History and war crimes

I must admit that I was surprised by the number of Americans critical of the Chinese protests against the newly approved Japanese history ‘altering’ textbooks. They call China’s protests hypocrisy. Their logic seemed to be based on China’s 3 large skeletons - Tibet, Tiananmen and Falun Gong.

It is always interesting to see Americans talk about the hypocrisy of other nations, given that it has one of the most thorough genocide in history against the Natives, and is now an invader and occupier of two foreign nations. How do we square that?

To say China should not criticize Japan is like saying Israel should not condemn Germany, should it decide to alter history and down play its atrocity during WWII, because Israel is having a ‘territorial dispute’ with Palestine. What is naïve and childish is the inability to distinguish invasion, occupation, genocide, state sanctioned abuse and exploitation based on race and gender, from policy failures.

We should, in a separate conversation, talk about Tibet, Tiananmen and Falun Gong just as we should address Native American reservations, reparation to descendents of American slaves, inner city police brutalities, and brutal suppression of anti-war and anti-WTO protesters and oh, let’s not forget Waco.

What we should not do is to confuse issues. Japan should face the truth about its history of brutality against other Asian countries. Germany has done so after WWII so should Japan.

Many of our American friends support Japan’s bid on the U.N. Security Council. Has Japan shown that it deserves the U.N. Security Council seat by supporting every war the west has waged since WWII?