Japan/US relations as of NKorean deal, in danger?

In a key parting of the ways the U.S. decided to identify non-proliferation-rather than denuclearization-as the focus of the North Korea negotiations.

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Japan gets stiffed on NKorean kidnappings during discussions;

-1st Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma, criticized the Iraq war as "a mistake";
-Vice President Cheney refused to meet with Kyuma during his visit;
-US has shown itself to be less than enthusiastic in backing Japan's campaign for a permanent Security Council seat;
-new Okinawan governor still wants Ginowan Air Field out verrrrry soon w/out new base built yet at Nago;
-instead of making Okinawa take US deal Kyuma criticized US for being "bossy";
-Japan to pay for US troop location to Guam?!?;
-Japan backs out of Iranian energy deal;
-sanctions on Iran could halt Japan's import of oil-10% from Iran,


http://counterpunch.org/china02202007.html

final analysis of author

Without question, the U.S.-Japan alliance will survive America's betrayal at the negotiating table in Beijing.

But Shinzo Abe may not.

And the hope that Tokyo and Washington would find an identity of interests that would create an impregnable united front against North Korea, China, and Russia in Northeast Asia is dead, a victim of fundamentally diverging interests and ruthless political opportunism by the Bush administration.

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You know that article is written just like something one might find in a supermarket checkout line.

I stopped read this "rag" after the following line;

Okinawa is host to some 28,000 American troops plus an equal number of camp followers and Defense Department civilians".

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the insinuation is quite clear. I personally, as a former Marine, take great offense at anyone anywhere calling my family "camp followers".

Whether or not the article itself has any other worthwhile information, it's use as a valid source of reliable information is called into question by it's use of this and other terminology that would never make it's way past the editors of the most accepted and reliable main stream press or media.

It does sound kind of funny. When I first read it I was thinking,
is that local Okinawans who work on the base? Or what.
But then quickly realized the author meant family members of soldiers that follow them to the overseas base.


It didn't seem a deragatory term to me.
Like, I wouldn't say it means anything like "groupies".

Having read a number of Chalmers Johnson's (the author of that particular quote) work (some of it here and here),
I think he's got bigger fish to fry than to attempt to diss soldiers' families.


the whole quote (in case it matters) reads:

"thirty-eight [bases] are located in Okinawa, where they occupy some 23,700 hectares or 19 percent of the choicest territory of the main island. Okinawa is host to some 28,000 American troops plus an equal number of camp followers and Defense Department civilians".

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