Newsletter No. 378
Editorial-Opinion
September 11, 2006

 

FIVE YEARS OF JAPAN AND THE “WAR ON TERRORISM”
By Michael Penn

On the five-year anniversary of the 9.11 attacks in New York and Washington, Japanese, like many others, are reliving the horror of that day through repeated images shown on almost every television channel. Stories are filling the airwaves once again about the victims of that tragic day and the burdens that still haunt the survivors. Although Japan did not suffer as America suffered on September 11, 2001; nevertheless, twenty-four Japanese citizens did perish in the World Trade Center attacks, and they are being remembered around the country.

Very few people deny the terrible tragedy of 9.11. Very few want to show disrespect to the victims and the survivors who are still suffering. But I am not one of those who believe that the proper response to a great tragedy is to suspend criticism, and to remain silent about serious political problems out of concern that some of those sufferers may be offended by criticism. For those who truly believe in democracy and want a better future for this world, there must be a higher loyalty -- a loyalty to the truth; a commitment to facing facts (even the unpalatable ones) in the hope that we can avoid similar tragedies in the future.

On my own report card for America and Japan over the last five years, the grade that has been earned is clear: “F.”

The American reaction to the vicious slaughter of 9.11 was precisely the opposite of what it should have been. Rather than acting coolly and calmly, and reaffirming the qualities of character that once made Americans among the most loved and respected people around the world, we lashed out wildly, and ironically helped the plotters of the 9.11 attacks succeed in much of their global political agenda of polarizing the West from the Islamic world.

At home, professional super-patriots in the media created a political climate of fear in which open criticism was equated with disloyalty. Congress almost completely abdicated its constitutional responsibilities and enabled the Bush Administration to carry out a major expansion of executive power until it almost became a law unto itself. Constitutional guarantees of individual rights were waived aside as a nuisance under the pretext that observing traditional methods would only play into the hands of “the enemy.” There were even secret prisons and cases of official torture worthy of any two-bit dictatorship. In short, the American response to 9.11 at home was to hollow out more than two centuries of democratic tradition. The framers of the US Constitution would have been appalled.

Abroad, the American record was even worse. Rather than focusing its response on the people who actually planned and carried out the attacks on the United States, the Bush Administration self-righteously declared a global “war on terrorism” and professed an intention to confront an “Axis of Evil” that consisted of a grab-bag of diverse countries that were of concern to the administration for one reason or another. By and large, world opinion tolerated the war in Afghanistan, which seemed to be directly linked to the World Trade Center tragedy. But amazingly, even before the destruction of al-Qaida had been fully accomplished, the Bush Administration turned its attention to Saddam Husain’s Iraq which -- as is now almost universally admitted -- had nothing to do with the 9.11 attacks.

The story is familiar, and need not be repeated in detail here, but the point is that America’s response to terror has inadvertently created political conditions in which terrorism is likely to flourish as never before. Rather than “draining the swamp” that supports terrorism, all that the Bush Administration managed to do was to walk itself into a quagmire.

As for Japan, future historians will say that the 9.11 attacks were closer to the beginning of the story than to the end. The full effects of what is happening now in Japan will not entirely manifest themselves for many years.

The prelude was the Persian Gulf War of 1991, in which the Japanese political establishment was surprised to discover that the demands of their American allies were changing quickly in the post-Cold War era. Earlier, the fact that Japan was peaceful in Asia, a good financial contributor to American causes, and an excellent role model for underdeveloped countries, was considered to be a sufficient contribution to the alliance. Suddenly, the Americans were demanding that Japanese soldiers serve shoulder-to-shoulder with American troops wherever duty called around the world. Even massive amounts of money sent to serve the American cause were sneered at as being “checkbook diplomacy.”

Tokyo was therefore well-primed to understand what the Americans would demand after 9.11. Very quickly, a naval mission was sent to the Indian Ocean, and then the GSDF were prepared for a role in Iraq. Washington demanded “boots on the ground,” and Tokyo was eager to supply them to the degree that Japanese public opinion would tolerate.

But the Bush Administration has miscalculated its response toward Japan just as badly as it miscalculated its response toward the Islamic world. In the Levant, the blood is already flowing at a terrible rate. In regard to East Asia, the most serious damage will not occur until long after the Bush Administration itself has passed from the scene.

The Americans somehow forgot what an earlier generation had learned at great cost: Japan is not a “normal nation,” and probably never will be. It is a homogenous, island nation with a long history of suspicion and fear toward the outside world. Japanese society prizes conformity and cooperation, and thus has never captured the full spirit of oppositional politics that characterizes the ideals of Euro-American democracy. Certainly, Japan has remained remarkably peaceful since 1945, but peace is not necessarily the same thing as a healthy, vibrant democracy in which individuals are free to shape their own destinies. In fact, Japan has essentially been ruled by a single political party for fifty years, and this party is set to provide yet another prime minister to lead the nation later this month. How the current generation of American leaders have convinced themselves that a re-militarized Japan would be an eternal, docile supporter of global US policy with no nasty, political side-effects remains a mystery -- unless one assumes that Washington is simply too out-of-touch to understand the realities of the world anymore.

At any rate, even today the miniscule Japanese Left remembers why Article Nine was supported by most Japanese for many decades: It was primarily to protect Japan from itself. In a culture of conformity there need to be strong institutional checks on the authority of the government to prevent the kind of runaway nationalism, militarism, and madness that characterized Imperial Japan in the 1930s.

But the younger generation is too apolitical to even care anymore, and the rise of a rightwing ideologue like Shinzo Abe to the premiership, without even any serious political opposition, is itself eloquent testimony to the enduring weaknesses of the democratic political culture of Japan. The point of no return will soon be crossed -- if it hasn’t been crossed already.

The Bush Administration’s “war on terrorism” has played a key role in all of this. Whatever this slogan may mean to the American public, in Japan it will be interpreted through distinctly Japanese lenses. For Tokyo, anti-terrorism will easily blend into anti-foreignism. A confrontation with parts of the Islamic world will easily become a Japan-China confrontation. Once the rightwing juices begin flowing, hardline responses to a whole variety of issues will become the norm in Tokyo. Even in the best of times, ordinary Japanese are reluctant to go against the grain and speak out about the abuses of power. Once the Right is firmly in the saddle, a subtle process of intimidation will quickly narrow the scope of allowable political debate in the public arena. The first clear signs of this have already appeared.

Of course, in logic, there is a fallacy known as the “slippery slope,” in which one bad action is seen, unreasonably, as leading to a whole chain of negative consequences, and finally disaster. The argument that I have just sketched out will be considered to be just such a slippery slope argument by some. So be it. What I can say in my defense is that many thoughtful Japanese of my acquaintance have themselves made arguments to me in private along these same lines. At least one of my Japanese colleagues already receives anonymous threats from rightwing groups for speaking out on Islamic issues.

Indeed, just last month a major terrorist event took place in Japan. A prominent politician had his family home burned down on August 15th, which could have led to the death of his elderly mother. The terrorist was motivated by a desire to silence this politician for his stance on public, political issues. Had the terrorist been a foreign Muslim targeting a conservative politician, there would have been a wild howl from the Japanese political world demanding a crackdown on foreign radicals and criminals. The reality, however, is that the terrorist in question was a rightwing Japanese activist, and his target was Koichi Kato, a critic of Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine. It took many days and much prompting from the press until the first official condemnation of the terrorist act finally appeared. The response to an act of political violence by a Muslim would not have come in so casual a fashion. This whole episode reveals in itself the political trend of the times.

Even “terrorism” itself has no entirely agreed-upon definition -- even though it is the “enemy” we are all supposed to be fighting. Fear and terror may be the weapon of choice for radical groups like al-Qaida; but neither in America nor in Japan have political leaders always refrained in the past from using fear and even terror when it has suited their own political purposes.

If al-Qaida attacked America, then just go after al-Qaida, and leave it at that. The sweeping language about global war will only serve to spread war globally. The quest for perfect national security can only lead to the perfect insecurity of the individual vis-a-vis state power. The “war on terrorism” has been nonsense from the start, and will only lead to more violence and mayhem, and further restrictions on the individual’s right to engage in democratic debate.

Today, the real enemy is “us” as much as it is “them.”