The Fortress of Solitude (Japans base in Iraq)

http://www.counterpunch.com/


I've visited lots of Japanese castles, from Kumamoto in Kyushu to Matsumae in Hokkaido. Some sit atop hills, enjoying a commanding view of the surrounding area. Some are encircled by moats, or twisting roadways designed to thwart attacks. Most castles date to the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, or are modern concrete reconstructions of fortresses first built during those centuries. They typically sport elegant interiors, combining austerity with opulence, and outside the towering donjon barracks for the lord's samurai retainers. I'm reminded of those castles when I read about Japan's present-day fortified base, outside of Samawah, in Iraq. Far to the west of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" envisioned by Japanese imperialists in the 1930s, this is the first Japanese military base outside Japan since 1945, the first year of the U.S. occupation. It was constructed to please that former occupying power, and to abet its latest occupation. It may be more defensively aloof than the citadels in Edo or Osaka ever were; J. Sean Curtin, of Asia Times Online, likens it to Superman's hideout, "The Fortress of Solitude."

Samawah is a city of 120,000 in the south, midway between Basra and Baghdad on the Euphrates, taken by U.S. forces after fierce resistance in April 2003. The fortress, housing about 560 modern samurai, perches on a hilltop ten kilometers outside the city, surrounded by a moat and zigzagging roads. These are all "lined with concrete walls and sandbags to prevent vehicles approaching the base at high speeds."

Curtin calls this "one of the most high-tech and expensive military camps ever constructed, one that includes a karaoke bar, massage parlor and gymnasium It may well be one of the most formidable military camps planet Earth has ever seen. And those given to hyperbole might say Iraq will not have witnessed the erection of such an extraordinary structure since King Nebuchadnezzar II began building the biblical Tower of Babel in what is now Babylon."

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Where to send them, in war-torn Iraq? Samawah was chosen because it was one of the few towns outside the Kurdish zone where "a foreigner can still venture out and eat at a restaurant." The area was patrolled by Dutch troops who, given the limited assignment of the Japanese, would have to provide them security. So since the SDF troops arrived in February 2004, they've been accompanied by heavily armed Dutch convoys on every excursion outside the castle. The non-combat designation notwithstanding, last May a Dutch sergeant was killed by the resistance on a nearby Euphrates bridge crossing, another has been killed in Samawah since, and the base has taken fire, so the supposedly safe, humanitarian mission has sparked much controversy in Japan. Koizumi himself recently called the situation "severe," however adding "Samawah is not a combat zone at present, and it will continue to be a non-combat zone."
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the article ends with these thoughts on 'change':

"The sound of the Gion Temple bells echoes the impermanence of all things." So wrote the unknown author of the samurai epic Heike Monogatari, as he opened his account of events in turbulent twelfth-century Japan, when a new order based on new rules toppled the old system. He referred to the Buddhist law of mujo: everything in the cosmos is subject to change and decline. Much is changing rapidly in Bush's brave new world, and Japan's "sincere" renunciation of war, constitutionally intended to be "forever," is no exception. The sturdy defenses of the Samawah fortress project the truth that Japan remains an imperialist country. But Koizumi's declining poll numbers affirm the truth that the Japanese people want peace, and reject the pressure from Washington to endorse Bush's empire-building agenda. The subservient alliance with the U.S. is also subject to mujo, and will end "like a dream on a spring night"---whenever the Japanese people organize to effect its fated fall.




never say never