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David Harcourt
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| Joined: | 31 Dec 1969 |
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| Posts: | 1127 |
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Posted: 13 Jul 2007 09:04 pm |
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It is a truth universally acknowledged, except in Japan, that the Japanese are the strangest people in the world. The strangest, indeed, who have ever lived.
It is they, for example, who when urged to reduce their mountainously high tariff barriers on rice argued that Japanese could not digest imported rice. Japanese stomachs, it was argued, are differently constituted from those of other varieties of human.
Similar arguments have been advanced, and apparently believed by those advancing them, against the importation of foreign skiing clothing and equipment: Japanese winters and Japanese snow, it has been claimed, is uniquely different. European skis won't work on Japanese snow. Foreign-made cold weather clothing won't protect again the Japanese cold. It is a different cold, and a different snow. It is Japanese.
The Japanese who perpetrated tens of thousands of atrocities, involving the deaths of millions of people, during the Second World War - here is one you may not have heard of: Japanese soldiers captured 21 Australian (female) nurses at one point in the war, lined them up on a beach and shot them; why, you might ask? only a Japanese could tell you - are the same people who made the Moss Garden, invented ikebana, and perfected the Tea Ceremony. They're like pianists, each of whose hands can cover the whole keyboard; they embody the worst and most disgusting brutality in human history, and the highest aesthetics known to humankind. How strange is this?
And yet they can also dimly perceive, if only occasionally, their own strangeness; the flaw in the glass (which is why, I believe, the Japanese have the highest suicide rates in the world, by a long margin).
Thus it was that, quite soon after Japan's conquest of much of the Pacific and Asia, it was people in Japan itself who coined the term "victory disease".
There is an entry on "victory disease" in Wikipedia. Wikipedia says, correctly, that the original intention of Japan's military planners was to establish a perimeter around the scene of their early victories, but the rapidity of this success encouraged them to keep extending their forces until the inevitable defeats began. "The decision to start a war against the United States is viewed as victory disease," Wikipedia says. But as Wikipedia also says, in the opening sentence of its entry,
The origin of the term is associated with the Japanese advance in the Pacific Theater of World War II, where, after attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941, they won a series of nearly uninterrupted victories against the Allies in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
This at least in Wikipedia's entry is correct. Pearl Harbor didn't mark the onset of "victory disease": if you took that view everything Japan did from the invasion of Manchuria onwards could be seen as a manifestation of it (diluting the term to meaninglessness). No, "victory disease" was the rush of blood to the head of the Japanese military which was felt as the victories continued, and which demanded more victories, anywhere, against anyone, and which continued long after the Battle of Midway in 1942.
After that battle, as we can see now, and as some - even in Japan - could see then, the Japanese Empire was doomed. Incredibly, the man who master-minded the attack on Pearl Harbor, Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, was one such. He foresaw, even before the attack on Pearl was launched, that Japan was biting off more than it could chew; that mistakes had been made months if not years before which meant that Japanese defeat was inevitable.
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David Harcourt
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| Joined: | 31 Dec 1969 |
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| Posts: | 1127 |
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Posted: 13 Jul 2007 09:53 pm |
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Nazi Germany also experienced victory disease, of course.
The too easy victories of 1940 and early 1941 led Hitler to make to the incredible decision to invade Russia in June 1941, and then to declare war on the United States following Pearl Harbor.
The pattern is so similar to the Japanese experience that one has to ask whether victory disease is more than a useful shorthand descriptive phrase: does it contain the germ of an explanation for extraordinary human behaviour?
I think it does. I think that there is an illogic in conquest which the conquerors cannot begin to see until the truth is borne in upon them by a succession of defeats. Alexander the Great sought to conquer the world. Genghis the Khan marauded as far and wide as his horsemen could go, building piles of the skulls of unarmed farmers and their families. Napoleon slaughtered thousands in Egypt, and attacked in Russia until even the destruction of Moscow could not win the world for him (and why do the French regard him as a hero, one has to ask, and then one remembers the Rainbow Warrior).
It seems that conquest carries with it no antidote for its own side-effects. You conquer, and you die.
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David Harcourt
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| Posts: | 1127 |
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Posted: 13 Jul 2007 10:06 pm |
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Which leads me to Israel.
What a defeat for Israelis the Six-Day War of 1967 can now be seen to be!
Threatened by its Arab neighbours - and these threats were undoubtedly real - Israel had attacked Jordan on 13 November 1966 with a force of 3000 soldiers. This action was heavily criticised in the US, where Walt Rostow, the Special Assistant to President Lyndon Johnson, reported that:
This 3000-man raid with tanks and planes was out of all proportion to the provocation and was aimed at the wrong target. They've wrecked a good system of tacit cooperation between Hussein and the Israelis... They've undercut Hussein. We've spent $500 million to shore him up as a stabilizing factor on Israel's longest border and vis-à-vis Syria and Iraq. Israel's attack increases the pressure on him to counterattack not only from the more radical Arab governments and from the Palestinians in Jordan but also from the Army, which is his main source of support and may now press for a chance to recoup its Sunday losses... They've set back progress toward a long term accommodation with the Arabs... They may have persuaded the Syrians that Israel didn't dare attack Soviet-protected Syria but could attack US-backed Jordan with impunity.
King Hussein of Jordan ordered a nationwide mobilisation. Hostility against Israel reached an extreme level in the Arab states. In April 1967 there were serious border incidents involving the Syrians. On 5 June the Israelis launched Operation Focus, a mass air attack on Egypt's airfields. The Six-Day War had begun.
Israel's main opponents in the War were Egypt, Jordan and Syria, but Iraq, Saudia Arabia, Kuwait and Algeria also contributed forces. By the end of the brief war, Israel had gained control of East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 14 Jul 2007 02:45 am |
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Obviously this is not a war which anyone except the Arab nations involved would have wished to see the Israelis lose.
But you can over-win a war, and the Israelis won too well in 1967. If you consider Israel's behaviour as a nation then, might it not have been better for Israel and for much of the rest of the world if Israel had been a little less successful in 1967, and certainly much more gracious in victory? Israel's aggressive and often unprincipled behaviour since 1967 has even touched us directly here in New Zealand, where Mossad spies have sought to pass themselves off as New Zealand citizens, using faked passports. This is no way to treat a friend (who, one suspects, is a friend no longer in international discussions, but perhaps another manifestation of the victory disease is that you no longer need friends).
I believe that if - being neither an Arab or an Israeli - you look at the history of Israel's relations with its neighbours since 1948 it is very difficult not to see Israel being as responsible as they are for the present, very grim, state of affairs. I am trying to draw a distinction here between how one feels - for whatever reason - about Israel and, say, Egypt and how one views their behaviour as nation states. I have no empathy - no sense of any connection of any kind - with Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudia Arabia, Kuwait and Algeria. They are as foreign to me as Lithuania or Mongolia.
But Israel is very different, at least in my imagination: it is a state which deserved to be made - needed to be made - out of the nightmare of World War Two. Over the centuries Jewish people have made a positive contribution to science and the arts which is completely out of proportion to their numbers, and yet successive attempts - culminating in the obscenity which was Nazism - have been made to persecute and even exterminate them altogether. The Jewish people needed a homeland, and where except in the land around Jerusalem could this possibly be?
But having given - or taken, depending on your point of view - their homeland, the Jews of Israel not only kept their chips on their shoulders; they went out looking for more. Perhaps they were first infected with victory disease in 1948, and the Six Day War reinforced, possibly permanently, the view that there was no downside to conquest? Many others have thought this before. How frightful is the thought that the Jewish leaders of today and Hitler and his closest aides shared the same self-destructive delusion?
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 15 Jul 2007 02:23 am |
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So I guess the next question is: if you've caught victory disease, how do you get rid of it?
History suggests that the only cure is defeat: shattering, cataclysmic defeat.
Is this what the Israelis want?
To take their neighbours down with themselves in a regional nuclear war?
Try as I might I can't think of a way out of this which doesn't involve Israel working with patience and with tolerance - over not decades but centuries - to lead its neighbours, not follow them, in efforts establish peace in the Middle East.
The nation which has mastered the pre-emptive strike, and whose people have endured more than two millenia of persecution, is going to have to walk away from that history and abandon its aggressive militarism.
Is there anyone among the Israeli leadership with an inclination to start the process?
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 15 Jul 2007 02:31 am |
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The Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine is a diverse, community-based group dedicated to organizing local activities and educational events that advance the cause of peace and justice for both Palestinians and Israelis. We support efforts for resolution of this conflict that combine vision with pragmatism. At this point in time, we have adopted, as the most hopeful path toward evolution of a just peace, the following organizational principles:
Support for equal rights and access to resources for all inhabitants of the region, based on principles of social, economic, environmental, and political justice.
Support for peace and justice activities in Israel, Palestine, and the U.S.
An end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, in accordance with international law and U.N. resolutions.
An end to U.S. policies that sustain the occupation.
International support for an equitable and just negotiation process.
A resolution to the Palestinian refugee issue in accordance with international law and human rights principles.
An end to all forms of terror: state, organizational, and individual.
We welcome all who support the principles above to join us in building this important voice in our community.
Ongoing Activities
Community Education: Sponsor speakers from Israel and Palestine in our community.
Action: Support concrete activities that further peace and justice in Israel and Palestine.
Legislative Affairs: Present timely information to our elected representatives.
Film/Reading/Discussion Series: Provide a gathering place for ongoing education and discussion.
We Invite You to Join Us!
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