nuked all of asia and South America, the populations of these areas would recover. We would not because we are too fat, comfortable and unused to hardship and deprivation. Morons like Obama and Clinton don't get it. The mafia type always grandstands to the end. Peace is not an option for a barbarian, warlike country like the USA. It never was and it never will be. Don't expect rational behavior from mafia goons. They prefer to rein in hell than serve in heaven.
I guess if it really came down to that -- say things were so provoked , regardless of where it comes from and it's NOT just the USA that can be guilty of this, let us at least be fair..
but if it came down to a "battle of civilizations" between east and west....it is probably clear that despite the technological advancement and economic advancement...with war devastating even THOSE advances (such as europe losing the "pride" of her historical cities and beautiful achievements...even more so than her economic might..or the USA practically losing access and continuity to the source of HER great army's FUEL. plus all the logistical problems of shipping and flying soldiers and armies and ordnance and equipment and their maintainance globally - or even just against the asian landmass)
it is the USA that will lose in the end.
if it came down to sheer NUMBERS ...
as Mao Zedong once said about a shooting war between the USA and CHINA (and that was when china was economically a bASKET CASE with FAR less advanced military ability and VERY FEW allies or "vested interests" and counter investments with other countries, even EXCLUDING europe and the USA) ....
:
"WE CAN AFFORD to lose 300 Million people....can the United States afford to lose as much?"
I often predicted to friends long ago - that one day JAPAN will HAVE to CHOOSE where her best future lies: she will HAVE to choose whether she is a "western nation" OR ASIAN.
despite HER own imperialism in the past towards her neighbor asian neighbors the day will come when , i thought, china's "dragon" would wake up, and there is NO ALTERNATIVE for other asian countries that have long been QUITE "sino" in deep parts of their cultures - LONG before any westerners ever even DREAMED of the EAST -
and that if japan wanted to be at the very least PERCEIVED as a "neighbor" willing to continue to be part of a regional ascendance - she would HAVE to choose, so LONG as the USA and the WEST maintain their ideas of concepts of being the world's "rulers" or definers of "order"....which is, as we can see, after a MERE 200 hundred years of ascendance -- is now COLLAPSING.
i have always said that historically - ASIA was ALWAYS the center of global power and civilization...and that the 200 hundred years or so of "western" ascendance, led up to this day by the USA - would prove to be an ABERRATION in the long line of history since humankind developed a civilization.
and the present "power shift" is merely a coming back to the HISTORICAL "order" of things.
the USA thinks it can maintain its dominance forever.
but as an ancient indian saying went to a British imperialist scoffing at the backwardness of "asia"...
"WE were HERE LONG BEFORE You were even TRIBES in the west....we shall still be here long after your EMPIRES are NO MORE".
and one might add; where it comes to the USA....
DESPITE the USA"s THREATS.
Take note of this :
a very important development INSIDE china is something that JAPAN will have to consider VERY VERY seriously for ITS own future as a leading economy that WILL be dependent on her asian neighbors...
and that is:
because of the spectacular success of China's region near beijing of technological, computer industrial advances....china is now DOUBLING that area's eminence - B U T - this time - with EMPHASIS on "renewable energy, non-pollution energy consumption"...
JAPAN's technology will FIND THAT a VERY VERY critical market and future cooperation area.
what has the USA to OFFER in contrast? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING of lasting benefit to japan or china or asia.
China can not be stopped from becoming, by 2020 - at the LATEST - the world's prime economy and POWER -- and as Pepe Escobar in asiatimesonline points out:
"WITHOUT HAVING TO BECOME A MILITARY SUPERPOWER like the USA".
is the USA going to DARE try to challenge china in its rise? CHINA simply isn't GOING to PERMIT IT.
that is all Hillary Clinton and her generals have to think about - if they are wise....as
"CHINA will CONTINUE to PERMIT THE USA TO DEPLETE HERSELF with her WARS and ECONOMIC SYSTEM". (pepe escobar).
and if the USA tries to MEDDLE in that by trying to constrain china and BY EXTENSION her NUMEROUS ASIAN NEIGHBORS - who have ALL felt the iron hand of the USA in destroying their economies for generations -
guess who REALLY is going to WIN in a real war? Japan's FUTURE lies with her BEING asian. PERIOD.
she will , ultimately , CHOOSE the only choice she can make:
TO BE asian, as she always has been...and not some COPYCAT wanna be "westerner" in the mold of the USA which is itself
a MERE child in the history of civilizations - and YET has CAUSED so much DAMAGE and HARM and DESTRUCTION all over the globe .
DOES THE USA REALLY think, do HILLARY and her pentagon and congress REALLY think asians are THAT STUPID? or the rest of the world for that matter?
they are laughable in their delusions of grandeur.
as SIGMUND FREUD said upon visiting the USA:
"AMERICA is an ACCIDENT ...a Monstrous, disastrous accident".
I'm not reading your comments b/c your use of caps and new lines is ridiculous. Stop screaming please.
To Teddy: excellent points about Japan!
Japan must throw off the yoke of U.S. imperialism. This is absolutely crucial for Japan and for the rest of the world.
For the abusive treatment of the Okinawans by the U.S. military, see chapter 2 of Chalmers Johnson's "Blowback", entitled "Okinawa: Asia's Last Colony," as well as chapter 8, "Japan and the Economics of the American Empire."
at least for the ensuing decade -- another reason, imo, that japan will have to "get close" with china and the rest of asia (if for nothing else than to ward off suspicions due to its own imperial past in world war 2...as well as the development of other asian nations that will be a big market for japan..)
is that - energywise-- since it will take another ten years for renewable, solar-wind power energy to become more widespread - and in which china is already the leading country with plans to increase it even more as a "green technology" country ....
in the MEANTIME - china is gobbling up and locking in gas and oil energy just about everywhere it can. which ALSO means that as china's own solar and wind power and other renewable and less polluting energy comes to maturity -- whatever remains of OIL and other fossil fuels - will be reserved for other higher-end purposes in technology and science...ALL of it LOCKED into china's coffers or contracts with nations...achieving china's intentions to be the foremost "clean energy" nation - while ridding itself of "energy dependence" on fossil fuels.
and in this meantime - japan which still needs fossil fuels as much as china or usa or europe and others - will be looking at a great portion of that available fossil fuel energy
coursing THROUGH PIPELINES controlled by China ...many of which are already in operation and others about to come online - especially going through NON-ARAB nations such as the various "istans" of central asia - straight across china all the way to China's EASTERN seaboard facing japan
which MAKES logistical sense for japan - to "buy" FROM china.
what has the USA to offer to compete with THAT prospect?
only one thing:
WAR to GET OIL and GAS.
why would japan SPEND on more WAR joining the USA for gas and oil, in the "meantime" , that it can buy through china's infrastructure already built or being built or just opened
from turkmenistan, kazakhstan (which itself is as large, landwise, as Europe)...
and where kazakhstan has just signed an agreement with china because china is offering what the WEST has NEVER offered for its oil (unsurprisingly enough) ....
not just loans for gas, or paying more for its gas than what china pays the saudis for oil, but above all..."DEVELOPMENT" as the kazakh president said today :
"CHINA is willing to help us DEVELOP...so we say to OTHER foreigners -- they can not have our mineral resources while leaving us with nothing". ?
there are already tensions, BETWEEN china and Kazakhstan's opposition parties that are more pro-western ...apparently..but what HAS the USA and what HAS europe really offered in their parts? they have shown that kazakstan and other cnetral asian countries are just "sources of energy" and treated them as inferiors ..and whatever china's SELF INTERESTS are , whcih are to be expected, it certainly is reported to have finessed the deals with these central asian nations
for their energy - and offered acceptable returns - such as development and, as the kazakh president says:
"HELPING US in DIVERSIFYING our economy"...
and all that without firing a single shot or dropping a bomb....
"the US president snubbed an offer" good job Obama, such a diplomat.. (if this story is true)
Right on, Teddy, I could not have said it better myself... The USA has been an imperial country since 1898, when we fought imperial Spain and took over their colonies of Cuba and The Philippines. Some 200,000 Filipinos died resisting US aggression until we established our colonial rule, which latest into the 1940s, when the Japanese Imperialists invaded and occupied for several years.
We have a long sorry record of imperially intervening in third world countries. It is time to end this misery. US out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Stop US bombing of Pakistan and Yemen.
Every Christmas season, we sing of "peace on earth." Let's try living it for once...
I only learned much later while growing up that there were STILL some noble americans -- such as Mark Twain - who tried their best to let it be known about what the USA had done in the philippines. I think MARK TWAIN was so horrified by what was going on: filipinos were being massacred...a commander even answering his soldier on instructions:
"burn the whole village..kill anyone above ten years old"..and that americans considered their behavior to be "human war"...
that Mark Twain wrote a lot in his newsletter about the atrocities.
I know from philippine history that there was a regiment of Black American Soldiers ...and when they saw what they were being asked to do ...they went "AWOL" or revolted...especially when little children confronted them...and a quote said:
a little boy went up to a black soldier and asked:
"WHY are you doing this to us? do you not see we are dark and brown like you? why do you do to us what the white people do to you in america"?
Jeevee
Who do we imagine we are??
I'd post something. But I tried that earlier. The pseudo-progressives constrain the discourse so only opinions approved by the command class are viewable.
Most people commenting here seem to have got the pointless point of American diplomacy; Send Ma Baker Clinton, with her shotgun and let her Bitch Slap a Japanese PM into shaping up and “honouring their treaty”.
There is a lot more behind this than meets the eye. The main point which perhaps many readers not so familiar with Japan may have missed is that the Liberal Democrats who ruled unbroken in Japanese government for the last 50 years were routed by the Democratic Party of Hatoyama. It is a whole new ball game now.
There was a secret agreement since the 60s between the succeeding LDP governments and the US to turn a blind eye to the anti-nuclear constitution which prohibits any nuclear weapons in Japanese territory. They the LDP allowed to run matters on the basis of “don’t ask, don’t tell”, thereby letting the US flaunt the Japanese law.
The US must get used to the idea that this new government is in fact winding down the long standing defence arrangements in order to become “closer” to its own Asian neighbours, principally China. Irrespective of any real or perceived threat from Pyongyang, Japan cannot adjust properly its present and historical relation with China to future needs while acting as an enormous land based aircraft carrier and doormat for the US.
As the article said “Hatoyama's coalition government, supports moving the base out of Japan”, not just this base but many more.
Another point that many Americans do not necessarily fathom is that Japan under the present Status of Forces Agreement is paying very much more than the original 27% of the costs of having US forces in Japan. The escalation since the 60s was a way of overlooking an uncomfortable balance of payments deficit but it is now supposed to include building new bases in Guam for the Marines that are to be relocated. America is not in a position to demand anything. It’s a question of cost, unlike America, in Japan the “new” government has to be responsible for the budget.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/perspectives/news/20091127p2a00m0na007000c.html
a personal experience :
I once met and spoke with a World War 2 veteran in the pacific theatre of the war. he was then in his 80's but very clear , hale and a wonderful person with a very dignified character...quiet, soft-spoken and humble.
what i recall him saying to me was:
"i was in the philippines, and fought in the southern part to defeat the japanese who held the main city in the south...davao...(davao is important in the sense of not just being a major philippine city - but for having what could be called an IDEAL naval location, with a very large, very , very deep ocean front water that looks south to australia) "
he was captured there and sent to a japanese ship and to japan and there was put in forced labor until their liberation after japan was defeated.
after the war - he went on with his schooling...to continue his army profession which was engineering in aircraft...then he was asked to go back to japan to become an INSTRUCTOR to the japanese in technology in order to help rebuild japan.
but he told me:
"I ALWAYS wondered, until TODAY, why...it was your country , the philippines that was invaded and enslaved by japan , and your people died along with US americans to defeat the japanese and your people suffered so much from this war...and YET the USA ...my country heaped money on japan to rebuild her...while neglecting or giving back so little to the philippines..and for this..proud as I am to have served in the war...i am ashamed of that part...of how my country treated your country".
i just listened and said nothing...because i knew he was sincere.
even his son told me "my dad never told me about these things".
Mc Curry writes:
"Although serious crimes are relatively uncommon, attitudes changed after three US servicemen were convicted of raping a 12-year-old Okinawan girl in 1995."
Contrast that with the following passage from Chalmers Johnson's book "Blowback":
"According to the conservative Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun, which studied bookings at the Okinawan Prefectural Police Headquarters, U.S. servicemen were implicated in 4,716 crimes between 1972 and 1995 -- just under a crime a day during the period of General Myers's command.
Of course, most of these criminal acts were not sexual assaults. Russell Carollo and a team of reporters from the Dayton Daily News went through one hundred thousand court-martial records going back to 1988 to find out how many servicemen had been brought before military courts charged with rape and how they had been treated. They discovered that since 1988, navy and marine bases in Japan have had 169 courts-martial for sexual assaults, the highest number of all U.S. bases worldwide, 66 percent more cases than at the number-two location, San Diego, which has more than twice the personnel. Since the navy has a large Okinawa base at White Beach and another contingent at Kadena and the marines have twenty different bases spread all over the island, 'Japan' here essentially meant Okinawa. As getting information on courts-martial required months of filing Freedom of Information Act requests, and the army released its records only after being sued by the Dayton Daily News, the statistics cited in their stories of October 1-5, 1995, do not even include army figures.
While the incidence of reported rape in the United States is forty-one for every one hundred thousand people, at the military bases in Okinawa it is eighty-two per one hundred thousand. And that, of course, is counting only reported rapes." (pp. 41-42)
When it comes to serving Empire and its abusive ways with the women of other cultures, Hillary Clinton's feminism evaporates into thin air.
Hillary Clinton is an afront to real women everywhere
I guess with THAT record - double the US national rate of rapes - with american servicement and their gung-ho "we are the empire" attitude - the rest of the world CAN be justificed in stereotyping americans :
"THEY ARE RAPISTS".
Hell, don't warn! Drop a couple more bombs on them!