JAPAN APOLGIZES FOR WW II, USA FOR DESTABILIZED MIDDLE EAST

U.S. NEEDS TO APOLOGIZE FOR IRAQ AND REFUGEES

It saddens me to read of the horrible plight of Middle East refugees and the costly and growing European refugee crisis. Yesterday fifty dead bodies, of men, women and children were found in a locked refrigerator truck on an Austrian roadside (Daily Mirror, UK, August 26, 2015) . This awful tragedy was apparently the end-result of some failed attempt by Syrian or Yemeni refugees to reach a safe place to live . These people were attempting to escape the end result of the destruction that the Bush and Obama administration's have wrought over the last decade in the Middle East. The present refugee crisis is the end result of our military adventures our invasions, attempts at colonization and exploitation, our penchant for regime change, misplaced support for vicious tyrants, our drone warfare, and haughty belief that we could remake the world in our own image at the end of a Colt, M-4 carbine. My deep dolor is not only for the waste of life and human suffering, but for my poor nation which seems set to continue making grievous errors because it can not or will not face its own mistakes or consign blame and punish those who led it into error.

On August 14, 2915,8 the New York Times ran a piece entitled "Japan Apologizes for World War II". Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe offered his regret (as have past PMs of Japan) for "inflicting immeasurable damage and suffering " on "innocent people" . During the war remembrance ceremony Abe promised the world that his nation would never again resort to "aggression" and "colonial rule". But Abe's obsequies were not the full blown apology that other Japanese leaders had offered during the 1950 and 1960. Abe's expressions of remorse were not obsequious enough for the Gray Lady of New York, who made clear that she hoped he would have been more forthright in expressing his apologies for Japan's aggression, militarism, and harsh colonial rule. Sadly the Times conveniently ignored the fact that in the very same edition, and in many earlier ones, one could read numerous reports of the tragic results of OUR OWN, USA aggression, our colonial adventures and destabilizing occupation in the heart of the Middle East under the Bush and Obama administrations. Is it just a NYT journalistic rule to limit US self-criticism? Or are we so fixated in the belief of our national purity of intention and exceptionalism, that our top journalists can ignore the elephant in the room as they point a finger of blame at the Japanese and totally ignore our own very recent transgressions? That is what is so bothersome about our situation.

Our news media are rife with reports of pitiful refugees from Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen who clog up the refugee compounds in Greece, Italy, Germany and the Baltics. These people, if lucky, land in frail craft on the rocky shores of Italy and Greece, then in pitiful streams of suffering humanity stagger in hordes along byways and country roads through Macedonia and Serbia in an attempt to reach a nation which might be humane and wealthy enough to give them succor. No one here in the USA has expressed any regrets for these massive streams of refugees, or acknowledged even an inkling of US blame. No one here has had the guts to put the cause of this tragedy at the door step of the misguided policies of Bush and Cheney...Obama and Clinton (Libya). No one here has been charged with war crimes, or even had their reputations sullied. All the culprits are still active in business and politics and continue unremorsefully continuing to make more mischief in the Middle East. No effort was made to face the facts of our monumental mistake in invading Iraq and attempting to colonize that nation, the destabilizing event which initiated the ME tragedy.

The Japanese and the Germans have faced their ugly war-history, and have made attempted to correct the evil which drove them to awful and horrible acts in the last Great War. The comparison of our crimes in the Middle East can not be equated with scope and duration of events of World War II, where millions upon millions died. But the sad truth is that a nation that can not face the truth about its misdeeds, can not change, can not correct its erroneous course. Are we consigned to repeat our mistakes, as Winston Churchill stated, because we are unable or unwilling to known our true history?

The American people deserve to hear the truth. To face up to the fact that their leaders made mistakes. Yes, our leaders probably committed war crimes. We too killed innocents. We made attempts at brutal colonization. The U.S. initiated the last major destabilizing event in the Middle East, in a major way we are now directly responsible for all those refugees streaming out of the nations George Bush vowed he would reduce to the "Stone Age" . We are and our British allies are responsible for the floating dead in the Mediterranean, and the masses pressing against the bulging chain link fences on European borders.

It is time we faced our own mud stained history like Japan and Germany.