While the U.S. is determined to keep Israel as both its watch dog and attack dog in the Middle East, (see Gaza Update: “[This is] one of the most barbaric moments in human history” – The “Humanitarian Pause”), there are very serious developments in U.S. war preparations in the East.
Thursday June 27 the RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific) military exercises begin. “We will not stand silently by while RIMPAC causes destruction of Hawai’i’s land, sea, and air in order to train the militaries of 29 countries to work together to practice for war on other countries,” says World Can’t Wait Hawai’i, which along with Ann Wright, is organizing protests of RIMPAC.
The U.S. is aggressively surrounding Taiwan and China with bases and air, naval and new forms of armed forces. See the map in The New York Times report A New Pacific Arsenal to Counter China. Biden has paid great attention to tightening U.S. influence on the region, bringing Australia and Japan into tighter military dependence and alliance with the U.S. In the process, Japanese leaders amended its constitution to formalize Japan’s armed forces.
The people of Okinawa, long colonized by Japan and now the poorest of Japanese prefectures, bear a great burden from this as 70% of U.S. forces in Japan are based on their tiny islands. Because they are strategically placed between Taiwan, Japan and China, 15% of their land is covered in U.S., and now Japanese, bases despite broad public opposition to their presence.
I was invited to speak about this at the June 23 Okinawa Memorial Day in NYC. It was special to be able to speak about my father’s experience in the Battle of Okinawa, 1945, where, as a 21 year old draftee into a segregated racist Army, he witnessed the U.S. military killing Okinawans (probably 140,000, all civilians), and developed a lifelong opposition to “American” wars.
