No. 839   /  Sep. 23, 2001
(Uploaded Sep. 26)

ž@Seeking gRetaliationh is also Medieval Barbarity
  @   The U.S. Should First gReflecth on its own Actions
          The 20th Century was the age of U.S. Imperialism

ž@Editorial: Miyazawa Kiichi, A Master Philistine
@@@@Using Sophistry to Justify the gRight of Collective Self-Defenseh

ž@Series: The Wavering gZokugiinh Diet Members
@@@@Exposing the So-Called gForces of Resistanceh [within the LDP](#5)

ž@Series: Lies and Distortions
@@@@Criticism of the New Junior High School History Textbook (#12)

ž@Terrorism Cannot Be Defended, Butc
@@@@U.S. Imperialism Invites Such Actions
@@@@The Position of the JCP is Identical to that of the Ruling Class

ž@Regional Reports: The Shamelessness of the Defiant Board of Education
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@(Saitama)

ž@Toshibafs Plan to Lay Off 17,000 Workers
@@@The Sweeping Collaboration of the Union Leaders
@@@Workers Are Unable to See Any Prospects For Struggle

ž@The Chinese Communist Party: gBusinessmen Are Also Workersh
@@@The View That They Are gAlso one Part of the Social Division of Laborh

ž@The View That They Are gAlso one Part of the Social Division of Laborh
@@@gNihon no Keizai Kakusah (The Economic Gap in Japan)

Are We Living in a Barbaric Medieval World?

Before Bush calls for grevengeh he should seriously reflect on the reason why the hatred against the U.S. exploded in this sort of barbaric attack.

Without such a self-examination, how can such terrorism be fundamentally eliminated? It is farcical and the height of stupidity for Bush to call for the elimination of terrorism without considering at all the underlying contradictions and causes.

Of course, we donft support the terrorist action of the Islamic terrorists. And such terrorism is unquestionably barbaric. However, it is not simply a barbaric act, but also the manifestation of some cause.

Class conscious workers throughout the world all know that the U.S. is in no position to say that terrorism is bad no matter what the cause. This is because throughout the past century the U.S. itself has often acted as a gterrorist state—a violent state armed to the teeth—and it continues to behave this way on the world stage. 

The 20th century was the century of U.S. imperialism

Throughout the past century the U.S. government has carried out a large number of barbaric terrorist actions against the people and nations of the world.

For example, in the Middle East the U.S. has supported, and continues to support, state terrorism against the Arabs living within the boundaries of the Israeli state. This is precisely the reason why some Arabs have rejoiced over the fact that the U.S. has been attacked. 

During the Gulf War, the U.S. intervened militarily in the Middle East, and this was fundamentally connected to the fact that this region is the great producer of the oil that the U.S. is desperate to control. In other words, this was fundamentally connected to the interests of American monopoly capital.

The U.S. has ignored the Kyoto Protocol concerning the environmental problem, and along with Israel withdrew from the world conference on racism. Even acknowledging that such meetings and agreements are essentially meaningless, this does not provide a basis for the U.S. government to reject them. As an imperialist state, the U.S. behaves in a nakedly egoistic, self-serving, and self-centered way. In fact, the 20th century was the gAmerican ageh—that is the century of American imperialism. 

Beginning with the occupation of the Philippines at the end of the 19th century, the U.S. emerged as an imperialist state, and through two world wars it developed into the strongest state in the world. Following the Second World War it struggled with the USSR for world hegemony, eventually winning this conflict to become the worldfs only  gsuperh imperialist state in the world.

During this time, backed by its economic and military power, the U.S. has dominated the world, carrying out barbaric acts of violence throughout the world waging a number of reactionary wars. And most of these conflicts of these were fought outside of the borders of the United States.

In these wars, the number of American causalities was only a fraction of that of the opposing countries. For the U.S. no matter how reactionary a war, it could be waged with little loss of human life on the domestic front. For this reason, the U.S. government was able to nonchalantly carry out barbarous acts.

America Doesnft Know the Pain of Imperialist War

Consider, for instance, the war between the United States and Japan.

Seen from either side, this war was a reactionary imperialist war. This war was a wager on who would gain ghegemony over the Pacific.h 

However, in this war there was an enormous difference between Japan and the U.S. in terms of causalities, since there was such a gap between their arsenals of modern weaponry. Moreover, the war was waged near Japan, and the ghome islandsh of Japan (Okinawa, etc.). Also, the territory of Japan was the object of gindiscriminate attacks,h completely destroying residential areas and killing a large number of civilians.

In that imperialist war, the number of causalities on the U.S. gmainlandh was nearly zero. On the other hand, the following list of causalities can be cited:

In the famous March 10, 1945 firebombing of Tokyo, 100,000 people were burned to death in a single night, and a million people lost their homes.

The firebombing of Yokohama claimed a total of 4,616 people, and destroyed about 10,000 homes.

On June 19, dozens of B29s destroyed about 60 percent of city of Shizuoka, wiping out about 25,000 households.

In Hamamatsu, where munitions factories were located, 27 bombing raids occurred, wiping out 92 percent of the homes there, and 1,057 people were killed alone on the fiercest air raid on June 18. 

In Sendai on July 10, an air raid claimed 900 lives, and in Aomori on July 28, 15,000 homes were destroyed, killing 731 people. 

In Nagoya, starting from March in 1945, air attacks intensified, with the number of dead eventually totaling 8,714.

In Osaka from December 1944 until the end of the war, 28 air attacks occurred. In particular, the attack on March 14 killed 4,000 people in a single day, and this number was relatively low due to the preparations in the wake of the fire bombing of Tokyo.

The total of dead in Kobe was around 6,235 people, with roughly 64 percent of the houses destroyed.

In Fukuoka, the 1,146 people were dead or missing from just one air raid on June 19, and about 13,000 homes were destroyed.

The figures above represent only some of the cities that were attacked by B29 bombing raids. In all over 10 million people were driven from their homes, with 2.2 million homes completely destroyed, and about 350,000 people losing their lives.

Finally, there were the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This killed about 160,000 people in Hiroshima at one blow (38 percent of the population), and in Nagasaki 74,000 people were killed.

In considering U.S. imperialism here, couldnft we say that these gindiscriminate attacks,h which killed civilians and even employed nuclear weapons, were gbarbarich?

Some may say that these attacks were justified either because it was war and there was no alternative or that it was grevengeh for Pearl Harbor. Still, the U.S. casualties from Pearl Harbor were only about 2,300. 

Of course, monopoly capital and reactionaries in Japan who waged an imperialist war. bear the responsibility for the Japanese victims. The military and the Emperor did not recognize defeat, continued the war even calling for a war to the end on the mainland and for this reason the U.S. expanded its air raids, and even went so far as to drop two nuclear bombs.

However, just considering the gindiscriminate air attacks,h including the nuclear attacks, it can only be said that these were ginhuman,h and this exposes the reactionary and barbaric nature of imperialist wars. 

There is no basis to say that since this was an imperialist war, gindiscriminate air attacksh were not barbarous. Rather, for the very reason that it was an imperialist war, these attacks ended up being barbaric and reactionary. 

Moreover, if one argues that there is no alternative in war, how could one criticize the terrorist attacks of the Islamic fundamentalists. Didnft Bush himself say that gthis is war.h For the U.S. a state of war means that everything is allowed, including gindiscriminate air attacks.h

Japanese imperialism, of course, also killed many people in brutal military actions in China and other Asian countries. The only difference between the imperialistic barbarity of the Japan and the U.S. is that Japan, in defeat, was forced to gexamineh its own actions and dissolve its own imperialism and militarism (but since the ruling class did not decisively collapse, this was only a temporary situation.), whereas the U.S., as the victor, kept its imperialism and militarism intact. 

What was attacked the other day was this bloated U.S. imperialism and militarism. This imperialism has been dispatched in more recent wars from the Korean War, to the Vietnam War to wars in the Middle East, and been exposed. But the U.S. government has certainly not undertaken any sort of gself-examination.h

What was attacked was this extremely malevolent U.S. imperialism and hegemonism that has ruled the 20th century. This was not, as the bourgeoisie say gan attack against civilization,h or ga challenge to international societyh as the Japanese Communist Party has claimed (Red Banner September 8). 

Of course, violence cannot be justified if it is grevenge,h and the Islamic radicals themselves view their own actions as a form of grevenge,h and continue to do so. 

Even though we criticize the goriginal sinh of American imperialism, and ridicule the logic of grevenge,h we still do not accept the logic of a gclash of civilizationsh in terms of a conflict between the West and Islam (or Asia). 

It is sufficient for us to state that the rational of grevengeh offered by the U.S. is nothing but an unfounded imperialistic rational. Our fundamental standpoint is opposition to all imperialism—Western, Russian, Japanese, as well as Chinese.

Terrorism is not carried out for no reason at all. If terrorism is called barbaric, then American terrorism (and all other actions that take the form of gstate terrorismh) is guilty of the same crime. 

There is no way to say that state terrorism is justified, but all other forms of terrorism are not. If terrorism is barbaric, the U.S. should begin by abandoning its own terrorism.

What the U.S. needs to do first is not the barbaric and medieval action of seeking gvengeance,h but a fundamental examination of its own imperialistic nature.

The Impudent gLogich of the United States

The U.S. always behaves this way. That is, even while being armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, they have the cheek to refuse any other country to have these same weapons.

If the U.S. were not so arrogant, they would abandon their nuclear weapons and make a declaration against these weapons being held by any countries throughout the world. This is gcommonh sense in terms of a non-hypocritical position. How can the U.S. expect anyone to take seriously the idea that they alone should be allowed to amass a massive nuclear arsenal and use it to threaten and suppress the entire world, but other countries should not be allowed to have such weapons?

In other words, the U.S. behaves as if it can indulge in any evil act, but others cannot do the same. How can a state that displays such naked egoism, of a gimmorality,h how claim to be the leader of the world and gain the trust of other countries?
 
This U.S. is the most tyrannical and shameless state in the world, and it has been behaving any way it deems fit throughout the past century.

There are many people throughout the world who have seen their relatives killed or lost their homes as a result of the policies of the U.S. government.

The rule of American monopoly capital has increased the poverty of the world, while on the other hand the country enjoys the highest level of consumption in the world, with an astronomical level of energy consumption per capita—thus a high level of environmentally hazardous CO2 production.

Americafs slogan of gfree trade,h despite claiming to be a just cause, only serves to cover the exploitation of the world by American monopoly capital, and what is worse, when it suits its interests the U.S. shamelessly adopts trade protectionism.

This sort of opportunistic, self-serving approach, has only driven much of the world into poverty. The fact that many are deaf to the calls of liberalism and democracy and have reacted against the United States, is again the fault of the U.S. policies.

It has already become perfectly clear to the world that no matter how much the U.S. claims that its own barbarous terrorism, i.e. its gretaliation,h is for the sake of freedom and democracy, this is nothing but deceitful slogan that aims to cover its vicious, self-satisfied acts and imperialist rule of the world.

Even though the greligioush rule of Islamic fundamentalists is a medieval folly that seeks to return to the dark ages, and is in fact an impossible anachronism, this still does not justify the false words of liberalism and democracy which seek to cover the exploitation and barbarous world rule of monopoly capital. 

What is necessary for the United States is not grevenge,h but self-examinationh and criticism of its own imperialism and hegemonism.

And if this is not possible, this means that American imperialism must be overthrown and swept away, and will be done so, by the workers of the world.

In fact, the fact that the mainland of American imperialism has been attacked in the first year of the new century can only be a sign of the beginning of the fall of this enormous gempire.h  

Just as the Roman Empire, feudalistic empires, and then a number of bourgeois empires have fallen, so too will the gempireh of American monopoly capital inevitably decline, and this marks the first step.

The screams heard from within the American gempireh now for revenge and vengeance, will only precipitate its own decline. This is an inevitable glawh of history.

 (Translated by Roy)