Obama dodges important questions on trip to Japan

November 14, 6:10 PMS

President Obama was in Japan this weekend, talking with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama about the importance of the US-Japanese alliance and Obama's policy of "engagement" with Japan.

But what stood out the most was Obama's refusal to discuss an issue that is increasingly angering many Japanese: US troops and bases in their country.

Once we brush the fluffy rhetoric of the American-Japanese "alliance" aside, a closer look reveals that Japan has actually been more of a US subject than friend since the end of WW2.

Since the end of the bloodiest (and unnecessary) conflict in human history, the US has stationed thousands of Marines in Japan, for the purposes of "regional stability." A disproportionate amount of the US military presence in Japan falls on one of the poorest and tiniest parts of Japan, the island of Okinawa.

Okinawans, who are ethnically different than the Japanese, inhabit a small island where there are 14 US bases that take up 18% of the island. Although Okinawa makes up about 1% of Japanese territory, two-thirds of the 40,000 Marines occupying the country are in Okinawa.

There are significant complications that can arise when thousands of young boys are stationed in an area with a completely different language, culture, and legal norms. For over sixty years, Okinawans have had to deal with excessive noise and environmental pollution and sexual assaults, rapes, drunk-driving and hit-and-run accidents, and property damage by US troops that nearly all go unpunished.

Whenever these "unfortunate accidents" occur, the US refuses to allow any Marines to be tried in Japanese courts and are immediately whisked back home or transfered to another foreign base. Okinawans have made protest after protest to the Japanese government, to no avail.

These are all legitimate grievances, and it's easy to imagine how angry Americans would be if a foreign power had over 40,000 of their soldiers who are all immune from local laws mingling and partying around San Diego for over 60 years.

Obama loves to talk about "engagement," yet when this issue was brought up by the Prime Minister, his lips were silent. That empty silence is the callousness of a two-faced emperor who preaches "peace" and "engagement" out of one side of his mouth but brings death and destruction out of the other.

It is absolutely urgent, for the sake of peace, financial stability, and the soul of our republic to end the criminal occupation of Okinawa. US out of Japan!*

*And while we're at it, the US out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Germany, South Korea, Africa, South America, and California as well!