An issue I've repeatedly touched upon on here is the rank hypocrisy of Western efforts to push Japan to apologize (again, and again, and again ...) for its war crimes, even as the very same countries prefer to bury their own misdeeds - many of them much more recent - as "old history" the victims need to just "get over." As it turns out, this commentator on Aljazeera currently linked to on Itai News picks up on this double standard, which will be glaringly obvious to many non-Westerners even if not to those Americans, Australians, Dutchmen and Frenchmen inclined to seeing history in rosy terms of their "good guys" fighting against "evil" Japanese imperialists, never bothering to ask themselves by what right Europeans were lording it over South-East Asians in the first place.
I don't agree with Mr. Ming's paranoia about the United States wanting to "fulfill its own goals by destabilizing the region" - this latest resolution is just the kind of thing to be expected of self-righteous, parochial Congressmen raised on an excess of self-congratulating "greatest generation" propaganda, and eager to usurp the Presidential prerogative in foreign affairs - but I do think it would serve a useful purpose if some people in this part of the world started to ask themselves a few searching questions whenever the next row over Japanese apologies raises its head: how would Americans take it if the Japanese Diet passed a resolution condemning the US for its failure to apologize for genocide against the Native Americans, enslaving millions of Africans or allowing legally entrenched discrimination against non-whites right up until the late 1960s? What would the Aussies say if Japanese MPs were to sanctimoniously mouth on about the absence of any apologies for "White Australia" or Australia's long history of disgracefully mistreating Aborigines?
Bravo!
Posted by: Kenji | August 03, 2007 at 03:46 PM