Special feature: US/UK Bombings in Afghanistan (Opinion Column)

9 October 2001

Asahi Shimbun Newspaper, morning edition, Page 11, Opinion 1

Unjust attacks should stop immediately

By Yo Hemmi

Is there any international legal or human justification in these retaliatory attacks? Can this struggle be portrayed as one between a mature democratic country and a terrorist organization? Is this a battle between civilization and barbarism, good against evil, as President Bush describes it? My answer to all of these is "No!" These military attacks don't have the least moral justification and should be completely stopped at once. And as long as they continue, we should raise our voices in strong opposition.

Clash of unequal worlds

The closer you examine the issues, what you see behind them is a world that is despairingly unequal. They cannot be portrayed simply as the "insanity" of Islamic extremists against the "sanity" of the rest of the world. Behind Osama bin Laden are not only thousands of armed groups. There is also a deep grudge against the United States held by perhaps hundreds of millions of the poor. President Bush is filled with not just the sense of revenge for the terrorist incidents in September, but also the incredible arrogance of the rich.

Hence, besides the perspective presented by Huntington in "The Clash of Civilizations," doesn't the current conflict also carry the undertones of a struggle between rich and poor? To elaborate, if this is so, it means that the problems created during the twentieth century between the rich north and poor south have intensified as a result of U.S.-led globalization, and are now heading towards conflict. Perhaps this struggle, which is both old and new-rich against poor, abundance against starvation, luxury against despair-is emerging now on a global scale.

Look at tragedy with your own eyes

Another threat exists which must not be overlooked. These days the United States, in a frenzy after the terrorist attacks, and allied countries including Japan, are in the process of throwing off the appearance of modern civil nation-states. The U.S. approach-giving absolute precedence to terrorist countermeasures, taking into custody many "suspects" despite the absence of legal grounds for arrest, and launching large-scale retaliatory attacks while refusing any form of dialog-cannot be described as the approach of a mature democratic country. And the Japanese government is obediently tripping over itself to assist the U.S. retaliatory attacks, to the extent that the Prime Minister himself is willing to violate our Constitution's Articles 9 (renunciation of war) and 99 (duty to respect and uphold the Constitution). Behind the thinking of the hawks now gaining momentum in Japan is probably the revival of the military draft.

Perhaps it is time for us to revise the image we hold of the United States. Is it acceptable to entrust the world's authority to pass judgment, to that superpower of war that has sent its soldiers to fight more than two hundred times since the country was founded? That country has scarcely reflected as a nation upon its war-making, including the use of the nuclear bomb. Japan has probably been seeing the world through the eyes of the United States for too long. Now is the time to see the tragedy of war with our own eyes, and to make our own moral judgments. Because there are already conspicuous signs that the United States is tilting toward a new imperialism.

An absolute majority of nations supports the current retaliatory attacks, but without a doubt, the attacks defy the conscience of an absolute majority of members of humanity. The issue is not, as Bush claims, "Either you are with us [the United States], or you are with the terrorists." Now, more than ever, we must take sides, not with a country, but rather with the people who are below the bombs that are falling.