「同盟国の国民の命を助ける協力をしない裏切り行為」Oh, please. Give me and all those who dwell in this fair land a break.
"This is the treachery of a country that will not collaborate in saving the lives of the citizens of an allied nation."*
You want to talk about betrayal? How about...
- The government of Japan's (Dare we say the LDP's? Or was it only Kanemaru Shin and the Takeshita Faction's doing?) complete burial of the testimony of Kim Hyon Hui, the North Korean operative who blew up KAL 858 in 1987 -- that she had learned how to impersonate a Japanese from a Japanese woman abductee?
- The Socialist Party's passing on to the government of the DPRK the postcard Ishioka Tōru and Arimoto Keiko had managed to have sent to Japan via a Polish contact - which was immediately followed, according to official DPRK accounts, by their and their child's accidental deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning?
- The families, having been on the left, allying themselves with some of the ugliest elements of Japan's recidivist right, thereby facilitating the fantabulists's use of the rachi mondai to cower more moderate politicians and bureaucrats in order achieve their ultimate goal of political power?
- The Japanese government's failure to round up and hold on to the members of the Red Army Faction, some of whom later participated in the DPRK kidnappings in Europe?
- The reliance on compromised Republican neo-con lobbyists to be the advocates of the abductees in Washington, leading to the abductee issue becoming one facet of those lobbyists' own beligerent politico-military agenda?
Listen to the barking of the fools if you want to. Their spectacular record of achievement speaks for itself.
Just do not single out the United States for your ire.
Those trying to nail down some part, any part of the North Korean nuclear program are the only real protectors Japan has.
------------------------
* Sankei Shimbun source article here.
The Japanese supporters of the abduction-issue got what they deserved by hoping that Dubya would care about their issue when it is far from central to the issue of NK and it's nuke program, etc. Dubya paid lip service to Megumi's mother and that's it. To expect anything else is to be a sucker.
ReplyDeleteMTC: You got the facts right, but you shat on the wrong people. The abductees and their families have every right to rail against and make demands against anyone else without regard to other worthy matters over which they themselves have no control. It is when the authorities make such demands in the interests of political expediency that they deserve your scorn, like your Western legislatures… but I digress, as I used to say before I tired of my own coyness. Likewise the media that refuses to discuss… but I… but I…
ReplyDeleteThe Japanese authorities are fuming, but will fall in line when the Six-Party talks are once again called to order, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, or at least until regime change comes to North Korea.
Okumura-san -
ReplyDeleteWhen distress pushes us against our limits, we justify irrational action by claiming there were no alternatives.
The families had alternatives. They had opportunities to pull out of their alliance with the recidivist right, particularly after Koizumi's second visit to Pyongyang. They had the option of understanding that those whom Koizumi did not bring back were indeed dead, never to return.
The families chose unreality, instead.
I am not condemning the families for choosing that which cannot be over that which is. However, they do themselves and their fellow citizens no favors by lashing out against the United States, which since the departure of John Bolton has kept a cool head, pursued its national interest and pursued Japan's national interest as well.