Lying About History (the Japanese in Okinawa; the U.S. and Torture)

[ProSense]

Monday, October 08, 2007

Lying About History (the Japanese in Okinawa; the U.S. and Torture)

Brian Tamanaha

About forty years ago, when I was growing up in Hawaii, I was told a horrible story that I never forgot. Yesterday, the story made it into the New York Times.

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The New York Times reported yesterday about a large public protest in Okinawa over proposed changes that would erase from Japanese history textbooks any references to the role Japanese authorities had in causing the mass suicides. The current textbooks acknowledge what happened. The new textbooks would mention the suicides without saying how or why they came about. This is a piece of the ongoing resurgent nationalism in Japan.

What is the connection between this story and torture by the U.S.? This: the willingness to lie—to write history in a way that washes away sins and erases victims.

Once again, the Bush Administration is insisting publicly, loudly, indignantly, that the U.S. does not engage in “torture.” Were it only true.

What we have engaged in, as has been reported by many sources (see anti-torture memos at this site), is “alternative procedures,” which include water boarding, exposure to very cold temperature, and forced standing for hours on end. Robert Conquest, a venerable sovietologist and favorite historian of conservatives, who Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, called these (USSR) tactics "torture," stating that "Torture is...a worse crime against humanity than killing.” If these sorts of actions were “torture” when the Soviet Union engaged in them, they are “torture” when we do them.

Deny, Deny, Deny. Hide behind a silly legalistic argument about the meaning of “torture.” But it doesn’t change what we did. (I optimistically use the past tense).

The victims of atrocities must not be erased.