Newsletter No. 228
April 5, 2006

 

IRAQ ROUND-UP: THINGS THAT HAPPENED AND THINGS THAT DIDN’T

More than a month ago news reports suggested that Japan would begin withdrawing the GSDF from Samawa between March and May. Prime Minister Koizumi was expected to make a formal announcement on this matter around the end of March. Well… in a story that I’m getting tired of writing about (and perhaps you are getting tired of reading about), it seems that the Samawa pullout has been delayed -- again.

The reason? Because “we can't make definite decisions on withdrawal until the security and political situation becomes clearer,” according to some recent comments by Foreign Minister Aso. Frankly, I don’t understand that logic. The fact that Iraq has entered a period of low-intensity civil war would seem to me to be a perfect argument for getting the GSDF out of Samawa. Theoretically, they are a “non-combat” force, and they have neither the political nor military weight to change the Iraqi domestic political outcome at all. Why on earth would political instability in Iraq be an argument for keeping them there in that exposed position?

Anyway, logical or not, that is the current policy it seems. There’s now no word at all on when the GSDF mission will actually pull out.

A related issue to the pullout of the GSDF mission is Tokyo’s attraction to joining a new strategic coalition in Asia that some Hawks now hope will create a common front against China and “terrorism.” One of the leaders of this movement on the Japan side appears to be Shinzo Abe, the frontrunner to succeed Koizumi as prime minister this year. According to a Reuters report, Abe has just declared, “We [Japan and China] do not share fundamental values about freedom and human rights.” He then went on to say that, “Japan should work closely with the United States, India and Australia because they share common values with Japan about democracy, freedom and human rights.”

Oh! Democracy, freedom, and human rights! Those shared values! He must have been thinking about warrantless surveillance, fingerprinting foreigners, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and the ignoring of domestic public opinion!

Be that as it may, this political and military alignment of Japan with Australia, India, and the United States does appear to be taking shape. The new alignment -- according to Professor Purnendra Jain of Adelaide University -- has already been dubbed the “Little NATO” by some Chinese commentators. Last month’s “Trilateral Security Dialogue” between Condoleezza Rice, Alexander Downer, and Taro Aso in Sydney, and the U.S.-India nuclear agreement, seem to lend some substance to his analysis.

For the GSDF mission in Iraq, the immediate significance is that Tokyo now wants to coordinate everything with Canberra before any major actions are taken. That may be the most important reason that the pullout has been delayed.

There are a few smaller developments that should be mentioned in this round-up.

Of some interest is a Kyodo News report a month ago that said that Japan may use the services of Halliburton-subsidiary KBR to help them dismantle their Samawa fortress when the GSDF finally does pull out. Halliburton, of course, is the company that was run by CEO Dick Cheney from 1995-2000, and has been noted for their creative accounting practices in Iraq and elsewhere.

More substantial is the news that Tokyo has decided to earmark US$655 million as the first loans to Iraq since 1985. The money is supposed to be used for irrigation, power stations, and the rebuilding of port facilities at Umm Qasr. However, the signing of the final agreement must await the formation of a new Iraqi government.

On the lighter side, it was announced about a month ago that Japan would soon be sending an Arabic-language version of the anime series “Captain Tsubasa” to Iraq to help promote Japan-Iraq friendship. Last year, the drama “Oshin” was shipped off to Iraq.

Finally, the Asahi reported at the end of March that Japanese bureaucrats are already trying to make sure that the history of Japan’s mission in Japan is presented to the next generation in a sanitized manner that contradicts even known facts, in favor of the government’s official line:

“Screeners also urged publishers to change passages that described the U.S.-led war in Iraq as a ‘pre-emptive strike.’ Officials said that wording would mean an invasion banned by international law. They added Koizumi had told the Diet the action did not amount to such a strike. They also rejected phrases describing the Self-Defense Forces' presence in Iraq as ‘logistic support’ or ‘participation in the multinational force,’ editors said. These are misleading, editors said they were told. Screeners told editors to state the SDF was in Iraq only on a mission of ‘humanitarian reconstruction support’.”

It seems that another of the “shared values” of “democracy, freedom and human rights” is that too much truth must never be written in a school textbook, and that the young must be lied to with more consistency than before.