The Comfort Women Resolution

Framing this resolution in terms of a “right” of Congress to address the matter completely mis-characterizes Congress’s functions and powers.

It is within Congress’s prerogative to address any issue it sees fit. This being a non-binding resolution, Congress’s law making power is not implicated, and thus its so called “right” to raise the issue is a strawman.

The operative rule here is that a Congressman represents the interests of his local community. There need be no nexus between the issue and American involvement. (This assumes America has no interest in the present matter, which I would in some ways dispute.)

Congress has addressed WW2 related Holocaust claims. Why? Because many Jewish-Americans are survivors or have relatives who are connected with the issue. Congress has addressed the genocide of Darfur, without there being any specific American connection. Congress has heavily criticized China and a slew of other autocracies over their human rights records. I find the claim that Congress has “no right” to criticize Japan a highly selective strawman. Replete in Congressional history is a long record of criticizing other countries on matters not even tangentially related to American interests. This resolution is no different.

In regards to the issue of internment of Japanese-Americans, early in the redress movement there were calls to prevent the issue from becoming addressed in either Congress or the Courts. In other words, the opposition sought to sideline the issue to strictly a non-governmental, “academic” forum. Undoubtedly, this course of action would have resulted in no action being taken to address this historical injustice. Perhaps Honda sees this matter along these lines? Whether the comfort women resolution will benefit from further politicization seems at this time highly unlikely, but to claim that there are no parallels ignores the possible moral motives behind Honda’s actions.

As I stated before, conspiracy theories backed up with no evidence.

In order for this conspiracy theory to work, EVERY Chinese-American and Korean-American would have to vote or side with these small interest groups, interest groups that are hardly known within their own communities. In other words, EVERY person of Chinese or Korean heritage would have to operate as a single homogeneous unit. Even if this racist line of thinking were true, it goes against the actual population numbers of Honda’s district.

Honda, like Lantos, has won all his elections with with an overwhelmingly huge majority (from the 60-70s range). Asian-Americans within his district represent no more than a third to one-fifth of the electorate. This Asian-American constituency is further divided into Vietnamese, Filipino, Chinese, Korean, and other SE Asian groups, with this order representing the descending order size. The Filipino and Vietnamese groups are larger than the Chinese and Korean populations, the Korean community being one of the smallest Asian-American groups.

It is an insult to one’s intelligence to assume that Honda or Lantos, both of whom have never had problems securing votes within their districts, would bend to the will of groups which at the very most represent less than 10% of their electorate. It is another insult to assume that Chinese-American or Korean-Americans would vote, or hold views, solely because of their ethnicity.

To believe in this conspiracy theory simply shows a complete disconnect with the local California Bay Area community.

Ponta, as has been pointed out repeatedly by others, your reasoning is logically flawed, yet you repeat the same message over and over again, ignoring criticism.

Redherrings, “they did it too,” constructing strawmen. These are childish games.

You obviously have a problem understanding the meaning of scope, specificity and relatedness. There is no reason why any group that wishes to address a specific issue must include all related and unrelated issues into their agenda. A group formed to address Imperial Japanese atrocities would not be expected to additionally address Chinese domestic crimes. “They did it too” is no reasoning at all. Why? Because it is not the specific subject matter that such a group is addressing, not within the scope of the type of crimes, and unrelated to that subject matter. It is simply illogical to pull out a red herring like this, you would simply be lambasted by a judge if you were to try to pull something like that in court.

Following your logic, in order for the US to address the atrocities of Darfur, it would first have to dump its specific objective to address the singular issue of Darfur. It would then have to water down its condemnation by expanding its message to include any other genocide everywhere else in history and the world. It would have to expand the scope to include unrelated atrocities such those which occur during a civil war, mass murders and rapes unrelated to genocidal warfare. It would end up not doing anything at all.

In regards to your CSIS quotation, I see no logical relevance whatsoever in its inclusion. I do see that you’ve simply ignored my assertion that it is simply illogical for Honda to be beholden by the interests of such an incredibly small constituency. By your logic, I would assume there is a huge Jewish American conspiracy controlling the destiny of America. Korean-Americans, in accordance with their constitutionally guaranteed civic rights, may pursue whatever agenda they wish, and may petition their local congressman to pursue that matter. That they have backed such a resolution does not address the individual merits of that resolution. You are simply creating a strawman. You are implying that because Korean-American groups support this, the merits of the resolution are flawed. You are insinuating that Honda has no individual motivations for supporting this resolution, instead substituting his individuality with motivations for those dastardly “Korean-Americans” you know so little of (never mind that most Korean-Americans I know from that area have no idea this resolution exists). You and the Sankei have created an imaginary leviathan in this image of Korean and Chinese Americans.

Ponta,

Once again your response shows a complete lack of rhetorical reasoning. You pay no heed to specificity, scope and relevance. This is something you have been called out on repeatedly, yet you continue to argue in the same manner.

You deflect by way of red-herrings, “they did it too” arguments, and constantly expand the topic by inserting new unrelated issues.

By your line of logic, no one who has ever sinned may ever criticize anyone ever. All criticism must first begin with a long self-criticism. It sounds like your living in China’s Cultural Revolution. Your line of reasoning silences discussion before it can even begin.

I expect you to once again ignore criticism, and the thread to be once again flooded by irrelevant posts unrelated to Honda and this resolution.

James, I thoroughly enjoy your blog and the excellent work you’ve done, and accordingly, I agree that this is circular, so I will stop posting on this thread.

That’s my definition of a “just war” which, you’ll notice, is a lot more limited than many other people’s. Are you really a “pacifist” as you say you are? If someone was attacking you, you wouldn’t fight back? Come on.

And what makes your “pacifism” even weirder is that you say you’re a pacifist, yet you don’t hate those who start wars.

“But that just wasn’t possible then. When your country went to war, everyone went.”

Not true. When your country goes to war, you don’t have to. You may be imprisoned or even killed, but unless a mind-control device has been developed, no one can actually be forced to go to war.

“And I don’t hate my grandfathers for raping and killing people anymore than I hate my wife’s grandfathers for raping and killing.”

You don’t? I think I’d hate mine if they did. But of course they didn’t.

“So what do you want to do with those soldiers? Arrest them for doing what soldiers are supposed to do? I think the modern view of how war is supposed to be waged has completely missed the point. War is terror. Kill. Rape. Bomb. Burn. Rape again. That’s what soldiers are paid to do.”

You’re wrong. You can fight a war without having to rape anyone. Don’t try to excuse the Japanese soldiers by saying that they just did what soldiers are “supposed” to do. Soldiers are not “supposed” to rape people. I think you’re the one missing the point of war. Not all who fight wars are evil, though many are. How about the ones fighting in self-defense? Are they evil too? War is terror, yes. And it should be avoided as much as possible. But if I were attacked, I’d fight back.

“Get over it.”

You know how callous that sounds? No, I won’t get over it. And it’s easy for you to say, isn’t it?

Steve: You’re right. I also read that only artillery was used during the Battle of Manila. But because I read somewhere else that air strikes were used, I included both. But if you’re saying only artillery was used, I guesss it’s true then. In fact, MacArthur didn’t want to use either air or artillery, and rely on ground troops alone but Manila was an urban area and the Japanese were well entrenched.

ponta: Thank you for saying that.

I’ve found an example of a “retraction” of sorts. As you know, the Japanese government has apologized for the comfort women thing several times – the most notable of which was probably the one in 1993. But more recently, Abe’s government claimed that “there is no documentation proving that the Japanese military participated in abducting the [comfort] women.” So what were they apologizing for?

I think there’s quite a lot of documentation, personally.