Japan's support for U.S. war extends terrorism -- Akahata editorial, September 20The Koizumi Cabinet intends to convene an extraordinary Diet session with the aim of extending the Anti-Terrorism Special Measures Law.
Reportedly, the bill to extend the law is scheduled to pass the House of Representatives in two days in early October and be enacted on October 10.
How outrageous it is to seek an extra Diet session to extend the law for Japan to help the U.S. forces kill the Afghan people by doing away with the necessary time for discussions in an attempt to fit in with the schedule that includes the dissolution of the House of Representatives for a general election!
Another bogged down guerrilla war
The Anti-Terrorism Special Measures law is a law for Japan to take part in the U.S. retaliatory war. The Koizumi Cabinet submitted the bill and got it enacted just before the U.S. Bush administration launched a war supposedly in retaliation for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
At that time, the Akahata editorial of October 6, 2001 warned of the danger of the law encouraging the threat of terrorism and creating a vicious circle of retaliation and terrorism. What we see today accords with that warning.
Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders and Taliban leaders have escaped the hunt for them in Afghanistan. The Koizumi Cabinet's White Paper on Defense emphasizes that the terrorists have now been diffused throughout the world.
The U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in May said that Afghanistan ceased to be a place for combat. But attacks with rocket bombs and guns are continuing, and the engagement between the local armed forces and the U.S. forces in September caused casualties on both sides.
Two U.S. influential think tanks, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Asia Society, pointed out that the war is far removed from achieving its goal that Afghanistan should no longer be a paradise for terrorism.
The government plan to extend the law is all the more sinister and intolerable, in that the law's failure, which is obvious to the public, is used as the pretext to extend the law.
It is now clear that the law for Japan to participate in the war of retaliation can neither eliminate nor prevent terrorist acts, but further increase and diffuse terrorism. The government must now abolish the law and order the Self-Defense Forces in the Indian Ocean to return to Japan.
The problem is that part of the fuel the SDF ships supplied to U.S. forces in the Indian Ocean was used for the Iraq War.
This not only goes against the Anti-Terrorism Special Measures Law but means that Japan's participation in the retaliatory war in Afghanistan was linked to its participation in the war of aggression against Iraq.
When the refueling was revealed, the Japanese government initially denied this, but finally the director general of the Defense Agency's Bureau of Defense Policy had to admit that this is "a serious matter if it is true."
The U.S. forces did not try to hide the diversion of fuel supplied from the SDF for their combats in Iraq. For the U.S. Bush administration, launching preemptive strikes without any United Nations resolutions, the SDF's refueling site, its legality for Japan, and attached ostensive reasons of "anti-terrorism," have nothing to do with U.S. policy.
Extending the term of deploying SDF units to the Indian Ocean goes beyond the issue whether SDF warships can continue to exist in the region or not.
An extension of the law will force Japan to increase its support for the strategy of the U.S. Bush administration which seeks to dominate the world by imposing war and suppression throughout the world through overthrowing foreign governments by force and then occupying their territories.
A road to isolation
The United States is under fire throughout the world for continuing the endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This indicates that the preemptive strategy of the U.S. Bush administration under "counter-terrorism" and "weapons of mass destruction" pretexts has completely failed. It would be stupid and reckless for Japan to stay the course in support of the United States in defiance of the Constitution which renounces the war and the right to belligerency.
Let's increase our efforts to foil the bill to extend the Anti-Terrorism Special Measures Law and end the Koizumi Cabinet's submission to U.S. unilateralism.(end)