Statement by Japanese Against US Retaliation and Japan's Involvement

I received the following letter from Muto Ichiyo, an intellectual-activist
in Japan and their statement against US and Japanese involvement in the war
of retaliation.  Please pass it on to other lists and friends as requested.

Dear friends,

I take it that we all share a keen sense of crisis vis-a-vis the Sept. 11
attacks in the United States and the Bush response to them. In Japan, partly
for fear of being "left behind," and partly for the ulterior purpose of
rushing all the political backlog (taking advantage of this
crisis, the Koizumi government is making a new law and sending troops to the
Indian ocean and even Pakistan. However, after a long period of political
dormancy, there seems to be a beginning of peace movement, ordinary people
now mouthing fears of being plunged into a war scheme whose outcome nobody.
An indication of this is the unexpected vigorous and quick response to a
joint statement we prepared, to which we asked for support. In three days
1300 signed and the number is still increasing.

We attach that position statement, and I hope that you will spread it
through whatever channels.

There are too many things I wish to discuss with you, but I stop here for
today.

Wish you well.

Muto
-------------------

We oppose the U.S. war of retaliation and request the Japanese government to
retract its support for this war.

We were shocked at the sight of the massive destruction and deaths that
resulted from the suicidal attacks at the economic and military centers of
the United States carried out on September 11 using passenger airplanes as
weapons. Thousands of innocent people were killed, and many more people
suffered physical and psychological injuries. We who seek a world free from
violence condemn this act, whatever its motivation, as a crime we cannot
tolerate. We express our profound condolences for the victims to the
bereaved families, their relatives, and friends, and wish for quick recovery
of those who were injured.

We are alike shocked by what the U.S. government has decided to do in
response to this incident. President Bush, declaring that the attacks were
acts of war, decided to launch the first war in the 21st Century
mobilizing the whole international community to retaliate against the
terrorists. Islamic extremists headed by Osama bin Laden are the immediate
putative enemy. The United States is engaging in a full-scale war to
annihilate terrorist systemssaid to be spread all over the world. The
worlds superpower has thus declared war against an entity which is not a
state. Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz explained that the military
campaign has as its objective termination of the terrorist networks and the
states harboring terrorists. President said that the war will be
large-scaled and prolonged . White House Press Secretary Fleischer briefed
that in this war no option is excluded. The U.S. Congress passed a
resolution giving President all powers of exercise of military forces and
allocated $40 billion for this war. The NATO has decided to participate in
this war invoking its collective security clause.

Meeting an act of terrorism with a full-scale war is an unusual response.
The September 11 mass killing of civilians obviously constitutes a major
international crime, a crime against humanity. In addition to procedures
under the U.S. domestic law, the perpetrators and accomplices of this crime
should be brought to justice under the international laws and tried and
punished by an international criminal court set up by the United Nations.
Without such procedures proposed, the United States declared a state of war.
Military attacks on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan are impending, and given
the declared purpose of destroying the international terrorist systems, the
theater of war is not limited to that country.

For the following reasons we strongly oppose this call for war and ask the
Bush administration to immediately retract it.

Firstly, this war not only would fail to bring about solution to the problem
but also is highly likely to bring the whole world into an infinite chain
reaction of violence and hatred. It is impossible to eradicate amorphous
networks of terrorists by regular military means. As long as the social soil
generating terrorism persists, the eradication of one organization would not
foreclose the emergence of another. More importantly, the September 11
incident strikingly demonstrated the high vulnerability of advanced
societies, that makes their perfect defense a matter of impossibility.
Predictably, the U.S. retaliation is likely to invite an escalating
terrorist counter-retaliation, which will be met by yet larger-scale
counterattacks, thus leading the world into a situation without exits
victimizing an ever larger number of innocent civilians. The only way to
prevent such would be to introduce a complete global system of surveillance
that will deprive individuals everywhere of their freedom and privacy and
destroy democracy. Already, steps are being taken in this ominous direction.

Secondly, we hear in the loud official and private voices calling for
vengeance a horrifying note of arrogance and hatred, indicating the revival
of colonial-time notion of civilization versus barbarity. This war is
described as a war to protect civilization (Secretary of State Powell) and
the struggle of the good against the evil" (President Bush). Reports are
arriving about Arabs and South Asians in the United States being treated
with hatred and violence. The mainstream opinion in Europe seems to
uncritically accept this civilization-versus-the-other approach. The
perception that this arrogance equating Euro-America to civilization has
historically humiliated and excluded the Islamic world and eventually
generated antagonists to the West is dangerously absent in the dominant
retaliation discourse.

  Shock, rage and grief there has been aplenty. But any glimmer of
recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such
atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process  or why the United
States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries,
but across the developing world  seems almost entirely absent. (Seumas
Miln, The Guardian Sept. 13)

The lack of this recognition fuels terrorism as a desperate form of action.
The world remembers that the United States, by waging wars from Vietnam War
to the Gulf, by supporting dictatorial regimes in Latin America, Asia, and
elsewhere, and, among others, by backing Israel's unlawful occupation of
Palestinian territories, have directly and indirectly caused the deaths of
far larger numbers of innocent non-combatants than the victims of the
September 11 incident. Now the dominance of the world by the United States
has come to an unprecedented level. The United States behaves as the global
power center imposing neo-liberal globalization on the overwhelming majority
of the world population, without addressing the resultant yawning gap
between the rich and the poor and the disruption of the global environment.
The Bush administration, adopting unilateralism as its policy, has been
disrupting one positive international arrangement after another, ranging
from global warming through ABM, nuclear testing, and international criminal
court, to racial discrimination, all in the name of the U.S. national
interests. This has provoked yet more intense public criticism and anger
throughout the world. Such a global environment that the United States
itself has created is the historical backdrop against which the September 11
incident occurred. In this sense, we consider that the September 11 incident
victims were also sacrificed by the U.S. global domination.

Prime Minister Koizumi surprised us by promptly expressing his unconditional
support for the United States war of retaliation. The Japanese government
is now searching for ways to enable the Japanese Self-Defense Forces to
participate in the war, either by making new laws or misusing existing laws.
They are also taking advantage of this incident to introduce crisis
management packages and to militarize society. The government and ruling
parties have decided to revise the Self-Defense Law in order to protect U.S.
military bases in Japan and facilitate SDFs deployment for internal peace.
These rightwing forces are now using the U.S. war for a trial run of a
war-capable state introduced under the 1997 Japan-U.S. joint defense
guidelines.

We are convinced that Japan ought to do exactly the opposite. If Japan is a
country that renounces war forever as a sovereign right of the nation and
the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes,
(Article 9 of the Constitution), what Japan ought to do with confidence and
dignity try to persuade the United States into opting for other solutions
based on the trust in the justice and faith of the peace-loving peoples of
the world. (Preamble) The situation strongly suggests that only this
approach will open up perspective for the prevention of another tragedy of
the same kind.

We demand that the Japanese government, following the Japanese
constitutional pacifism, retract its support for the Bush governments war
of retaliation and request the U.S. government to drop its war plans.

We demand that the Japanese government drop its attempt to use this
opportunity to become a full-fledged war-capable state. In concrete, we
demand that the Japanese government abandon its state-of-emergency
legislation, SDF law revision for the protection of U.S. bases, new
legislation and/or enlarged interpretation of the guidelines related laws
for SDFs war participation.

We demand that the Japanese government drastically review its policy of
promoting neo-liberal globalization processes that intensify social tensions
and conflicts everywhere to an unbearable level. On this basis, the Japanese
government should propose to the WTO and other related agencies a
fundamental change of direction in global politico-economic management
toward mitigating social tensions and ending elimination of the people at
the bottom and further destruction of environment.

If peoples security matters, marking a step forward in this direction is
the only way to enhance the security of the people in the United States as
well as the rest of the world.

This is time we should cut the vicious cycle of violence and hatred. Whether
the September 11 tragedy can be the starting point in this direction or be
the trigger to set the vicious cycle of violence into motion depends on our
ability and will to create viable peoples linkages to prevent the war and
its expansion.

We are encouraged by voices coming from grieved New York people, Peace, Not
revenge! In these voices we sense that many in New York who experienced the
clashing calamity, now feeling war, bombing, and massive violence close to
them, find that vengeance using overwhelming military power and the show of
American force do not make amends for their grief. Voices against this war
of vengeance are rising from peace movements and informed public of the
United States. They are rising everywhere in the world.

We join our voices with them. Let us act together to stop the war and create
a world that does not foster terrorism!

Original signatories include:

Akiyama, Naoe (Japan Negros Campaign Committee)
Ishizaki, Atuko (Grass Seeds Association)
Ukai, Satoshi (Hitotsubashi University)
Oshima, Koichi (Christian Political League)
Otsu, Kenichi (National Christian Council of Japan)
Kokawa, Yoshinobu (Christian Peace Network)
Kimura, Kenzo (Catholic Council for Peace and Justice)
Ogura, Toshimaru (Project against Network Monitoring)
Kurihara, Yukio (literary critic)
Sugimoto, Rie (Institute of Local Science)
Ogasawara, Kimiko (NCC-J, Peace and Nuclear Issues Committee)
Ohashi, Yukako (Soshiren: From my Body)
Koshida, Kiyokazu (Pacific-Asia Resource Center)
Tawara, Yoshibumi (National Network on Children and Textbooks)
Tono, Haruhi (Asia-Pacific Workers Solidarity Links)
Tomiyama, Yoko (Japan Consumers Union)
Nakayama, Chinatsu (writer)
Hanasaki, Kohei (Sapporo Freedom School)
Fukutomi, Setsuo (Concerned Citizens of Japan)
Matsui, Yayori (VAWW-NET-Japan)
Muto, Ichiyo (Peoples Plan Study Group)
Yoshikawa, Yuichi (Concerned Citizens of Japan)
Watanabe, Ben (Center for Transnational Labor Studies)
Mizuhara, Hiroko (Japan Consumers Union)
Yamaguchi, Yasuko (Womens Democratic Club)
Yamaguchi, Yukio (Citizens Nuclear Information Center)
Mizushima, Asaho (Waseda University)
Ota, Masakuni (writer)
Amano, Yasukazu (National Fax Network Against War)
Tateyama, Hiroki (Yamaguchi University)

forwarded by Elson Boles, Ph.D.
Dept. of Sociology
Saginaw Valley State University