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KCNA Assails Japan's Decision to Dispatch Troops to Iraq

KCNA

    Pyongyang, October 14 (KCNA) -- The Japanese government recently decided to dispatch its ground "Self-Defense Force" to southern Iraq within December on the basis of the so-called "law on the special measure to help rehabilitate Iraq". An advance detachment made up of some 150 soldiers is supposed to leave by a transport ship of the marine "SDF" to be followed by the departure of the main unit comprising 500-600 soldiers early next year. And it was reported that the air "SDF" would send 3 "C-130" transport planes to Iraq and its neighbouring country at the end of the year.
    It is stipulated in Article 9 of Japan's "peace constitution" that "it shall not keep ground, marine and air forces and other combat power and the right of the state to belligerence shall not be recognized."
    It makes no sense to assert that the Japan "SDF" to be dispatched to Iraq will not be involved in battles as they are a daily and hourly occurrence, claiming casualties.
    Japan was bound to the "peace constitution" after being legally branded as a war criminal state in the wake of the defeat of militarism in the middle of the last century. But it has plunged itself into a war, "illegally discarding the constitution."
    Japan has gradually ditched the "peace constitution" since the end of the Cold War through the institution of the "law on cooperation in UN peace-keeping operation" in 1992, the "law on the revision of the guidelines for the U.S.-Japan defence cooperation" in 1997, the "law on emergency in the surrounding areas" in 1999, the "special law on measures against terrorism" in 2001, etc.
    Japan rendered its "peace constitution" defunct by passing the "bill to cope with the event of armed attack", the "bill on the revision of the law on the SDF" and the "bill on the revision of the law on setting up a security council" through the meeting of the Japanese House of Representatives on May 15. Now Japan has gone to the lengths of sending its army equipped with sophisticated weapons to battlefields of an unjust war in the Mideast under the blood-stained Sun flag.
    It is the U.S. that instigated and helped Japan rush headlong into reinvasion though it has not yet shaken itself off the ill-fame of a war criminal state.
    In order to use Japan, a defeated state in the East as a servant and shock force in realizing its ambition for world domination, the U.S. has actively encouraged Japan's rearmament and helped it act as an "ordinary state."
    As regards the dispatch of the SDF to Iraq, a senior official of the U.S. government welcomed it, when interviewed by Tokyo Shimbun on Oct. 12.
    Japan should redress its unprecedentedly hideous crimes committed against the Korean and other Asian peoples and the rest of the world through honest reflection and compensation.
    But it is as clear as a noonday that Japan will repeat its past aggression and plunder as it has opted for emerging a military giant through a sleight of hand and brazen-faced moves. The army and people of the DPRK are closely following every move of the Japanese reactionaries with the hatred and grudge pent up for nearly a century.
    The Japanese people should be well aware that a miserable destruction will be entailed by the moves to turn the society into the ultra-right and the reckless militarisation of the country spearheaded by the reactionary ruling quarters and come out in a campaign to check them.