I just cannot understand this
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| Fri, 04-23-2004 - 11:44am |
TOKYO, April 22 — The young Japanese civilians taken hostage in Iraq returned home this week, not to the warmth of a yellow-ribbon embrace but to a disapproving nation's cold stare.
Three of them, including a woman who helped street children on the streets of Baghdad, appeared on television two weeks ago as their knife-brandishing kidnappers threatened to slit their throats. A few days after their release, they landed here on Sunday, in the eye of a peculiarly Japanese storm.
"You got what you deserve!" read one hand-written sign at the airport where they landed. "You are Japan's shame," another wrote on the Web site of one of the former hostages. They had "caused trouble" for everybody. The government, not to be outdone, announced it would bill the former hostages $6,000 for air fare.
Beneath the surface of Japan's ultra-sophisticated cities lie the hierarchical ties that have governed this island nation for centuries and that, at moments of crises, invariably reassert themselves. The former hostages' transgression was to ignore a government advisory against traveling to Iraq. But their sin, in a vertical society that likes to think of itself as classless, was to defy what people call here "okami," or, literally, "what is higher."
Treated like criminals, the three former hostages have gone into hiding, effectively becoming prisoners inside their own homes. The kidnapped woman, Nahoko Takato, was last seen arriving at her parents' house, looking defeated and dazed from tranquilizers, flanked by relatives who helped her walk and bow deeply before reporters, as a final apology to the nation.
Dr. Satoru Saito, a psychiatrist who examined the three former hostages twice since their return, said the stress they were enduring now was "much heavier" than what they experienced during their captivity in Iraq. Asked to name their three most stressful moments, the former hostages told him, in ascending order: the moment when they were kidnapped on their way to Baghdad, the knife-wielding incident, and the moment they watched a television show the morning after their return here and realized Japan's anger with them.
"Let's say the knife incident, which lasted about 10 minutes, ranks 10 on a stress level," Dr. Saito said in an interview at his clinic on Thursday. "After they came back to Japan and saw the morning news show, their stress level ranked 12."
To the angry Japanese, the first three hostages — Nahoko Takato, 34, who started a nonprofit organization to help Iraqi street children; Soichiro Koriyama, 32, a freelance photographer; and Noriaki Imai, 18, a freelance writer interested in the issue of depleted uranium munitions — had acted selfishly. Two others kidnapped and released in a separate incident — Junpei Yasuda, 30, a freelance journalist, and Nobutaka Watanabe, 36, a member of an anti-war group — were equally guilty.
Pursuing individual goals by defying the government and causing trouble for Japan was simply unforgivable. But the freed hostages did get official praise from one government: the United States.
"Well, everybody should understand the risk they are taking by going into dangerous areas," said Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. "But if nobody was willing to take a risk, then we would never move forward. We would never move our world forward.
"And so I'm pleased that these Japanese citizens were willing to put themselves at risk for a greater good, for a better purpose. And the Japanese people should be very proud that they have citizens like this willing to do that."
In contrast, Yasuo Fukuda, the Japanese government's spokesman offered this about the captives' ordeal: "They may have gone on their own but they must consider how many
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Alicia ~ Sahm to Katie (10/97) and Deanna (9/99).

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By the way, the most recent edition of The Economist talks about the Vietnam Syndrome. I can't provide a link since it's considered premium material but the article defines the syndrome as "scepticism either prudent or debilitating according to your political taste, about both the legitimacy and the efficacy of American using military power overseas". Apparently the term "VULCAN" was also used by author James Mann to describe members of Bush's war cabinet. I quote the last section of the Economist article:
That Mekong moment
Yet even if the soldiers' standing remains high, the Vietnam Syndrome still haunts Mr. Bush in two ways. First, the Iraq war is dividing the country in much the same profound way that Vietnam once did. Though most people continue to support the war (albeit with growing reservations), the left regards it an utterly illegitimate enterprise. Second, the possibility that Iraq is indeed a quagmire grows ever larger. In 1997 Paul Wolfowitz, the most important neo-con Vulcan, justified the first Bush administration's decision not to march into Baghdad on the grounds that "conceivably, this could have led the United States into a more or less permanent occupation of a country that could not govern itself but where the rule of a foreign occupier would be increasingly resented". That looks a lot more sober and prescient than the more recent dreams of using Iraq to inspire a democratic revolution in the Middle East.
Perhaps the most striking historical analogy has less to do with the syndrome than with the personnel. Mr. Mann argues that Mr. Bush's Vulcans closely resemble the "best and brightest" who helped get JFK into Vietnam. Like their predecessors, they possess boundless optimism in American power, and boundless faith in their own ideas. They are also open to the charge that they knew more about airy-fairy theories than the situation on the ground. Donald Rumsfeld even looks a bit like Robert McNamara, the Vietnam-era defense secretary. Vietnam looks set to haunt the Vulcans for some time to come."
Gettingahandle
Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.
I agree with what Collin Powell said: "Well, everybody should understand the risk they are taking by going into dangerous areas," said Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. "But if nobody was willing to take a risk, then we would never move forward. We would never move our world forward.
"And so I'm pleased that these Japanese citizens were willing to put themselves at risk for a greater good, for a better purpose. And the Japanese people should be very proud that they have citizens like this willing to do that."
The argument that by putting ourselves in known dangerous situations is irresponsible because then someone else would feel they have to rescue us is lame and definately has no comparison to hikers or climbers and someone going into a war-torn area to try and help the people on the streets. The Japanese government should consider how their treatment of these 3 is giving them a blacker eye to their society as a whole than the so-called "trouble" they "caused".
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