DDI+2010+-+BQ+Lab+-+Japan+Patriarchy-Imperialism+1AC+-+7-24-10

Futenma 1AC - Inherency

While the era of U.S military bases is receding, Washington is clinging desperately to a base it has no utility for, and US-Japan relations are suffering as a result.

John **__Feffer__**, staff writer for Foreign Policy in Focus, 3/4/**__10__**, []

For a country with a pacifist constitution, Japan is bristling with weaponry. Indeed, that Asian land has long functioned as a huge aircraft carrier and naval base for U.S. military power. We couldn’t have fought the Korean and Vietnam Wars without the nearly 90 military bases scattered around the islands of our major Pacific ally. Even today, Japan remains the anchor of what’s left of America’s Cold War containment policy when it comes to China and North Korea. From the Yokota and Kadena air bases, the United States can dispatch troops and bombers across Asia, while the Yokosuka base near Tokyo is the largest American naval installation outside the United States. __You’d think that, with so many Japanese bases, the United States wouldn’t make a big fuss about closing one of them__. __Think again. The current battle over the Marine Corps air base at Futenma on Okinawa -- an island prefecture almost 1,000 miles south of Tokyo that hosts about three dozen U.S. bases and 75% of American forces in Japan -- is just revving up. In fact, Washington seems ready to stake its reputation and its relationship with a new Japanese government on the fate of that base alone, which reveals much about U.S. anxieties in the age of Obama.__ __What makes this so strange__, on the surface, __is that Futenma is an obsolete base__. Under an agreement the Bush administration reached with the previous Japanese government, the U.S. was already planning to move most of the Marines now at Futenma to the island of Guam. __Nonetheless, the Obama administration is insisting, over the protests of Okinawans and the objections of Tokyo, on completing that agreement by building a new partial replacement base__ in a less heavily populated part of Okinawa. The current row between Tokyo and Washington is no mere “Pacific squall,” as Newsweek dismissively [|described it]. __After six decades of saying yes to everything the United States has demanded, Japan finally seems on the verge of saying no to something that matters greatly to Washington,__ __and the relationship that Dwight D. Eisenhower once called an “indestructible alliance” is displaying ever more hairline fractures. Worse yet, from the Pentagon’s perspective, Japan’s resistance might prove infectious -- one major reason why the United States is putting its alliance on the line over the closing of a single antiquated military base and the building of another of dubious strategic value.__ During the Cold War, the Pentagon worried that countries would fall like dominoes before a relentless Communist advance. Today, the Pentagon worries about a different kind of domino effect. In Europe, NATO countries are refusing to throw their full support behind the U.S. war in Afghanistan. In Africa, no country has stepped forward to host the headquarters of the Pentagon’s new Africa Command. In Latin America, little Ecuador has kicked the U.S. out of its air base in Manta. __All of these are undoubtedly symptoms of the decline in respect for American power that the U.S. military is experiencing globally. But the current pushback in Japan is the surest sign yet that the American empire of overseas military bases has reached its high-water mark and will soon recede__.

Futenma 1AC – Inherency

U.S. soldiers use aggression and sexual violence against girls and women in the localities surrounding the bases, in acts that aren’t taken seriously by the government. Gwyn **__Kirk__**, research analyst with the Global Fund for Women and a Foreign Policy In Focus columnist **__&__** John **__Feffer__**, author and international affairs representative in Eastern Europe and East Asia, March 14, 20**__08__**, [], "GENDER AND U.S. BASES IN ASIA PACIFIC" __Military personnel are trained to dehumanize “others” as part of their preparation for war. Their aggressiveness, frustration, and fear spill over into local communities__, for example __in acts of violence against girls and women.__ Although most U.S. troops do not commit such violations, __these incidents happen far too often to be accepted as aberrations__. __Racist and sexist stereotypes about Asian women – as exotic, accommodating, and sexually compliant – are an integral part of such violence. These crimes inflame local hostility and resistance to U.S. military bases and operations, and have long-lasting effects on victims/survivors. Cases are seriously underreported due to women’s shame and fear or their belief that perpetrators will not be apprehended.__ __This pattern of sexual violence reveals structural inequalities between Asian communities and the U.S. military__, encoded in Status of Forces Agreements and Visiting Forces Agreements. __The military sees each crime as an isolated act committed by individual soldiers. Local communities that protest these crimes see gendered violence as a structural issue that is perpetuated by legal, political, economic, and social structures.__ __Military prostitution continues despite the military’s declared “zero tolerance” policy__, affirmed in Department of Defense memoranda and Executive Order 13387 that President George W. Bush signed in October 2005. These days, most women working in clubs near U.S. bases in South Korea and Japan/Okinawa are from the Philippines due to low wages, high unemployment, and the absence of sustainable economic development at home. These governments admit Philippine women on short-term entertainer visas. __Servicemen are still protected from prosecution for many infringements of local laws and customs. The sexual activity of foreign-based troops, including (but not exclusively) through prostitution, has had serious effects on women’s health, boosting rates of HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, drug and alcohol dependency, and mental illness.__ U.S. Navy ships visit the Philippines for R & R and make stops at Pattaya (Thailand) where the sex-tourism industry flourished during the Vietnam War.

Futenma 1AC – Plan Text

Resolved: The United States federal government should remove all UnitedStates military presence from Japan. We’ll clarify.

Futenma 1AC – Sexual Violence Advantage

The US militaristic presence in Okinawa is imperialistic and justifies and perpetuates unthinkable abuses against women.
 * __P__**arty for **__S__**ocialism and **__L__**iberation, 3/4/**__08__**, []

__ The United States military presence in Japan has stoked fresh anger and resentment after a recent series of attacks on women. __ Staff Sgt. Tyrone Luther Hadnott, 38, was arrested on Feb. 10 __amid the outcry of the people of Okinawa for the rape of a 14-year-old girl.__ Shortly thereafter, __another U.S. soldier was accused of sexually assaulting a Filipino woman at a hotel—the second such incident in less than ten days. Four months earlier, U.S. servicemen from the Iwakuni U.S. Marine Corp Air Station gang raped a woman in Hiroshima City.__ The population’s justified rage has forced the U.S. military to take face-saving measures restraining its occupying forces. The U.S. military limited some 45,000 troops, civilian employees and their families to bases, workplaces or off-base homes indefinitely on Feb. 20, going beyond a midnight curfew already in place. On Feb. 29, prosecutors released Hadnott and dropped charges against him, reportedly because the victim chose not to pursue the case.

By March 3, the military had already announced an end to the curfew for civilians and a relaxation of the curfew for military personnel to only cover late night and early morning hours. The announcement came despite violations of the curfew, including one where an intoxicated soldier smashed an office window with a steel pipe. __More often than not, U.S. soldiers are permitted to do as they please and criminal actions are hushed up or the offender is given a slap on the wrist. These heinous criminal acts only add to the grievances behind decades of opposition to U.S. presence on the island chain.__ __It is a typical trend for U.S. military personnel camped out on foreign lands to abuse the local population. Such incidents rarely surface.__

__Violence against women is a common offense committed by imperialist soldiers. Such recurring criminal acts are not merely coincidental nor do they spring from a handful of "bad apples"__ such as Hadnott. __Violence against the local population near U.S. military bases abroad is the direct result of the racism each soldier is indoctrinated with, and women are particularly vulnerable.__ The __Army does its fair share to create the conditions for such crimes. The U.S. military uses 7,000 Filipinas to serve its soldiers in Okinawa__. During the first Gulf War, rest-and-recreation ships were reportedly floated for the U.S. servicemen with 50 Filipino women each__. As__ __of one year ago, 900 Filipinas worked for $200 a month at "massage parlors" inside U.S. camps and bases in Iraq__.

In that context, the November 2005 rape of a 22-year-old Filipino woman by U.S. soldiers in Olongapo City, Philippines may have been shocking, but was hardly surprising. When Lance Corporal Daniel Smith was found guilty, the U.S. government quickly negotiated his release into U.S. custody by threatening to suspend joint military exercises in the Philippines. U.S. military presence in Japan

It is not commonly highlighted that the United States has several major bases in Japan. Following its defeat in World War II, Japan was reduced to the status of a regional junior partner to the United States, who has established a number of military bases in Japanese territory. The bases are a springboard for projecting of U.S. power into the Korean peninsula and the rest of East Asia. Okinawa was the site of significant battle in World War II. The United States has kept bases in Japan despite returning formal control of the islands to Japan by 1972. The U.S. base in Okinawa is highly valuable for its hegemony in the region. __Okinawans, an oppressed nation within Japanese territory, have long fought back against U.S. occupation.__ __For decades, Okinawans have voiced their opposition to the crime, crowding and noise brought by U.S. troops__. Protests in the 1990s forced the closing of a Marine air station, and now a plan to build a new airstrip on the island has stirred persistent opposition. The United States does not want any element of a popular threat to its presence in Okinawa. U.S. military officials have apologized profusely and Ambassador Thomas Schieffer traveled to Okinawa in order to avert a larger crisis. The week following Hadnott's arrest, Okinawan lawmakers passed resolutions demanding tighter discipline among U.S. troops. Demonstrations of hundreds have been organized to voice outrage at the ghastly crime and to demand an end to the occupational U.S. base on their island. It would not be the first time that outcry to a crime committed by U.S. personnel in Okinawa resulted in popular pressure to end the U.S. occupation. Hadnott’s crime is being compared to the 1995 rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl by three U.S. servicemen. That incident triggered massive protests against the U.S. military, including a march of 85,000 people. The three men were convicted and sentenced to prison.

Futenma 1AC – Sexual Violence Advantage

Card continues, no text removed

The U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement, signed in 1960, has also been a focus of protest. The agreement restricts the jurisdiction of the Japanese government and allows the U.S. military to maintain custody of someone accused of a crime until a formal indictment is filed in a Japanese court. These types of legal agreements that provide protection or full exemption from local law have always been an integral element of colonial relations, and the U.S. government demands nothing less for its soldiers.

__The recent cases of sexual assault are only the most well known. Unknown numbers of women have been the victims of sexual and other violence for the entirety of the U.S. presence in Japan. There are also many other incidents, such as murder, harassment, drunk driving and property destruction that are regularly carried out by U.S. military personnel around bases.__ __The crimes committed by U.S. troops are a product of the colonial mentality instilled by the military to serve the needs of imperialism. They take place in the context of the current plans of the U.S. government to expand its military presence Okinawa, Iwakuni and Kanagawa__, __Japan____.__ __Only the removal of U.S. bases abroad can bring such atrocities to an end. A growing movement in Okinawa, the Japanese mainland and throughout Asia is voicing this demand.__
 * U.S. troops out of Japan and all of Asia!**

Futenma 1AC – Sexual Violence Advantage

The origins of our military bases in Japan lie in the U.S.’s patriarchal goals – today, they actively condone and increase gender inequality.

Gwyn **__Kirk__**, research analyst with the Global Fund for Women and a Foreign Policy In Focus columnist **__&__** John **__Feffer__**, author and international affairs representative in Eastern Europe and East Asia, March 14, 20**__08__**, [], "GENDER AND U.S. BASES IN ASIA PACIFIC" Militarism is a system of institutions, investments, and values, which is much wider and more deeply entrenched than any specific war. __To create alternate definitions of genuine peace and security, it is important to understand institutionalized gendered relations and other unequal power dynamics including those based on class, colonialism, and racism inherent in U.S. military policy and practice.__ __Demilitarization requires a de-linking of masculinity and militarism, stopping the glorification of war and warriors, and defining adventure and heroism in nonmilitary terms__. It also requires genuinely democratic processes and structures for political and economic decision-making at community, national and transnational levels. In addition, the United States must take responsibility for cleaning up all military contamination in the Asia-Pacific region. Instead of undermining indigenous control of lands and resources in Guam, for example, the United States and local government agencies should support the self-determination of the Chamorro people. __The proposed Marines base for Henoko (Okinawa) should be scrapped and the Japanese government should redirect funds earmarked for it to economic development to benefit Okinawan people.__ Since military expansion is a partner in corporate capitalist expansion, economic, political, and social development based on self-sufficiency, self-determination, and ecological restoration of local resources must be encouraged. Communities adjoining U.S. bases in all parts of the region suffer from grossly distorted economies that are overly reliant on the services (legal and illegal) that U.S. soldiers support. This economic dependency affects local men as well as women. Locally directed projects, led by those who understand community concerns, should be supported, together with government reforms to redistribute resources for such initiatives. In addition, __the United States and Asian governments need to revise their legal agreements to protect local communities__. Local people need transparency in the implementation of these policies, in interagency involvement (Pentagon, State Department, Department of the Interior, Environmental Protection Agency) and in executive orders that affect U.S. military operations in the region. Such revisions should include the ability for host governments to prosecute perpetrators of military violence so that the U.S. military can be held accountable for the human consequences of its policies. __U.S. military expansion and restructuring in the Asia-Pacific region serve patriarchal U.S. goals of “full spectrum dominance.” Allied governments are bribed, flattered, threatened, or coerced into participating in this project. Even the apparently willing governments are junior partners who must, in an unequal relationship, shoulder the costs of U.S. military policies__. For the U.S. military, land and bodies are so much raw material to use and discard without responsibility or serious consequences to those in power. Regardless of gender, soldiers are trained to dehumanize others so that, if ordered, they can kill them. Sexual abuse and torture committed by U.S. military personnel and contractors against Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison illustrate a grim new twist on militarized violence, where race and nation “trumped” gender. White U.S. women were among the perpetrators, thereby appropriating the masculinized role. The violated Iraqi men, meanwhile, were forced into the feminized role. __Gendered inequalities, which are fundamental to U.S. military operations in the Asia-Pacific region, affect men as well as women. Young men who live near U.S. bases see masculinity defined in military terms. They may work as cooks or bartenders who provide rest and relaxation to visiting servicemen__. They may be forced to migrate for work to larger cities or overseas, seeking to fulfill their dreams of giving their families a better future. U.S. peace movements should not only address U.S. military involvement in the Middle East, but also in other parts of the world. __Communities in the Asia-Pacific region have a long history of contesting U.S. militarism and offer eloquent testimonies to the negative impact of U.S. military operations there. These stories provide insights into the gendered dynamics of U.S. foreign and military policy, and the complicity of allied nations in this effort. Many individuals and organizations are crying out for justice, united by threads of hope and visions for a different future.__ Our job is to listen to them and to act accordingly.

Futenma 1AC – Sexual Violence Advantage

The neocolonization of Okinawa has brought about exploitation of women’s sexuality through patriarchal policies, naturalizing masculine violence. Ayano **__Ginoza__**, prof women’s studies, Washington State University, September 20**__05__**, [|http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/4/0/7/1/pages40718/p40718-1.php], “The American Village as a Space of Militarism and Tourism: U.S. Militarism, Gender Hierarchy, Class, and Race in Okinawa,” p. 10-14 __ In the American Village, traditional Japanese gender roles seems to be less restrictive due to the absence of the Japanese and Okinawan cultural presence __. However, __once women are freed and alienated from the Japanese social gender norms in the American Village, their sexuality becomes subjugated to the militarization of GIs__. __As Teaiwa affirms: “This collaboration between militarism and tourism affects the complex process of displacement and social mobility for Islanders, affecting the physical, mental, and emotional health of island bodies” (252). Thus, the space of the American village negotiates and fluctuates with Japanese women’s social class, gender, and race relations.__ The carefully designed popular images of an American landscape entice younger GIs and Japanese women in particular. __Suzuyo Takazato, a politician and feminist activist against military violence,__ also __points out that__, through media, __“Japanese young girls” 10__ __ constantly receive images of “U.S. soldiers as friendly foreigners” and “images of movie heroes” which make them “dream of…the opportunity to court U.S. soldiers” __ (Takazato 263). The imagined American popular landscape exploits that dream and supposedly provides an opportunity to experience that dream. __The idealization of the American landscape prevents Okinawan women and tourists from questioning, challenging, and explaining the militarization of Okinawan women’s sexualities.__ Further, Okinawan women in the American Village who enjoy the access to the American style commodities and entertainment in the space neutralize the tension between Okinawan conflicts with U.S. imperialism and mitigate the restlessness of the Okinawan- U.S. issue. Masahide Ota, the former Okinawan governor and a tireless critic of the U.S. military bases, laments that the younger generation of Okinawan women who “[have] no immediacy” to military violence “freely accept the bases” (148). Both Takazato and Ota lament Okinawan women’s incapability and lack of knowledge about militarization. However, they seem to dismiss the sociopolitical process of naturalizing the militarization of the Okinawan landscape. __Most of the time, the militarization process is so naturally constructed in the landscape of Okinawa through media that people, even politicians, easily dismiss the process and end up blaming and lamenting the women’s behaviors. This shows the vulnerability of younger Okinawans who interpret the neocolonization of the space as urbanization.__ In this space, thus, Okinawan __women are the ones most sexually visible and easily seen as a cause of the sexual assaults and militarization of their bodies although they are the ones most impacted and sexually and racially violated.__ __While Okinawan women consume the positive image of America and romanticize the idea of dating GIs, GIs objectify and exploit the women’s sexuality__. This often results in sexual abuse and rape of Okinawan women. An article in Time titled “Sex and Race in 11 Okinawa: U.S. Servicemen and Local Women Can Be A Volatile Mix, A Rape Allegation Against An American Casts Harsh Light on The Island’s Race Relations” describes a rape case in the American Village. This article illustrates a militarized situation of the American Village with a hypersexualized image of female tourists from mainland Japan as “dream seekers” whose “biggest draws” are “the real live Americans” (August 27, 2001, p39). In the article, the American Village is depicted as “[r]eminders of Uncle Sam abound— America Mart, America Hotel and Club America”: A two-story emporium called American Depot stands in the shadow of a giant Ferris wheel emblazoned with a Coca-Cola logo. Even at traditional matsuri, or summer festivals, children wave cotton candy, shirtless skateboarders do stunts on open walkways and women in shorts and bikini tops lick jewel-colored snow cones. Tourists and dream seekers from the Japanese mainland flock [there]. __The biggest draws, especially for Japanese women, are the real live Americans. (__39) This not only provides the American journalists’ view of the American Village, but also stereotypes hypersexualized Asian women’s bodies which are available to desire “the real live American” males. The sexual objectification of women’s bodies—“lick[ing] jewel- colored snow cones”—is constructed to justify the rape against Japanese women. At the same time, Americans are on display and commodified as well. According to Lynn Lu, description of Asian women’s bodies by the Western media derives from “the Western (male) popular imagination” which constructed “the exotic mysteries of [Asian women’s] sex” (17). However, __a crucial aspect to be noticed here is that in the American Village the young generations of Okinawans are able to perform and dress like younger generations of Americans, and GIs racialize this performance as exotic and sexual.__ __As Enloe points out, popular media “can become the basis for crafting patriarchal and militarized public 12__ __ policies” __ (The Curious Feminist 228). __This “public policy discourse,” she argues, “acknowledges a woman either as silently symbolic or silently victimized” and privileges masculinity__ (229). __Thus, the hypersexualization of women’s bodies is a product of dynamic political and patriarchal ideas which valorize women’s sexuality__. The women’s hypersexualized bodies are also racialized in the media. In an interview for the online Time Magazine, a “U.S. Air Force guy” arrogantly generalizes Okinawan women’s attitudes towards GIs: [Okinawan women] come out to bars. They know we’re there. What do you think they’re looking for? I mean, come on, they know what can happen, they’ve heard the stories, too. I mean, they live in Okinawa, and they still keep coming, looking for us. So what does that tell you? So they come in, have a good time, and the guy says, so you want to come home with me, and they say, sure, because that sounds like fun and you

Futenma 1AC – Sexual Violence Advantage

(card continues, no text removed)

know we Americans treat them a helluva lot better than the Japanese guys do, right? (2 July 2001) This demonstrates the ways in which GIs conceive of Okinawan women’s sexuality as compared to “Japanese guys.” Those GIs not only sexualize Okinawan women’s bodies, but at the same time racialize them by generalizing all Okinawan women’s bodies as sexually available to GIs. __Moreover, the implication is that GIs masculinize themselves by denigrating Japanese men. This also justifies GIs’ sexual abuse of Okinawan women in the American Village where they consider Okinawan women are GIs’ objects. That is, they are claiming the western masculine centrality against Okinawan women’s bodies. The hypersexualization and racialization of Okinawan women’s bodies by U.S. 13 media and GIs demonstrate the dynamics of sociopolitical processes that militarize Okinawan women’s bodies and naturalize masculinized violence.__

Futenma 1AC – Sexual Violence Advantage

Patriarchy sanctions and perpetuates war and environmental destruction – we must take a stance against patriarchy to move away from militarism.

Karen **__Warren and__** Duane **__Cady__**, Assistant Professors @ Macalester College and Hamline University, 19**__96__**, “Bringing peace home: feminism, violence, and nature,” p. 12-13

Operationalized, __the evidence of patriarchy as a dysfunctional system is found in the behaviors to which it gives rise__, (c) the unmanageability, (d) which results. For example, in the United States, current estimates are that one out of every three or four women will be raped by someone she knows; __globally, rape, sexual harassment, spouse-beating, and sado-masochistic pornography are examples of behaviors practices, sanctioned, or tolerated within patriarchy. In the realm of environmentally destructive behaviors, strip-mining, factory farming, and pollution of the air, water, and soil are instances of behaviors maintained and sanctioned within patriarchy. They, too, rest on the faulty beliefs that it is okay to “rape the earth,” that it is “man’s God-given right” to have dominion (that is, domination) over the earth, that nature has only instrumental value, that environmental destruction is the acceptable price we pay for “progress.”__ And the presumption of warism, that war is a natural, righteous, and ordinary way to impose dominion on a people or nation, goes hand in hand with patriarchy and leads to dysfunctional behaviors of nations and ultimately to international unmanageability. __Much of the current “unmanageability” of contemporary life in patriarchal societies, (d), is then viewed as a consequence of a patriarchal preoccupation with activities, events, and experiences that reflect historically male-gender-identified beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions. Included among these real-lifeconsequences are precisely those concerns with nuclear proliferation, war, environmental destruction, and violence towards women, which many feminists see as the logical outgrowth of patriarchal thinking__. In fact, __it is often only through observing these dysfunctional behaviors—the symptoms of dysfunctionality—that one can truly see that and how patriarchy serves to maintain and perpetuate them. When patriarchy is understood as a dysfunctional system, this “unmanageability” can be seen for what it is—as a predictable and thus logical consequence of patriarchy.__ The theme that global environmental crises, war, and violence generally are predictable and logical consequences of sexism and patriarchal culture is pervasive in ecofeminist literature. __Ecofeminist Charlene Spretnak, for instance, argues that “a militarism and warfare are continual features of a patriarchal society because they reflect and instill patriarchal values and fulfill needs of such a system. Acknowledging the context of patriarchal conceptualizations that feed militarism is a first step toward reducing their impact and preserving life on Earth.”__ Stated in terms of the foregoing model of patriarchy as a dysfunctional social system, the claims by Spretnak and other feminists take on a clearer meaning: __Patriarchal conceptual frameworks legitimate impaired thinking (about women, national and regional conflict, the environment) which is manifested in behaviors which, if continued, will make life on earth difficult, if not impossible. It is a stark message, but it is plausible.__ Its plausibility lies in understanding the conceptual roots of various woman-nature-peace connections in regional, national, and global contexts.

Futenma 1AC – Sexual Violence Advantage

Rejecting sexual violence comes first – our discussion of international politics must include discussions of sexuality or the oppression of women will continue unabated.

Gayle **__Rubin__**, Assistant Professor @ University of Michigan, 19**__99__**, [], [CJL] , "Culture, Society, and Sexuality," p.143

The time has come to think about sex. __To some, sexuality may seem to be an unimportant topic, a frivolous diversion from the more critical problems of poverty, war, disease, racism, famine, or nuclear annihilation.__ But it is precisely at times such as these, when we live with the possibility of unthinkable destruction, that people are likely to become dangerously crazy about sexuality. __Con temporary conflicts over sexual values and erotic conduct have much in common with the religious disputes of earlier centuries. They acquire immense symbolic weight. Disputes over sexual behaviour often become the vehicles for displacing social anxieties, and discharging their attendant emotional intensity. Consequently, sexuality should be treated with special respect in times of great social stress. The realm of sexuality also has its own internal politics, inequities, and modes of oppression.__ As with other aspects of human behaviour, the concrete institutional forms of sexuality at any given time and place are products of human activity. They are imbued with conflicts of interest and political maneuver, both deliberate and incidental. In that sense, sex is always political. But there are also historical periods in which sexuality is more sharply contested and more overtly politicized. In such periods, the domain of erotic life is, in effect, renegotiated.

Futenma 1AC – Imperialism Advantage

Okinawa has long suffered the wrath of American imperialism

George Feifer,  editor of World Policy Journal, Fall of  2000 , Ebsco

Japanese and American veterans of the Battle of Okinawa who return as tourists often gape at the Rising Sun and the Stars and Stripes flying side by side from tall flagpoles. Okinawans see less irony in those banners than the hallmarks of their centuries-long subjugation. The American participation began in 1853, when Matthew Perry called on Okinawa on his way to open Japan. "It would be difficult for you to imagine the beauties of this island with respect to the charming scenery and the marvelous perfection of cultivation," the commodore wrote, rubbing his eyes like previous visitors. But he was not so beguiled as not to point his big guns at the utterly inoffensive islanders before making brazen, unprovoked demands. Determined to secure an American base there, Perry claimed suzerainty over the Ryukyus. By the time his report of this act reached Washington, the presidency had been assumed by Franklin Pierce, who, convinced the occupation would require congressional approval, ordered it to end. Still, the ambitious commodore compelled a captive Ryukyu monarchy to sign a flagrantly unequal, unjust "friendship" treaty that established a "permanent anchorage" on Okinawa for the United States. General MacArthur's assertion of the same was couched in strikingly similar language. The United States had to maintain dominion over the Ryukyus, the supreme commander insisted, because they were "absolutely essential to the defense of our Western Pacific Frontier...[and] in my opinion, failure to secure them for control by the United States might prove militarily disastrous." To avoid association with nineteenth-century imperialism, the defense of our "frontier" was said to greatly benefit Okinawans too, just as Japan had claimed throughout the much longer history of its mistreatment of the island. Even today, Pentagon strategists maintain the island still needs our protection, now against China's expansionist potential. Citing the threat to Taiwan, some 400 miles to the southwest, they argue that the Okinawan bases are "the linchpin" of America's Far East strategy. Some military experts doubt the bases are a right or necessary linchpin, or that Okinawa is suitable for training troops; Hawaii or Guam, both said to be willing to accept a transfer, would be better. Moreover, these experts argue that withdrawing our installations from the island, which is "dangerously vulnerable" to missile attack, would enhance our Pacific defenses by freeing us from an obsolete Cold War stance that also impedes the rapid deployment of the highly mobile forces more likely to be needed to meet current crises. Aircraft carriers for launching quick strikes at distant targets have become much more valuable than fixed bases. But whatever the rights and wrongs of that dispute, the major powers' pursuit of their own strategic interests is precisely what has long tormented Okinawans. They might consider the burden of the bases less onerous if they could understand their benefit to them. Even before the Soviet Union's collapse, some Okinawans were emboldened to ask what the bases were protecting them from. Never having had an argument with Moscow and now having none with Bejing, the majority fear the purportedly "protecting" installations, with their dangerous equipment and potential as targets, more than any conceivable enemy.

Japan has always been the linchpin of American imperialism

Geoff King , author of Mapping Realities: an Exploration of Cultural Cartographies, 19  96  , pg. 161

The fact and the fiction of the Vietnam war, the rationality and the irrationality, are not easily separated out. The domino theory contained an element of truth, however deeply enmeshed in Cold War fantasy. A successful socialist or communist regime in one post-colonial state might indeed become a model for others, however different the local realities. Vietnam was of little importance in itself to American imperialism, but it was located in a region of strategic concern. America wanted Southeast Asia to remain a part of the capitalist world economic system. The immediate issue was the future orientation of Japan, which became the linchpin of American policy in the Pacific following the ‘loss’ of China to communism in 1949. Southeast Asia was a vital alternative source of markets, raw materials and rice for Japan if it was not to be tempted into a regional alliance with China from which the United States might be excluded. An abiding theme of American policy was the fear that the globe would break down into a series of separate trading blocs. The United States favoured a largely open world economy that it, as the single greatest power, could control. America was also able to further intervention from France. French troops could return home, where their presence eased fears about the postwar redevelopment of Germany that had become central to S policy. Economically, the war in Vietnam and the neighbouring states might appear to have been an irrational enterprise for America, costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars. It was much less so for some American-based corporate interests, not to mention the domestic profits made by those involved in the provision of military hardware.

Futenma 1AC – Imperialism Advantage

US foreign bases are used to project and perpetuate its military empire

STEPHEN R. SHALOM  is the author of Imperial Alibis: Rationalizing U.S. Intervention After the Cold War (South End Press, 1993), and is on the editorial board of NEW POLITICS, Winter 19  99 , New Politics, 

If nuclear weapons are to remain part of the U.S. arsenal and if military interventions are still to be relied on, then Washington will continue to need foreign military bases. And sure enough, U.S. officials have continued their persistent effort to secure military access wherever they can. Thus, though the U.S. Navy was thrown out of Subic by a nationalist Philippine Senate in 1991, the Pentagon has been working with compliant Philippine officials to find some backdoor way to obtain some form of basing rights. In Japan, despite the overwhelming opposition of the people of Okinawa, the Pentagon and Tokyo politicians are intent on maintaining U.S. military facilities. And military access agreements have been concluded with Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. Such U.S. bases serve two principle purposes. First, they allow Washington to intervene, to threaten intervention, or simply to act provocatively wherever it chooses. Of course we are told that these bases help to maintain regional stability. But consider, for example, the case of North Korea. Washington reached an agreement to provide the North Koreans with civilian nuclear power technology and oil in return for assurances that Pyongyang would end its nuclear weapons program. Emboldened by its regional military bases and its stepped up military exercises in South Korea, the United States has simply refused to keep its side of the deal. When North Korea responded to U.S. bad faith with reckless cruise missile tests, U.S. saber-rattling escalated. And, tellingly, Secretary of Defense William Cohen has declared that there will be a U.S. presence on the Korean peninsula even when there is a unified Korea (remarks to World Affairs Council, Los Angeles, June 29, 1998). A second purpose of foreign bases is to ensure the dependence of Washington's major allies. Ostensibly defensive alliances, such as NATO and the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, have been intended to keep potential rivals in a state of military -- and thus political and ultimately economic -- dependency. The United States has been trying to get its allies to pick up an increasingly larger share of the costs of the U.S. bases, but Washington has resolutely blocked any effort for independent action on the part of its partners. Thus, Washington has refused to turn over any part of NATO's southern command to a European, and rejected any peacetime European planning within NATO. Military action by the allies in support of U.S. interests is welcome -- in fact, the U.S. has continually pressed Japan to ignore its constitutional prohibition on war -- whether in the Middle East or in defense of Pacific sealanes. Independent action, however, is unacceptable.

Futenma 1AC – Imperialism Advantage

American imperialism is based off the skewed vision of self-imposed leadership via military expansionism; we cannot explain the problems we face without getting rid of this illusion

Chalmers Johnson  is an American [|author] and [|professor emeritus] of the [|University of California, San Diego]. He served in the Korean war, was a consultant for the [|CIA] from 1967–1973, and led the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley for years.[|[1]] He is also president and co-founder of the [|Japan Policy Research Institute] (now based at the [|University of San Francisco]), an organization promoting public education about [|Japan] and [|Asia].[|[2]] He has written numerous books including, most recently, three examinations of the consequences of [|American Empire]: //Blowback//, //The Sorrows of Empire//, and //Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic//. 2000. Pg. 7, 8 of Blowback …only a few missiles in essentially doctored tests have hit their targets- but it is unquestionably expensive, and arms sales, both domestic and foreign, have become one of the Pentagon’s most important missions. I believe the profligate waste of our resources on irrelevant weapons systems and the Asian economic meltdown, as well as the continuous trail of military “accidents” and of terrorist attacks on American installations and embassies, are all portents of a twenty-first century crisis in America’s informal empire, an empire based on the projection of military power to every corner of the world and on the use of American capital and markets to force global economic integration on our terms, at whatever costs to others. To predict the future is an undertaking no thoughtful person would rush to embrace. What form our imperial crisis is likely to take years or even decades from now is, of course, impossible to know. But history indicates that, sooner or later, empires do reach such moments, and it seems reasonable to assume that we will not miraculously escape that fate. What we have freed ourselves of, however, is any genuine consciousness of how we might look to others on this globe. Most Americans are probably unaware of how Washington exercises its global hegemony, since so much of this activity takes place either in relative secrecy or under comforting rubrics. Many may, as a start, find it hard to believe that our place in the world even adds up to an empire. But only when we come to see our country as both profiting from and trapped within the structures of an empire of its own making will it be possible for us to explain many elements of the world that otherwise perplex us. Without good explanations, we cannot possibly produce policies that will bring us sustained peace and prosperity in a post—Cold War world. What has gone wrong in Japan after half a century of government-guided growth under U.S. protection? Why should the emergence of a strong China be to anyone’s disadvantage? Why do American policies toward human rights, weapons proliferation, terrorism, drug cartels, and the environment strike so many foreigners as the essence of hypocrisy? Should American-owned and -managed multinational firms be instruments, beneficiaries, or adversaries of United States foreign policy? Is the free flow of capital really as vulnerable as free trade in commodities and manufactured goods? These kinds of questions can only be answered once we begin to grasp what the United States really is. If Washington is the headquarters of a global military-economic dominion, the answers will be very different than if we think of the United States as simply one among many sovereign nations. There is a logic to empire that differs from the logic of a nation, and acts committed in service to an empire but never acknowledged as such have a tendency to haunt the future.

Futenma 1AC – Imperialism Advantage

The problem with American imperialism is America itself; it has metamorphosized into a militarist institution where its original democratic foundations have withered into oblivion

Chalmers Johnson  is an American [|author] and [|professor emeritus] of the [|University of California, San Diego]. He served in the Korean war, was a consultant for the [|CIA] from 1967–1973, and led the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley for years.[|[1]] He is also president and co-founder of the [|Japan Policy Research Institute] (now based at the [|University of San Francisco]), an organization promoting public education about [|Japan] and [|Asia].[|[2]] He has written numerous books including, most recently, three examinations of the consequences of [|American Empire]: //Blowback//, //The Sorrows of Empire//, and //Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic//. 2000. Pg. 221-223 of Blowback … his dispute with Congress. But much like the warfare between Gorbachev and the Communist old guard in the Soviet Union, it had the effect of further weakening the structures of political authority. Congressional willingness to resort to so untested a device as impeachment combined with a president willing to try to divert attention through warlike actions suggests a loss of prudence, even a recklessness, on the part of American elites that could be fatal to the American empire in a time of crisis. Even though the United States at century’s end appears to have the necessary firepower and economic resources to neutralize all challengers, I believe our very hubris ensures our undoing. A classic mistake of empire managers is to come to believe that there is nowhere within their domain—in our case, nowhere on earth—in which their presence is not crucial. Sooner or later, it becomes psychologically impossible not to insist on involvement everywhere, which is, of course, a definition of imperial overextension. Already, the United States cannot afford its various and ongoing global military deployments and interventions and has begun extracting ever growing amounts of “host-nation support” from its clients, or even direct subsidies from its “allies." Japan, one of many allied nations that helped finance the massive American military effort in the Gulf War, paid up to the tune of $13 billion . (The U.S. government even claimed in the end to have made a profit on the venture.) Japan also pays more generously than any other nation for the American troops on its soil. On the economic front, the arrogance, contempt, and triumphalism with which the United States handled the East Asian Financial crisis guarantees blowback for decades to come. Capitals like Jakarta and Seoul smolder with the sort of resentment that the Germans had in the 1920s, when inflation and the policies of Britain and France destabilized the Weimar regime. ln the long run, the people of the United States are neither militaristic enough nor rich enough to engage in the perpetual police actions, wars, and bailouts their government’s hegemonic policies will require, Moreover, in Asia the United States now faces a renascent China, not only the world’s oldest continuously existent civilization but the product of the biggest revolution among all historical cases. Today, China is both the world’s most populous society and its fastest growing economy. The United States cannot hope to “contain" China; it can only adjust to it. But our policies of global hegemony leave us unprepared and far too clumsy in even our limited attempts to arrive at such an adjustment . Meanwhile, the Chinese are very much aware of the large American expeditionary force deployed within striking distance of their borders and the naval units permanently off their coastline. It does not take a Thucydides to predict that this developing situation portends conflict. The indispensable instrument for maintaining the American empire is its huge military establishment. Despite the money lavished on it, the endless praise for it in the media, and the overstretch and blowback it generates, the military always demands more. In the decade following the end of the Cold War, military budgets consistently gave priority to an arms race that had no other participants . For example, the Pentagon’s budget for the fiscal year 2000 called for replacing the F-15, “the world’s most advanced aircraft," with the 1:-22, also “the world’s most advanced aircraft." The air force wanted 339 F-22s at $188 million each, three times the cost of the airplane it is replacing, The United States already has 1,094 F»15s, against which there is no equal or more capable aircraft on earth. The last Clinton defense budget included funds for yet more nuclear-attack submarines, for which there is no conceivable use or contingency. They merely provide work for local defense contractors and will join the fleet of America's “floating Chernobyls," along with its nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, cruising the seas waiting for an accident to occur. The American military at the end of the century is becoming an autonomous system. We no longer have a draft army based on the obligation of citizens to serve their nation . When the Vietnam War exposed the inequities of the draft—for example, the ease with which college students could gain deferments—Congress decided to abolish conscription rather than enforce it in an equitable manner. Today, the military is an entirely mercenary force, made up of volunteers paid salaries by the Pentagon . Although the military still tries to invoke the public’s support for a force made up of fellow citizens, this force is increasingly separated from civilian interests and devoted to military ones. Equipped with the most advanced precision-guided munitions, high- performance aircraft, and intercontinental-range missiles, the American armed forces can unquestionably deliver death and destruction to any target on earth and expect little in the way of retaliation. Even so, these forces voraciously demand more and newer equipment, while the Pentagon now more or less sets its own agenda.

Futenma 1AC – Imperialism Advantage (card continues, no text removed)

Accustomed to life in a half-century-old, well-established empire, the corporate interests of the armed forces have begun to take precedence over the older idea that the military is only one of several means that a democratic government might employ to implement its policies. As their size and prominence grow over time, the armed forces of an empire tend to displace other instruments of foreign policy implementation. What also grows is militarism, “a vast array of customs, interests, prestige, actions, and thought associated with armies and wars and yet transcending true military purpose"—and certainly a reasonable description of the American military ethos today.7 “Blowback“ is shorthand for saying that a nation reaps what it sows, even if it does not fully know or understand what it has sown. Given its wealth and power, the United States will be a prime recipient in the foreseeable future of all of the more expectable forms of blowback, particularly terrorist attacks against Americans in and out of the armed forces anywhere on earth, including within the United States. But it is blowback in its larger aspect—the tangible costs of empire—that truly threatens it. Empires are costly operations, and they become more costly by the year. The hollowing out of American industry, for instance, is a form of blowback—an unintended negative consequence of American policy — even though it is seldom recognized as such. The growth of militarism in a once democratic society is another example of blowback. Empire is the problem. Even though the United States has a strong sense of invulnerability and substantial military and economic tools to make such a feeling credible, the fact of its imperial pretensions means that a crisis is inevitable. More imperialist projects simply generate more blowback.

American imperialism and the myopic ideologies that accompany it replicate and multiply, replacing culture and cosmopolitanism with military fanaticism

Hamid Dabashi  is an Iranian-American [|historian], [|cultural critic] and [|literary theorist]. He is the [|Hagop Kevorkian] Professor of [|Iranian] Studies and [|Comparative Literature] at [|Columbia University] in [|New York City]. He is the author of nineteen books. Among them are his //Authority in Islam//; //Theology of Discontent//; //Truth and Narrative//; //Close Up: Iranian Cinema//; //Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of Iran//; an edited volume, //Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema//; and his one-volume analysis of Iranian history [|//Iran: A People Interrupted//]//.// 20 08 , []

This is the most immediate short—term memory of this catastrophe. But the more enduring question remains if this renewed post-Vietnam Syndrome resurrection of U.S. militancy will amount to a full-fledged imperial project. The combined calamity of Neo-conservatism and Neo-liberalism makes one thing clear: if anything, this is an empire with no commanding ideology; an empire with no hegemony. A constellation of bankrupt, pathetic, and provincial doctrines and dogma do not make a legitimizing ideology of domination. Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington—the best and most recent examples of the intellectual poverty that, from Tocqueville to Hofstadter, has been recognized and diagnosed in this country—protest too much. The period of Civilizational thinking is over, and the aggressive provincialism of the United States has in fact acted as catalyst for all other cosmopolitan cultures around the globe to degenerate into equal provincialism at the mercy of American parochialism. The Islamic republic and the Jewish state mirror and reflect the Christian predilection of this Empire they alternately oppose or befriend, and they all wish to clone themselves around the globe. Thus we have the fundamental problem of Israel with Lebanon, the long-term project of the Islamic Republic of Iran for Iraq, and the possibility of a cross—sectional coalition in Palestine. Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine can potentially be sites of a cosmopolitan political culture in which Islam (Mahdi’s Army in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine) remains integral but not definitive. That mere possibility is precisely the mutual nightmare of both the Islamic Republic and the Jewish state and above all the Christian imperialist United States, with all of them having degenerated into fanatical religious states seeking to clone themselves around the region}; As a potential ideology of domination, Neo-conservatism (a la William Kristol’s Project Bar the New American C€H[u1`}')I6 has done nothing but make Americans detested the world over, and, along with Israel, considered (global poll after global poll) to be the chief sources of menace and mayhem around the globe }7 American imperialism (under the banal disguise of globalization) is universalizing the most provincial aspects of American culture, destroying cosmopolitan cultures and nourishing tribalism and religious fanaticism with a militant triumphalism run amuck, squarely embedded in the heartbeat of its Christian (and Christian Zionist in particu- lar) fundamentalism

Futenma 1AC – Imperialism Advantage

Without culture we are robbed of humanity and society as we know it; the human race would be extinct

Aldous Leonard Huxley  was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous [|Huxley family]. He spent the later part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death in 1963. Best known for his novels including [|//Brave New World//] and wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine [|//Oxford Poetry//], 19 63 , []

BETWEEN CULTURE and the individual the relationship is, and always has been, strangely ambivalent. We are at once the beneficiaries of our culture and its victims. Without culture, and without that precondition of all culture, language, man would be no more than another species of baboon. It is to language and culture that we owe our humanity. And "What a piece of work is a man!" says Hamlet: "How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! ... in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god!" But, alas, in the intervals of being noble, rational and potentially infinite, (man, proud man, Dressed in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he is most assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As make the angels weep) Genius and angry ape, player of fantastic tricks and godlike reasoner—in all these roles individuals are the products of a language and a culture. Working on the twelve or thirteen billion neurons of a human brain, language and culture have given us law, science, ethics, philosophy; have made possible all the achievements of talent and of sanctity. They have also given us fanaticism, superstition and dogmatic bumptiousness; nationalistic idolatry and mass murder in the name of God; rabble-rousing propaganda and organized Iying. And, along with the salt of the earth, they have given us, generation after generation, countless millions of hypnotized conformists, the predestined victims of power-hungry rulers who are themselves the victims of all that is most senseless and inhuman in their cultural tradition. Thanks to language and culture, human behavior can be incomparably more intelligent, more original, creative and flexible than the behavior of animals, whose brains are too small to accommodate the number of neurons necessary for the invention of language and the transmission of accumulated knowledge. But, thanks again to language and culture, human beings often behave with a stupidity, a lack of realism, a total inappropriateness, of which animals are incapable. Trobriand Islander or Bostonian, Sicilian Catholic or Japanese Buddhist, each of us is born into some culture and passes his life within its confines. Between every human consciousness and the rest of the world stands an invisible fence, a network of traditional thinking-and-feeling patterns, of secondhand notions that have turned into axioms, of ancient slogans revered as divine revelations. What we see through the meshes of this net is never, of course, the unknowable "thing in itself." It is not even, in most cases, the thing as it impinges upon our senses and as our organism spontaneously reacts to it. What we ordinarily take in and respond to is a curious mixture of immediate experience with culturally conditioned symbol, of sense impressions with preconceived ideas about the nature of things. And by most people the symbolic elements in this cocktail of awareness are felt to be more important than the elements contributed by immediate experience. Inevitably so, for, to those who accept their culture totally and uncritically, words in the familiar language do not stand (however inadequately) for things. On the contrary, things stand for familiar words. Each unique event of their ongoing life is instantly and automatically classified as yet another concrete illustration of one of the verbalized, culture-hallowed abstractions drummed into their heads by childhood conditioning. It goes without saying that many of the ideas handed down to us by the transmitters of culture are eminently sensible and realistic. (If they were not, the human species would now be extinct.) But, along with these useful concepts, every culture hands down a stock of unrealistic notions, some of which never made any sense, while others may once have possessed survival value, but have now, in the changed and changing circumstances of ongoing history, become completely irrelevant. Since human beings respond to symbols as promptly and unequivocally as they respond to the stimuli of unmediated experience, and since most of them naively believe that culture-hallowed words about things are as real as, or even realer than their perceptions of the things themselves, these outdated or intrinsically nonsensical notions do enormous harm. Thanks to the realistic ideas handed down by culture, mankind has survived and, in certain fields, progresses. But thanks to the pernicious nonsense drummed into every individual in the course of his acculturation, mankind, though surviving and progressing, has always been in trouble. History is the record, among other things, of the fantastic and generally fiendish tricks played upon itself by culture-maddened humanity. And the hideous game goes on.

Futenma 1AC – Solvency

In response to various abuses by the U.S. military, Okinawan women have organized in favor of the removal of the soldiers from bases – only our aff solves for the ongoing crimes against humanity.


 * __I__**nternational **__N__**etwork for the **__A__**bolition of **__F__**oreign **__M__**ilitary **__B__**ases, local and national campaigns from numerous countries, all opposing foreign military bases, fleets, and other forms of unwanted military presence , 20**__09__**, []

__“Okinawan Women Act Against Military Violence" was organized on November 8, 1995, as an outgrowth of the participation of 71 Okinawan women in the Beijing Women's Conference NGO Forum__ last September. We base our position on the section of __the Platform of Action approved by the Beijing Women's Conference that clearly states: "Rape that takes place in a situation of armed conflict constitutes both a war crime and a crime against humanity." We are proceeding on the premise that the same holds true for Okinawa, which has long suffered a foreign military military presence. Okinawan women have resolved that we will no longer tolerate this violence and violation of human rights, and have thus petitioned the Japanese government to consolidate the U.S. bases and withdraw U.S.military personnel__, review the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty and the Status of Forces Agreement, and award full compensation to all victims. We have conducted a signature campaign, engaged in a 12-day sit-in demonstration, and visited the both Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to issue our appeal. We have received wide support for our efforts from women throughout Japan.

Rejection of the rape and other violence committed by U.S. soldiers is essential to allow the women of Okinawa to represent their nation and take an important stance against patriarchy.

Linda Isako **__Angst__**, asst. prof of anthropology @ Lewis and Clark, 20**__01__**, The Sacrifice of a Schoolgirl: The 1995 Rape Case, Discourses of Power, and Women’s Lives in Okinawa, p. 248

Finally, not only has __the rape__ been redeployed in a representational capacity, it __has simultaneously been absorbed into and redefines existing symbolic expressions of Okinawan victimhood. It is as symbol that the rape/rape victim functions most powerfully and critically for Okinawan identity politics__. Moreover, particularly __in the discourse of nationalism, as Carol Delaney tells us,__ __“Women do not represent, they are what is represented.…__This observation opens theoretical space to think about the differences between symbolization and representation, often held to be the same.” In many countries, __women symbolize the nation, but men represent it, and often the nation is referred to as female and represented as a female statue__. Most fundamentally, “because of their symbolic association with land, women are, in a sense, the ground over which national identity is played out.” 14 __As symbol, the 1995 rape and the rape victim can serve in many capacities to many Okinawans, and as such, the event and the girl made it possible, beyond the immediate exigencies of political protest, for a variety of groups with different goals and competing agendas to come together as a unified Okinawan voice of dissent. Identity politics is implicitly one of resistance —__in this case, against the Japanese state and the powerful myth of Japanese cultural homogeneity, and against U.S. military power. This article explores the nature and practice of hegemony within a politics of protest, including the ways in which __activists in the Okinawa anti-war movement appropriate and apply the rape as a symbol of Okinawan subjugation__.

Futenma 1AC – Solvency

America must step back and realize that withdrawal is the ONLY solution in the post-Cold War world

Chalmers Johnson  is an American [|author] and [|professor emeritus] of the [|University of California, San Diego]. He served in the Korean war, was a consultant for the [|CIA] from 1967–1973, and led the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley for years.[|[1]] He is also president and co-founder of the [|Japan Policy Research Institute] (now based at the [|University of San Francisco]), an organization promoting public education about [|Japan] and [|Asia].[|[2]] He has written numerous books including, most recently, three examinations of the consequences of [|American Empire]: //Blowback//, //The Sorrows of Empire//, and //Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic//. 2000. Pg. 221-223 of Blowback More generally, the United States should seek to lead through diplomacy and example rather than through military force and economic bullying. Such an agenda is neither unrealistic nor revolutionary. It is appropriate for a post—Cold War world and for a United States that puts the welfare of its citizens ahead of the pretensions of its imperialists. Many U.S. leaders seem to have convinced themselves that if so much as one overseas American base is closed or one small country is allowed to manage its own economy, the world will collapse. They might better ponder the creativity and growth that would be unleashed if only the United States would relax its suffocating embrace. They should also understand that their efforts to maintain imperial hegemony inevitably generate multiple forms of blowback. Although it is impossible to say when this game will end, there is little doubt about how it will end. World politics in the twenty-first century will in all likelihood be driven primarily by blowback from the second half of the twentieth century—that is, from the unintended consequences of the Cold War and the crucial American decision to maintain a Cold War posture in a post—Cold War world. U.S. administrations did what they thought they had to do in the Cold War years. History will record that in some places they did exemplary things; in other places, particularly in East Asia but also in Central America, they behaved no better than the Communist bureaucrats of their superpower competitor. The United States likes to think of itself as the winner of the Cold War, In all probability, to those looking back a century hence, neither side will appear to have won, particularly if the United States maintains its present imperial course.

America must step back and realize that withdrawal is the ONLY solution in the post-Cold War world

Chalmers Johnson  is an American [|author] and [|professor emeritus] of the [|University of California, San Diego]. He served in the Korean war, was a consultant for the [|CIA] from 1967–1973, and led the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley for years.[|[1]] He is also president and co-founder of the [|Japan Policy Research Institute] (now based at the [|University of San Francisco]), an organization promoting public education about [|Japan] and [|Asia].[|[2]] He has written numerous books including, most recently, three examinations of the consequences of [|American Empire]: //Blowback//, //The Sorrows of Empire//, and //Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic//. 2000. Pg. 221-223 of Blowback More generally, the United States should seek to lead through diplomacy and example rather than through military force and economic bullying. Such an agenda is neither unrealistic nor revolutionary. It is appropriate for a post—Cold War world and for a United States that puts the welfare of its citizens ahead of the pretensions of its imperialists. Many U.S. leaders seem to have convinced themselves that if so much as one overseas American base is closed or one small country is allowed to manage its own economy, the world will collapse. They might better ponder the creativity and growth that would be unleashed if only the United States would relax its suffocating embrace. They should also understand that their efforts to maintain imperial hegemony inevitably generate multiple forms of blowback. Although it is impossible to say when this game will end, there is little doubt about how it will end. World politics in the twenty-first century will in all likelihood be driven primarily by blowback from the second half of the twentieth century—that is, from the unintended consequences of the Cold War and the crucial American decision to maintain a Cold War posture in a post—Cold War world. U.S. administrations did what they thought they had to do in the Cold War years. History will record that in some places they did exemplary things; in other places, particularly in East Asia but also in Central America, they behaved no better than the Communist bureaucrats of their superpower competitor. The United States likes to think of itself as the winner of the Cold War, In all probability, to those looking back a century hence, neither side will appear to have won, particularly if the United States maintains its present imperial course.

Futenma 1AC – Solvency

Imperialism and the crimes that come with it can only end by withdrawal

Chalmers Johnson , is an American [|author] and [|professor emeritus] of the [|University of California, San Diego]. He served in the Korean war, was a consultant for the [|CIA] from 1967–1973, and led the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley for years.[|[1]] He is also president and co-founder of the [|Japan Policy Research Institute] (now based at the [|University of San Francisco]), an organization promoting public education about [|Japan] and [|Asia].[|[2]] He has written numerous books including, most recently, three examinations of the consequences of [|American Empire]: //Blowback//, //The Sorrows of Empire//, and //Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic//., 7/30/ 09 , Lexis

3. We Need to End the Secret Shame of Our Empire of Bases In March, New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert noted, "Rape and other forms of sexual assault against women is the great shame of the U.S. armed forces, and there is no evidence that this ghastly problem, kept out of sight as much as possible, is diminishing." He continued: " New data released by the Pentagon showed an almost 9 percent increase in the number of sexual assaults -- 2,923 -- and a 25 percent increase in such assaults reported by women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan [over the past year]. Try to imagine how bizarre it is that women in American uniforms who are enduring all the stresses related to serving in a combat zone have to also worry about defending themselves against rapists wearing the same uniform and lining up in formation right beside them." The problem is exacerbated by having our troops garrisoned in overseas bases located cheek-by-jowl next to civilian populations and often preying on them like foreign conquerors. For example, sexual violence against women and girls by American GIs has been out of control in Okinawa, Japan's poorest prefecture, ever since it was permanently occupied by our soldiers, Marines, and airmen some 64 years ago. That island was the scene of the largest anti-American demonstrations since the end of World War II after the 1995 kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by two Marines and a sailor. The problem of rape has been ubiquitous around all of our bases on every continent and has probably contributed as much to our being loathed abroad as the policies of the Bush administration or our economic exploitation of poverty-stricken countries whose raw materials we covet. The military itself has done next to nothing to protect its own female soldiers or to defend the rights of innocent bystanders forced to live next to our often racially biased and predatory troops. "The military's record of prosecuting rapists is not just lousy, it's atrocious, " writes Herbert. In territories occupied by American military forces, the high command and the State Department make strenuous efforts to enact so-called "Status of Forces Agreements" (SOFAs) that will prevent host governments from gaining jurisdiction over our troops who commit crimes overseas. The SOFAs also make it easier for our military to spirit culprits out of a country before they can be apprehended by local authorities. This issue was well illustrated by the case of an Australian teacher, a long-time resident of Japan, who in April 2002 was raped by a sailor from the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, then based at the big naval base at Yokosuka. She identified her assailant and reported him to both Japanese and U.S. authorities. Instead of his being arrested and effectively prosecuted, the victim herself was harassed and humiliated by the local Japanese police. Meanwhile, the U.S. discharged the suspect from the Navy but allowed him to escape Japanese law by returning him to the U.S., where he lives today. In the course of trying to obtain justice, the Australian teacher discovered that almost fifty years earlier, in October 1953, the Japanese and American governments signed a secret "understanding" as part of their SOFA in which Japan agreed to waive its jurisdiction if the crime was not of "national importance to Japan." The U.S. argued strenuously for this codicil because it feared that otherwise it would face the likelihood of some 350 servicemen per year being sent to Japanese jails for sex crimes. Since that time the U.S. has negotiated similar wording in SOFAs with Canada, Ireland, Italy, and Denmark. According to the Handbook of the Law of Visiting Forces (2001), the Japanese practice has become the norm for SOFAs throughout the world, with predictable results. In Japan, of 3,184 U.S. military personnel who committed crimes between 2001 and 2008, 83% were not prosecuted. In Iraq, we have just signed a SOFA that bears a strong resemblance to the first postwar one we had with Japan: namely, military personnel and military contractors accused of off-duty crimes will remain in U.S. custody while Iraqis investigate. This is, of course, a perfect opportunity to spirit the culprits out of the country before they can be charged. Within the military itself, the journalist Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007), speaks of the "culture of unpunished sexual assaults" and the "shockingly low numbers of courts martial" for rapes and other forms of sexual attacks. Helen Benedict, author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq (Beacon Press, 2009), quotes this figure in a 2009 Pentagon report on military sexual assaults: 90% of the rapes in the military are never reported at all and, when they are, the consequences for the perpetrator are negligible. It is fair to say that the U.S. military has created a worldwide sexual playground for its personnel and protected them to a large extent from the consequences of their behavior. As a result a Futenma 1AC – Solvency

** (Card continues, no text removed) **

group of female veterans in 2006 created the Service Women's Action Network (SWAN). Its agenda is to spread the word that "no woman should join the military." I believe a better solution would be to radically reduce the size of our standing army, and bring the troops home from countries where they do not understand their environments and have been taught to think of the inhabitants as inferior to themselves.

Imperialism and the crimes that come with it can only end by withdrawal

Chalmers Johnson , is an American [|author] and [|professor emeritus] of the [|University of California, San Diego]. He served in the Korean war, was a consultant for the [|CIA] from 1967–1973, and led the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley for years.[|[1]] He is also president and co-founder of the [|Japan Policy Research Institute] (now based at the [|University of San Francisco]), an organization promoting public education about [|Japan] and [|Asia].[|[2]] He has written numerous books including, most recently, three examinations of the consequences of [|American Empire]: //Blowback//, //The Sorrows of Empire//, and //Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic//., 7/30/ 09 , Lexis

3. We Need to End the Secret Shame of Our Empire of Bases In March, New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert noted, "Rape and other forms of sexual assault against women is the great shame of the U.S. armed forces, and there is no evidence that this ghastly problem, kept out of sight as much as possible, is diminishing." He continued: " New data released by the Pentagon showed an almost 9 percent increase in the number of sexual assaults -- 2,923 -- and a 25 percent increase in such assaults reported by women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan [over the past year]. Try to imagine how bizarre it is that women in American uniforms who are enduring all the stresses related to serving in a combat zone have to also worry about defending themselves against rapists wearing the same uniform and lining up in formation right beside them." The problem is exacerbated by having our troops garrisoned in overseas bases located cheek-by-jowl next to civilian populations and often preying on them like foreign conquerors. For example, sexual violence against women and girls by American GIs has been out of control in Okinawa, Japan's poorest prefecture, ever since it was permanently occupied by our soldiers, Marines, and airmen some 64 years ago. That island was the scene of the largest anti-American demonstrations since the end of World War II after the 1995 kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by two Marines and a sailor. The problem of rape has been ubiquitous around all of our bases on every continent and has probably contributed as much to our being loathed abroad as the policies of the Bush administration or our economic exploitation of poverty-stricken countries whose raw materials we covet. The military itself has done next to nothing to protect its own female soldiers or to defend the rights of innocent bystanders forced to live next to our often racially biased and predatory troops. "The military's record of prosecuting rapists is not just lousy, it's atrocious, " writes Herbert. In territories occupied by American military forces, the high command and the State Department make strenuous efforts to enact so-called "Status of Forces Agreements" (SOFAs) that will prevent host governments from gaining jurisdiction over our troops who commit crimes overseas. The SOFAs also make it easier for our military to spirit culprits out of a country before they can be apprehended by local authorities. This issue was well illustrated by the case of an Australian teacher, a long-time resident of Japan, who in April 2002 was raped by a sailor from the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, then based at the big naval base at Yokosuka. She identified her assailant and reported him to both Japanese and U.S. authorities. Instead of his being arrested and effectively prosecuted, the victim herself was harassed and humiliated by the local Japanese police. Meanwhile, the U.S. discharged the suspect from the Navy but allowed him to escape Japanese law by returning him to the U.S., where he lives today. In the course of trying to obtain justice, the Australian teacher discovered that almost fifty years earlier, in October 1953, the Japanese and American governments signed a secret "understanding" as part of their SOFA in which Japan agreed to waive its jurisdiction if the crime was not of "national importance to Japan." The U.S. argued strenuously for this codicil because it feared that otherwise it would face the likelihood of some 350 servicemen per year being sent to Japanese jails for sex crimes. Since that time the U.S. has negotiated similar wording in SOFAs with Canada, Ireland, Italy, and Denmark. According to the Handbook of the Law of Visiting Forces (2001), the Japanese practice has become the norm for SOFAs throughout the world, with predictable results. In Japan, of 3,184 U.S. military personnel who committed crimes between 2001 and 2008, 83% were not

Futenma 1AC – Solvency (card continues, no text removed)

prosecuted. In Iraq, we have just signed a SOFA that bears a strong resemblance to the first postwar one we had with Japan: namely, military personnel and military contractors accused of off-duty crimes will remain in U.S. custody while Iraqis investigate. This is, of course, a perfect opportunity to spirit the culprits out of the country before they can be charged. Within the military itself, the journalist Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007), speaks of the "culture of unpunished sexual assaults" and the "shockingly low numbers of courts martial" for rapes and other forms of sexual attacks. Helen Benedict, author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq (Beacon Press, 2009), quotes this figure in a 2009 Pentagon report on military sexual assaults: 90% of the rapes in the military are never reported at all and, when they are, the consequences for the perpetrator are negligible. It is fair to say that the U.S. military has created a worldwide sexual playground for its personnel and protected them to a large extent from the consequences of their behavior. As a result a group of female veterans in 2006 created the Service Women's Action Network (SWAN). Its agenda is to spread the word that "no woman should join the military." I believe a better solution would be to radically reduce the size of our standing army, and bring the troops home from countries where they do not understand their environments and have been taught to think of the inhabitants as inferior to themselves.