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Velvet Imperialists
I'm not a big fan of Dana Rohrabacher, the grandstanding Republican congressman from California. But last week at a congressional hearing on U.S.-Japan relations, he ably cut through the Pentagon's doublespeak.
The hearing's topic was the current conflict between Washington and Tokyo over the military bases on the Japanese island of Okinawa. The United States wants to close the aging Futenma air base, send half the Marines over to Guam, and build a replacement facility in a less populated part of the island. Most Okinawans don't want a new base or an old base expanded to accommodate the remaining Marines from Futenma. The Japanese government hasn't decided whether to listen to Washington or to its own constituents.
Rohrabacher had a simple question for the Pentagon official at the hearing. "How many U.S. military personnel do we have in Japan?" he asked. Looking very uncomfortable, the official said that he would have to get back to the congressman with those figures.
Excuse me? The congressman wasn't asking about the location of Osama bin Laden or the Pentagon's covert plan for Helmand province. The number of U.S. troops in Japan - approximately 47,000 - is no state secret. In response, Rohrabacher quite sensibly pointed out that it's impossible to make a case for a new base unless we have a clear sense of our capabilities and our needs.
Rohrabacher, of course, was attempting to ride his hobby horse - the China menace - to the finish line. He tried to goad the Pentagon official into stating that China was a threat, but to no avail. The United States is happy that Japan is strengthening its relations with countries in the region, the official said, and China poses certain "challenges" but isn't a "threat."
Well, all of that is useful to know. The official's statement is perfectly consistent with the latest Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), in which the Pentagon pointedly failed to identify China as the only threat on the horizon that could dethrone the current king of the hill (a major feature of the previous QDR).
But if China's no threat and the Cold War has been over for a couple decades, chairman of the Asia-Pacific subcommittee Eni Faleomavaega (D-American Samoa) asked, why does the United States need so many troops stationed in Japan? Faleomavaega also wanted to know why the United States has to maintain over 700 bases around the world and tops the list of global arms exporters.
The Pentagon official couldn't satisfy either Rohrabacher's anti-China tirade or Faleomavaega's probing questions about the U.S. empire of bases. And that's precisely the problem with the Obama administration's Pacific policy. We are trying to maintain the exact same force posture as previous administrations but at the same time emphasizing our new commitment to multilateralism and our new status as a "global partner." It's like Arnold Schwarzenegger going from Terminator to Kindergarten Cop in the space of a year: Audiences above the age of seven are just not convinced.
Most recently, the Pentagon quietly announced that it will not build anything on Okinawa without the approval of the host community. That might make base relocation on the island a little difficult. After all, the prefectural government has come out against any new bases (or base expansions). So have the mayors of the affected communities. And according to a June 2009 opinion poll, 68 percent of Okinawans oppose relocating the Futenma base within the prefecture.
And it's not as if the people of Guam - where 8,000 of the U.S. Marines from Futenma are slated to relocate - are overjoyed at the expansion of their own base. "They are angry about a major military buildup here, which the government of Guam and many residents say is being grossly underfunded," writes Blaine Harden in The Washington Post. "They fear that the construction of a new Marine Corps base will overwhelm the island's already inadequate water and sewage systems, as well as its port, power grid, hospital, highways and social services."
If the Obama administration is truly committed to gaining the approval of host communities, it might soon find itself without any hosts at all. Here's the bottom line: It's not easy to run an empire with velvet gloves. A proper imperialist would have given the thumbs up to Rohrabacher and squelched Faleomavaega's impertinence. A good old-fashioned hawk would never talk about gaining the consent of a host community. At the same time, velvet imperialists who revel in touchy-feely values of mutuality and good governance are no good at dismantling empires. They're afraid of appearing weak. They speak of the need to "maintain stability" in an anarchic world. And they love to talk about how military bases are necessary for responding to humanitarian disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes.
In other words, don't expect the Obama administration to pull a Gorbachev and begin to unravel the U.S. empire of bases. Look instead for an insider who knows the system, as Gorbachev did, to pull the plug. If some future administration chooses Andrew Bacevich as secretary of defense - the Boston University professor served in Vietnam and rose to the rank of colonel - we might actually see Pentagon reform we can believe in.
In the meantime, where should the Marines of Futenma relocate? I vote for Washington, DC. Marines deployed outside the U.S. Capitol could promote democracy by protecting lawmakers who support health care legislation from the wrath of tea party crazies. And if the Pentagon's so keen on rebuilding cities, parts of the District certainly qualify. If the prospect of having U.S. Marines involved in promoting democracy, maintaining stability, and responding to humanitarian crises at home makes you squeamish, you can begin to understand how the Okinawans might feel.
For more information on our campaign to reduce the U.S. military footprint on Okinawa, visit our new website. And consider contributing a few dollars to help us spread the word with ads in major media.
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16 Comments so far
Show AllNot once in this article does Mr. Feffer address the issue of U.S. Marines raping women and girls in the community. In Guam, and Okinawa as well, this is one of the issues about which the citizens are concerned!
David Brancaccio, and NOW on PBS, addressed this issue on December 11, 2009. If you haven't already watched this show, it's worth the time! In addition, they address the issues relating to the island's infrastructure.
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/550/
And, Mr. Feffer's solution is to bring the Marines home and station them in Washington, D.C.? Do we really need the Marines on the streets of our cities? Is the author being facetious? Here in NYC, I see cops, from time to time, bearing more arms than what I think are necessary -- including machine guns. Every time this scene presents itself to me, I experience a serious sense of dé·jà vu -- Kent State comes to mind.
"And, Mr. Feffer's solution is to bring the Marines home and station them in Washington, D.C.? Do we really need the Marines on the streets of our cities? Is the author being facetious?"
You may have just made his point. The people in countries we currently have bases in feel just as uncomfortable as you seem to be about having troops in your neighborhood.
"If the army and the navy, ever look on heaven's scenes,
They will find the streets are guarded, by United States Marines"
http://www.contemplator.com/america/marine.html
Heaven for a marine, might be guarding the streets. Imagine that ;)
I've written other articles on Okinawa that discuss the rape cases (http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/05-6)
And if you read the final sentence of this article, you'll get the answer to your last question: "If the prospect of having U.S. Marines involved in promoting democracy, maintaining stability, and responding to humanitarian crises at home makes you squeamish, you can begin to understand how the Okinawans might feel."
Thanks, Mr. Feffer, for your direct reply to my concerns! I really appreciate the fact that you took the time to point out that I missed something. I do regularly read articles on CD, and I offer responses. However, I will admit that I am not familiar with your writing.
I wonder if you gave this offer to US armed forces personnel, how many would take advantage:
1. Keep your current commitment, but you can work stateside in a non-military position, same pay, benefits and training.
2. Increase educational opportunity - a new 'GI' bill.
I would guess enough to cut the military personnel by 2/3 at least. That would be the start of reducing the entire military to 2/3 of it's current size and budget. Close 3/4 of overseas bases. This would be great, but I would not expect it to happen in the US for a few generations from now, at best.
Nobody is going to say out loud the real reason we keep troops in Japan.
We don't want Japan to militarize and become a new threat. In order to keep them from having a strong military we need to continue to provide their defense. Therefore we need troops in Japan to be ready to do so. Of course 47,000 aren't enough to defend Japan if it was attacked, but they are enough to get us into the fight and assure we send more troops.
The next question might be, who might actually attack Japan? North Korea. Koreans still hate Japan and the poor northern state might see an undefended and rich Japan as too tempting. (Well, this is the fear anyway.)
Of course there wouldn't be an undefended Japan. The militaristic culture of Japan has been repressed for 65 years, but it would come roaring back almost instantly. Our fear is that such a Japan wouldn't just want to be secure, but would want to expand.
But how can we actually say out loud that we fear and don't trust one of our closest allies?
This is merely illustrative of the bi-partisan (rather UNI-PARTISAN meaning NON-PARTISAN meaning the PARTISAN crapola is all sideshow) nature on the American Imperial Slaughterhouse.
The Death Toll Of The Democrats Is Quite Large
The Liberal Holocaust
Imperialism and the Democratic Party
Many people involved in US anti-war movement(s) have this naive belief that Democrats are not imperialists, that US imperialist policies, such as those pursued by the Bush administration, are just a recent deviation or limited to Republican administrations. In fact, the Democratic Party has a long and bloody history of imperialism. Democrats are imperialists and mass murderers. Nor is this limited to the more conservative democrats; left-liberals have done the same. Liberal governments have slaughtered millions.
...
Carter, the so-called "human rights" president, was also an imperialist warmonger. He continued US support for brutal tyrants in Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, etc. Carter supported Pol Pot's forces after they were thrown out of power due to a war with Vietnam. Under Ford Indonesia invaded East Timor and proceeded to slaughter 200,000 people. Although this invasion occurred under Ford, the worst atrocities happened under Carter's reign. As atrocities increased, he increased the flow of weapons to the Indonesian government, insuring they wouldn't run out and could continue massacring Timorese. Carter also backed the massacre in Kwangju by the South Korean military dictatorship. Many of the things which liberals like to blame Reagan for were actually started under Carter. Deregulation began under Carter, as did US support for the Contras in Nicaragua. Six months before the Soviets invaded he also initiated US support for the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists/"freedom fighters" in Afghanistan which would later include Bin Laden.
Bill Clinton was a mass murderer and war criminal, too. He backed numerous dictatorships, continued the proxy war against Marxist guerillas in Columbia and bombed more countries than any other peacetime president, including Iraq, Yugoslavia, Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan.
Clinton laid siege to Iraq with sanctions, "no fly zones" and bombings, killing 1.5 to 3 million people. UN-approved sanctions on Iraq were originally imposed at the start of the Gulf War in response to the invasion of Kuwait, but continued after the end of the war at US (and UK) insistence.
Clinton attacked and dismembered Yugoslavia, using a "divide and conquer" strategy to install US/NATO puppet governments ruling over its corpse. During and after World War Two Yugoslavia underwent its own Leninist revolution, independent of Soviet tanks, and eventually evolved a market socialist economy based on a limited form of worker self-management. Most of the economy was run by enterprises that were officially worker owned, with elected managers, and sold their products on the market. Yugoslavia was a federation of different nationalities in southeastern Europe, with six different republics united under a federal government.
The death toll of the democrats is quite large:
Greek Civil War: 160,000 (Truman)
Korean War: 3 million (Truman)
Assault on Indochina: 5 million (started under Truman, accelerated under Kennedy & LBJ)
Coup in Indonesia: 1 million (LBJ)
East Timor: 100,000 (Carter)
Kwangju Massacre: 2000 (Carter)
Argentine Dirty War: 30,000 (mostly Carter)
Iraq sanctions: 1.5 million (mostly Clinton)
Turkish Kurdistan: 40,000 (mostly Clinton)
...
http://www.questionwar.com/liberalholocaust.html
Carter and Clinton are only liberals in comparison with the ultra conservative ruling oligarchs. They would have been conservatives in social democracies of Scandinavia.
Regardless of the wrongs or rights of Clinton's dismembering of Yugoslavia, you really aren't doing a good job of indicting Clinton on Yugoslavia when you deliberately omit so many details to fit your narrative.
Not to worry. If you want to get into the hoary details of Clinton and his voluminous war crimes in Yugoslavia I can get into them all night long if you'd like. Of course this goes way beyond Clinton he was just the errand boy.
There were no "rights" and I don't call wholesale slaughter "wrongs" as that diminishes the suffering.
"Velvet imperialists who revel in touchy-feely values of mutuality and good governance are no good at dismantling empires. They're afraid of appearing weak.... In other words, don't expect the Obama administration to pull a Gorbachev and begin to unravel the US empire of bases. Look instead for an insider who knows the system, like Gorbachev did, to pull the plug."
Afraid of appearing weak in whose eyes - partisan domestic hawks, potential international adversaries, or both?
I'm not saying I disagree with John Feffer's analysis (and I wholeheartedly agree that Andrew Bachevich would make an outstanding Secretary of Defense). Maybe I'm just sort of floundering around looking for historical examples of other empires, at other times, in which some political insider analogous to Gorbachev came along and actually did a "good" dismantling job. The post-Churchill Labor government of Great Britain? DeGaulle eventually extracting the French from Algeria?
Anyway, I suppose this is an opportune time for an abject confession of error.
I for one publicly cut President Barack Obama a huge amount of slack early on for his catastrophic personnel decision to keep Robert Gates in the new cabinet as Secretary of Defense. I thought Obama was being bipartisan crazy like a fox.
Who better (I actually reasoned and argued) to gracefully and faithfully execute a new president's policy directive to not only end the occupation of Iraq, but also reverse course and withdraw from Afghanistan as well? I figured a lifelong Republican and career CIA professional who had been brought back from academe into public office by George W. Bush would provide institutional continuity and much-needed partisan cover to effectuate change, sort of like Rahm Emanuel and Joe Lieberman would be good to have on board to run interference and help modify US relations with Israel.
Well, I sure blew those prognostications. Mea maxima culpa.
Relying upon "insiders who know the system" to do the right thing and dramatically reform or dismantle an empire from within may well be the way, but first there has to be the will.
Bill from Saginaw
thanks.. "I sure blew those prognostications" - you weren't the only one.. I seem to remember some spin about 'team of rivals'..
VERY GOOD COMMENTS BillfromSaginaw.
and Feffer writes a good article, especially for focusing on the "velvet" empire - which to most americans is the convenient way to "clear" conscience that the USA "doesn't do evil things" ....which of course == that PERCEPTION lays the foundation and provides the atmosphere for TOLERATING what americans Deep down KNOW IS an empire that DOES evil things.
this is important, imo, because it is what allows americans of every generation to wrap themselves with a "security blanket" of careful ignorance...(Which doesn't admit that it is, otherwise the confrontation with Truth will HAVE to be followed) ....
i had occasion just yesterday to TEST this very theory with some folks -- and i was correct, i got the EXPECTED reactions to my comments bearing witness to how americans , even those critical of "how things are going" who would otherwise be seen as "tolerant", "openminded". etc , have EXACTLY what an american poet described whom I do not recall the name of:
"WE AMERICANS -- carefully nurture an attitude of detached indifference to the suffering of others.......EVEN IF WE are the cause of it".
50 years from now this web site will have articles in it talking about velvet imperialism in Iraq and Afganistan. We're going to still be occupying those countries 50 years from now just like the US has been occupying Japan and Korea for the past 50 years. And people 50 years from now will be asking why are we still in Iraq and Afganistan.