[Peace-discuss] Parallels

[Morton K. Brussel]

This time the parallel is not the Germany of the early 1930's but to  
Japan before WWII.  --mkb

Published on Saturday, April 29, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Ashamed of the Stars and Stripes? It Could Happen
by David Benjamin

PARIS -- Recently in Japan, traveling to and fro around Tokyo, I was  
surprised by the sight -- through a train window -- of the Japanese  
"rising sun" flag, or hinomaru. The moment was remarkable because,  
all that day, it was the only flag I saw. If I had covered as much  
ground in the U.S.A., in an area as densely settled as greater Tokyo,  
I probably would have spotted the Stars and Stripes displayed in  
hundreds of places -- over post offices, on car antennas, lapels,  
policemen’s sleeves, on warehouses, bridges, front-lawn flagpoles, t- 
shirts, halter tops and Coca-Cola cups.

The difference lies in history. But a parallel looms, perhaps, in the  
future.

In Japan, the end of World War II marked the eclipse of a period of  
ultra-nationalist militarism that dated to the 1880's -- when a  
demimonde of violent right-wing "societies"{ began to quietly,  
ruthlessly subvert Japanese government and culture. Even in the  
Empire's death throes in 1945, Japan’s militarists -- defeated  
everywhere but on the home front -- dug in their heels and  
forestalled surrender, contributing to the national horror that took  
place in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Today these discredited elements  
linger stubbornly in Japan's body politic, preventing the ruling  
Liberal Democratic Party from becoming either liberal or democratic,  
and poisoning foreign relations with China, Korea and Taiwan, among  
others.

One lamentable legacy of Japan’s imperial militarists is that they  
brought shame onto the national flag. Today, flying the hinomaru is a  
bitter provocation, suggesting fierce xenophobia and racist  
aggression. To be caught in Japan with your flag open is mildly  
embarrassing, and totally uncool.

In America today, waving the flag is also devolving into an act of  
provocation. Old Glory now -- like the hinomaru during those 65 dark  
years in Japan -- has been taken captive by rightist advocates of  
military supremacy. This flag demands ritual and submission. This  
flag requires a "patriotism" divorced from discourse, diplomacy and  
dissent. Any hesitation to pledge absolute allegiance, any reluctance  
to virtually worship the Stars and Stripes as a sort of graven idol,  
is deemed tantamount to treason.

The far right -- supported apparently by popular opinion -- seeks to  
amend the Constitution, so we can imprison people for burning the  
flag symbolically. This notion prevails despite the reality that flag- 
burning has become so unfashionable among protesters that it's a sort  
of quaint relic of bygone days. Besides, according to proper flag  
etiquette, the only reverent way to dispose of a worn-out flag is to,  
well... burn it.

Obsessive flag-worship is common to both the former Japanese Empire  
and an increasingly imperial America. It's appropriate to wonder  
where the U.S. stands today, compared to that 65-year arc that  
brought so much suffering to the people of Japan. If Japan's Age of  
Militarist Insanity began in 1880, the comparable U.S. period might  
properly date to 1961. That's when America’s wisest general, Dwight  
D. Eisenhower, issued his prescient warning against the rise of a  
"military-industrial complex" that -- ironically -- has flourished  
all the more luxuriantly since Eisenhower condemned it.

It's been 45 years. The Pentagon today is joined at the teat to a  
cartel of huge, greedy and swinishly wasteful defense contractors,  
whose campaign bribes bloat the war chests of supine presidents and  
guarantee jingoist majorities in Congress. Today's U.S. military- 
industrial complex looks more and more like its Japanese forebear.

For instance, the cost of the military in Japan exploded in the  
1930's and '40’s, impoverishing civil society while stifling any  
voice that dared challenge the generals, the admirals, their zaibatsu  
cronies and -- especially -- the bellicose politicians in Nagatacho  
who had never fired a shot nor shed a drop of blood for their  
country. Today in America, Pentagon spending exceeds $500 billion a  
year. The most profligate spenders and rabid supporters of  
"preemptive war," "regime change," "shock and awe" -- and other  
martial fantasies -- are not the veterans of human carnage, but a  
coterie of draftdodging theorists (Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld) who  
prudently turned to war-mongering only after they were too old to serve.

The fears of General Zinni echo the lamentations of Admiral Yamamoto.

Japan's militarists also fought "culture wars," demanding religious  
piety of every last soul, intimidating media, censoring books,  
banning "indecent" music, eavesdropping on conversations to detect  
glimmers of sedition, and recruiting informants to root out liberals,  
agnostics, artists, iconoclasts, foreigners and other unsavories.

In the 1930'’s, Japan’s unilateralist saber-rattlers used an entirely  
mythical union of nations -- called the Greater East Asia Co- 
Prosperity Sphere -- to justify their various invasions. Today's  
cynical White House formulation for a similar fanciful phantom is  
"the Coalition of the Willing."

As Japan's era of militarism reached its climax, the national  
treasure was exhausted and the lifeblood of millions of idealistic  
and loyal soldiers, sailors and airmen -- the flower of Japanese  
youth -- was being squandered under thousands of proudly flapping  
flags, in a war of choice that had been lost already before it began.

Plus, they killed a lot of people elsewhere! The Japanese became  
famous for bombing civilians and torturing prisoners. Today in  
America... well, is any of this ringing a bell?

Right now, America's military-industrial complex is wallowing in  
wealth, calling the shots, nourished by secrecy and wrapped in the  
flag. The question is: Are we really willing to put up with these  
armed sociopaths for 20 more lost, bloodsoaked years before  
reclaiming our republic?

Must we, like Japan, end up embarrassed by the sight of our flag?

David Benjamin is a novelist and journalist who splits time between  
Madison, Wisconsin and Paris. His latest book is The Life and Times  
of the Last Kid Picked.
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