RICHARD COHEN, MORAL CRIPPLE
Japanophobia at the Washington Post

COHEN'S AVERSION TO RESEARCH

To anyone who has been following this story, Cohen's complete ignorance of the subject he has chosen to write about is baffling: Certainly this prestigious pundit, who sits at the epicenter of one of the world's premier news operations, has the resources to do a little research. If he had, Cohen would have discovered that a Navy investigation has revealed that the civilians on board USS Greeneville were indeed a distraction, according to the testimony of several crew members – and negligence was rampant. Cohen could have found this out had he plonked down a few quarters for a copy of the Washington Times, which, on February 23 (and again on February 26), reported the text of a confidential Navy report:

"The location and number of civilian visitors did interfere with the ability of the OOD and commanding officer to use the fire control system and converse with the [technician] in ascertaining the contact picture from the time the ship was preparing for periscope depth until the emergency blow was conducted. Better distribution of the civilian visitors could have dramatically improved this situation."

A LAME CLAIM

Even more astonishing is Cohen's lame claim that he cannot tell us how the Greeneville surfaced under a Japanese fishing vessel. The idea that anyone is his position could be unaware of the developing story – that a US sub, on a joyride for the benefit of VIP civilians, recklessly and needlessly snuffed out the lives of 9 Japanese, including 4 high school students – is just not credible. Where has he been the last few weeks – on the lam with Marc Rich? This feigned ignorance is a verbal fig-leaf for the sheer ugliness that follows. Oh, sure we're sorry, says Cohen, who lists the distinguished roster of official apologizers, from President Bush on down, and then avers that this has not been enough for the Japanese,

"who are demanding more than they are entitled to. The constant calls for more and more apologies. The implications that, somehow, the Americans are unfeeling and cavalier about the loss of Japanese life. These are calumnies. The collision was a tragedy, but it was an accident. The Greeneville was not even in Japanese waters – it was off Hawaii. If the Greeneville was being reckless, it was more than likely that American lives would have been in danger."

QUALITY TRUMPS QUANTITY

But there were no "constant calls for more and more apologies" – it was the quality of the apology that mattered to the Japanese, and not only that but the key question of whom was making the apology to whom. Yes, it was very thoughtful that US government officials, including the President, expressed sadness and took responsibility for the tragedy, but what the Japanese wanted was a direct communication from the sub's commander to the grieving families of the deceased. Was this too much to ask? Apparently so, since it took commander Scott D. Waddle almost two weeks to issue a personal apology: on Tuesday he arrived in Honolulu, where he met with a Japanese diplomat and, according to reports, bowed low and delivered his apology as "tears fell from his eyes." Waddle also expressed his willingness to go to Japan and meet with the relatives of the missing. As Elaine Sciolino put it in the New York Times: "Commander Waddle's gesture may help allay anger in Japan, where the tradition of making amends with a formal bow and a teary apology is considered extremely important." As an Agence France Presse story on Waddle's Honolulu sojourn pointed out: "Earlier Waddle had expressed regret over the collision but stopped short of apologizing, in a letter sent to Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) through his lawyers in Washington."

NONE SO BLIND

But Western concerns about legal liability did not go over well in Japan, where the Western custom of refusing to take responsibility for anything is unthinkable. That Cohen is wearing cultural blinders is reflected in his unwillingness or inability to understand what the Associated Press reporter writing the story of Waddle's apology stated clearly in the first paragraph of his dispatch:

"After apologies from President Bush and other top officials, the families of the nine Japanese presumed dead received the words of remorse they wanted most – from the captain of the U.S. submarine that scattered their loved ones in the sea."

SALTING THE WOUND

In response to the news that Waddle hand-delivered 13 apologies addressed to the families of the nine missing, one of the grieving parents said: "I wish he had done it sooner" – but better late than never. Perhaps this gesture will reassure the Japanese that all Americans are not rampaging barbarians – but Cohen's column is calculated to exacerbate that suspicion, pouring vitriol on an open wound:

"This constant call for one apology after another may well reflect a cultural difference between Japan and the United States, but it also smacks of epic hypocrisy. It took the Japanese forever to acknowledge that approximately 200,000 Asian women were forced to become the sex slaves of the Japanese military during World War II. Only grudgingly did Japan compensate some of them and even more grudgingly did it offer remorse. As far as some of the surviving comfort women' are concerned, no apology has ever been forthcoming. It has been the same story when it comes to other examples of Japanese war crimes before and during World War II. The Japanese have been extremely reluctant to own up to such barbarities as the so-called Rape of Nanking."

THE MARK OF CAIN

It is Cohen who is the hypocrite. For it was he who wrote a column, when Clinton apologized to the Africans for slavery, denying that he bore any responsibility, wailing that he and his people were suffering over in Europe at the time. "Why should I, as some in Congress propose, apologize for slavery? After all, during that era my ancestors were all in Europe, living with very few civil rights themselves." He didn't feel any remorse – and rightly so, since he had nothing to do with the institution of slavery, and so could hardly apologize for an institution he neither approved nor supported. So why, then, must today's Japanese take responsibility for the Rape of Nanking, which took place in 1937 – since most of them were not even born yet? The collective guilt of the Japanese people – a guilt that, in Cohen's view, must last for all eternity – is simply assumed. With all the obfuscation and sloganeering that goes on in the holy war against "racism," the true meaning of the word has been lost: but wasn't this its original definition – assigning a tribal mark of Cain to an entire people?

HATE MAIL

I get a lot of mail from my readers, and I enjoy reading it: most of it is kudos (thanks, guys!) but I do get my share of hate mail, and none of my columns in recent memory have provoked so much of the latter as my commentary on the sinking of the Ehime Maru. All of it sounded like Cohen's column – only cruder, much cruder. My outraged correspondents made explicit in their hateful missives what was only implicit in Cohen's venomous column: those [expletive deleted] "Japs," and "gooks" deserved what they got – after all, didn't they bomb Pearl Harbor? And what about the Bataan death march? My correspondents, too, were quick to bring up the long-ago rape of Nanking. This is the tribal mentality that infects American culture, and especially its imperial capital, and it is damned ugly.

A PURPOSEFUL UGLINESS

As with virtually all the ugliness in this country – most of it concentrated in Washington – Cohen's has a political purpose: to challenge the growing furor in Japan over the outrageous behavior of US troops and their officers stationed in that still-occupied country. Cohen complains that

"The accident has been conflated with the behavior of some servicemen on Okinawa, a Japanese island. It has also been conflated with the remarks of US Lt. Gen. Earl Hailston referring in an e-mail to Japanese lawmakers as 'nuts . . . and a bunch of wimps.' Put it all together and the newspaper Asahi Shimbun recently wondered if the security provided by the United States is worth all the trouble. 'We cannot help asking whether security must come at the expense of people's lives,' it said in a recent editorial. I cannot help asking if it ever heard of an accident."

A DANGEROUS ROUTINE

It all depends on what you mean by "accident" – to paraphrase Cohen's formerly favorite US politician. For if these submarine joyrides staged for the benefit of VIP civilians were just a matter of course – a routine perk doled out to certain "opinion leaders," as widely reported – then it was just a matter of time before an incident such as this occurred. In recognition of the inherent dangers of the practice, the Navy has since discontinued the program: so, yes, it was an "accident" – but one that should never have happened, and would never have happened except in a world where political influence and buying "access" is everything and the ordinary concerns of everyday folk (no matter what their nationality) are less than nothing. It would never have happened, in short, if the poisonous atmosphere emanating out of Washington hadn't permeated virtually every aspect of American life, including the military. Cohen, who is practically a living symbol of the pernicious political culture that flourishes inside the Beltway, has no right to call anyone a hypocrite – as his past comments on the question of apologies make all too plain.

APOLOGIAS

When George W. Bush went to Bob Jones University, and then got down on his hands and knees and blubbered his apology, it wasn't enough for Cohen: "In turning himself into the martyr of this affair, Bush shows once again that he does not understand what he did," he harrumphed. [Washington Post, 2/29/00] The ritual humiliation of the tobacco companies, who even assisted and approved their evisceration at the hands of Congress, did not appease the vengeful Cohen, who demanded: "I feel that all of us – especially those of us who ever smoked – should get an apology from Big Tobacco, a humble and most humbling 'I am sorry' accompanied by some pretty fair groveling. I want contrition." Yes, but not now – and not for the benefit of the Japanese, who are, after all, collectively guilty of the crimes of their ancestors, and are probably right behind the Germans in terms of their inherent political correctness.

'DON'T MAKE US SORRY'

This, of course, is what it all boils down to: the Japanese are an occupied people, a defeated people, and as far as Cohen is concerned they had better damn well stay defeated. Sure, our joyriding sailors killed nine of your citizens, and we're real sorry about that, "but we are the same guys who have provided Japan with a security shield ever since World War II, helped rebuild the country and have been its steadfast ally and best friend. Don't make us sorry."

WELL, I'M SORRY!

Well, this American is sorry, and isn't afraid to say so. I'm sorry that we provoked Japan into war, and that our lying President – who, as Robert Stinnett has proven, had prior knowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor – was finally successful into getting us into that war through the back door. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as even his apologists admit, "lied us into war" – as Clare Booth Luce succinctly put it in her Keynote Address at the 1944 Republican National Convention – and as for Pearl Harbor, he had been hoping for it, planning for it, counting on it. FDR's Secretary of War (yes, they called things by their right names back then) Henry Stimson described the process when he confided to his diary the discussion at a White House meeting on November 25, 1941: "The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves." I'm sorry that we nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when the Japanese government was already indicating its willingness to sue for peace under reasonable terms. I'm sorry that our barbaric military and political leaders held out for the up-until-then unheard of demand for "unconditional surrender" and saw fit to make Japan the proving ground for their nuclear nightmare. I'm sorry that US military personnel are raping, committing arson, and generally creating havoc and resentment among the Japanese people: no one has yet explained to the American people why we need to continue the military occupation of Japan at tremendous cost to the taxpayers over half a century after the end of World War II – and I'm sure the Japanese are beginning to wonder, too. Isn't it about time we got out?

IMPERIAL HAUTEUR

But, most of all, I'm sorry that our American elites – and is there a journalist more representative of the species than Cohen? – are so morally blinded by arrogance that they cannot see why this has become a political issue in Japan. It frankly sickens me even to contemplate it, for it is the same imperial hauteur that blinds the elites to their own crimes in Kosovo, in Iraq, and around the world. It is, in short, a symptom, and a particularly grotesque one, of the disease of Empire that is gradually but determinedly eating away at the national character, and our own sense of decency. This is what it means to be truly decadent – to be without a moral sensibility, especially in regard to oneself – and the rot starts from the head. Our elites, in short, are moral cripples, without the means or the inclination to distinguish right from wrong. In this they are like children – but immensely powerful, and therefore dangerous, children, whose "accidents" can create havoc on a massive scale.