Why Are U.S. Forces in Japan?
World War II ended in Japan with the dropping of two atomic bombs in 1945. American troops are still stationed there and have been ever since the end of the war. Why? What exactly is the purpose of this occupation?
“The most famous expression of this came from Lt. Gen. Henry C. Stackpole, commander of the 3rd Marine Division in Okinawa, in a 1990 interview with the Washington Post. His forces, he claimed, were like a `cap in the bottle,’ preventing the monster of revived Japanese militarism from jumping out and, as in the first half of the twentieth century, threatening other East Asian countries.”
What Is Blowback, Exactly?
The title of the book is explicitly explained on two separate pages. Both use almost exactly the same metaphorical phrase. The first explanation expands outward into the purely theoretical. By the second occurrence excerpted here, the context which follows is much more precise and concrete:
“`Blowback’ is shorthand for saying that a nation reaps what it sows, even if it does not fully know or understand what it has sown.”
The Effect of Long-Term Occupation
What is the true effect of long-term military occupation in a foreign country by another country’s weaponry? Is it a warm feeling of parental protection? Or, perhaps, just the opposite: it inspires rebellion against the authorities? Or could there be a third option entirely removed?
“The U.S. military likes to say that the noise from its aircraft is the `sound of freedom’ but many Okinawans have been so deafened that they can no longer hear it.”
But It Does Keep Out the Elephants
One of the more vivid and eccentric uses of metaphor in the book is also one which can be routinely applied to any number of situations. Although certainly directed toward a specific circumstance within context, readers should feel free to extricate it from that context and liberally apply to circumstances of their own discourse. It’s just that effective:
“Elephant bane is a chemical repellent spread by African farmers to keep elephants out of their gardens and orchards. Pentagon theorists, Colonel Summers suggests, are like the New Yorker who spreads elephant bane around his apartment and then extols its benefits because he encounters no elephants.”
The World Needs a Villain
In order to maintain social cohesion on the planet, nothing works quite so well as a villain that can be readily identified. A concrete antagonist whom the political leaders can propagandize into a boogeyman. That this is so can be easily enough proved by comparing the last half of the 20th century with the first quarter of the 21st century:
“With communism long gone as an enemy, the new, abstract danger is `instability.’"
