GI SPECIAL 3D24:

Deborah Davis defends freedom at home while her son serves abroad in Iraq.

Soldier, Come Home:

Police State Thugs Attacked Your Mom For Defending The Liberties Of Americans

[While you're off in Iraq because the traitors who have seized the government lied to trick the nation into an Imperial war of occupation, this is what's happening back here at home.

[In addition to all the other reasons to get you out of that shithole, like saving your life, we need you back here to defend us against this over the line police state bullshit and the people who are determined to keep it going until we have no liberties left. We need you, and all the troops, to stand up against the domestic enemies who rule in Washington, and spread their poison all over America.

[Your weapons are in the wrong place pointing the wrong way. The enemy isn't in Iraq. This is the enemy. This is what the enemy is doing to Americans. If our troops won't defend our liberties, who will? Isn't that what you swore an oath to do? Come home, and do it, before it's too late.

[Do you think Patrick Henry or Thomas Paine would sit around watching this shit go down? Not while they had breath and arms to fight for our liberties. T]

Nov 18 2005 Papersplease.org

DEB DAVIS LIKES to commute to work by public bus. She uses the time to read, crochet or pay bills. It's her quiet time. What with the high price of gas, she saves money, too: a week's worth of gas money gets her a month's worth of bus rides.

The bus she rides crosses the property of the Denver Federal Center, a collection of government offices such as the Veterans Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, and part of the National Archives. The Denver Federal Center is not a high security area: it's not Area 51 or NORAD.

On her first day commuting to work by bus, the bus stopped at the gates of the Denver Federal Center. A security guard got on and demanded that all of the passengers on this public bus produce ID. She was surprised by the demand of the man in uniform, but she complied: it would have meant a walk of several miles if she hadn't.

Her ID was not taken and compared to any "no-ride" list. The guard barely glanced at it.

On Monday, September 26th 2005, Deb Davis headed off to work on the route 100 bus. When the bus got to the gates of the Denver Federal Center, a guard got on and asked her if she had an ID. She answered in the affirmative. He asked if he could see it. She said no.

When the guard asked why she wouldn't show her ID, Deb told him that she didn't have to do so. The guard then ordered her off the bus. Deb refused, stating she was riding a public bus and just trying to get to work.

The guard then went to call his supervisor, and returned shortly with a federal policeman. The federal cop then demanded her ID. Deb politely explained once again that she would not show her ID, and she was simply commuting to work. He left, returning shortly thereafter with a second policeman in tow.

This second cop asked the same question and got the same answer: no showing of ID, no getting off the bus.

The cop was also annoyed with the fact that she was on the phone with a friend and didn't feel like hanging up, even when he 'ordered' her to do so.

The second cop said everyone had to show ID any time they were asked by the police, adding that if she were in a Wal-Mart and was asked by the police for ID, that she would have to show it there, too.

She explained that she didn't have to show him or any other policeman my ID on a public bus or in a Wal-Mart. She told him she was simply trying to go to work.

Once inside, she was taken down a hall and told to sit in a chair, still handcuffed, while one of the policemen went through her purse, now retrieved from the bus.

The two policemen sat in front of their computers, typing and conferring, trying to figure out what they should charge her with.

Eventually, they wrote up several tickets, took her outside and removed the handcuffs, returned her belongings, and pointed her toward the bus stop. She was told that if she ever entered the Denver Federal Center again, she would go to jail.

She hasn't commuted by public bus since that day.

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Troops:

Read Between The Lines:

[2006 = 1776]

23 November 2005 By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout Perspective [Excerpt]

Get some.

That's what Marines say before the shooting starts, before the metal meets the meat, before the difference between Now and Later becomes a matter of survival and strength.

Get some, they say. Get some.

The time has come for the soldiers, those who have completed their service and those who stand the watch today, to get some.

Not in a firefight, not in a desert or a jungle or on a frozen plain, not on any battlefield soaked with blood and redolent with screams, but on a field of honor where the good name and sacrifice and suffering of our soldiers has become all too easily slapped aside in a quest to salvage polling numbers and approval ratings.

IRAQ WAR REPORTS

"We Can Lose In Iraq And Destroy Our Army, Or We Can Just Lose" Says Marine Lieutenant Colonel Recently Returned From Iraq

November 13, 2005 By THE NEW YORK TIMES

"Why Iraq Has No Army," by James Fallows, is the cover story in the December issue of The Atlantic. The reasons offered by Mr. Fallows are detailed and dark, if not wholly despairing.

What I heard amounted to this: The United States has recently figured out a better approach to training Iraqi troops. Early this year it began putting more money, and more of its best people, on the job. As a result, more Iraqi units are operating effectively, and fewer are collapsing or deserting under pressure.

But as the training and numbers are getting somewhat better, the problems created by the insurgency are getting worse - and getting worse faster than the Iraqi forces are improving.

Here is a sampling of worried voices:

"The current situation will NEVER allow for an effective I.S.F. (Iraqi Security Force) to be created," a young Marine officer who will not let me use his name wrote in an e-mail after he returned from Iraq this summer. "We simply do not have enough people to train forces. If we shift personnel from security duties to training, we release newly trained I.S.F. into ever-worsening environs."

"A growing number of U.S. military officers in Iraq and those who have returned from the region are voicing concern that the nascent Iraqi army will fall apart if American forces are drawn down in the foreseeable future," Elaine Grossman, of the well-connected newsletter Inside the Pentagon, reported in September.

"U.S. trainers have made a heroic effort and have achieved some success with some units," Ahmed Hashim, of the Naval War College, told me in an e-mail. "But the Iraqi Security Forces are almost like a black hole. You put a lot in and little comes back out."

"I have to tell you that corruption is eating the guts of this counter-insurgency effort," a civilian wrote in an e-mail from Baghdad. Money meant to train new troops was leaking out to terrorists, he said. He empathized with "Iraqi officers here who see and yet are powerless to stop it because of the corrupt ministers and their aides."

"On the current course we will have two options," I was told by a Marine lieutenant colonel who had recently served in Iraq and who prefers to remain anonymous. "We can lose in Iraq and destroy our army, or we can just lose."

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THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO COMPREHENSIBLE REASON TO BE IN THIS EXTREMELY HIGH RISK LOCATION AT THIS TIME, EXCEPT THAT A CROOKED POLITICIAN WHO LIVES IN THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU THERE, SO HE WILL LOOK GOOD.

That is not a good enough reason.

U.S. army 2^nd Battalion 34^th armor regiment specialist Jonathan Grant (L) and sergeant Elliot Lawson stand guard at a checkpoint near Baquba October 12, 2005. REUTERS/Jorge Silva

AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS

Afghan Occupation Forces Kicked Out Of Uzbekistan

November 23, 2005 By Paul Ames, Associated Press

BRUSSELS, Belgium  Uzbekistan has told NATO allies they can no longer use its territory or airspace to support peacekeeping [translation: occupation] missions in neighboring Afghanistan  an apparent retaliatory move against a West critical of the former Soviet republic's human rights record, alliance officials said Wednesday.

Uzbekistan already had ordered out the U.S. military. On Monday the Americans flew their last plane out from an air base in Uzbekistan that had been an important hub for operations in Afghanistan.

Indian Hostage Executed

23 November 2005 Aljazeera

On Tuesday, a purported Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, said the group had killed an Indian worker they kidnapped at the weekend, but the authorities could not confirm the claim.

He said the Indian national had been shot dead after the Taliban received no response to a 48-hour deadline for the road construction company the hostage worked for to leave Afghanistan.

"Today at 6pm we killed the Indian roadworker with Kalashnikov shots, based on our earlier ultimatum," Ahmadi said in a telephone call from an undisclosed location.

"We had earlier given a 48-hour ultimatum. Nobody contacted us, that's why we killed the guy. We have thrown out his body."

The kidnapped man was snatched in southern Nimroz province on Saturday with an Afghan driver and two police guards. The driver was released on Monday. Ahmadi said the other two Afghans were "safe with us".

TROOP NEWS

Veterans In NY City Veterans Day Parade Welcome Anti-War Protestors

19 November 2005 CODEPINK NYC

As we stood along the Veterans Day parade on a "peace block" at 42nd and 5th Avenue with our signs saying "LOVE THE TROOPS/HATE THE WAR" we were amazed and moved by the response we had from passing veterans who gave us thumbs up and peace signs in response.

We ended up giving away most of our Love the Troops/Hate the War buttons to vets in wheelchairs as they rolled by.

When the Vets for Peace float finally arrivedthey had been relegated to the absolute tail end of the paradewe ran into the street to join them for the rest of the march.

All of us thought the change in people's feelings towards the peace contingent was palpablethe tide of public opinion has truly turned against the war. (Go to the New York page at www.codepinkalert.org to see the great photos of Cindy Sheehan on the Peace Float and Code Pink New York on the sidelines.)

"We'll Do Everything We Can To Get You Back Safe"

"That's What We Do"

November 21, 2005 By MICHELLE O'DONNELL, Columbus Journal

COLUMBUS, Ga., Nov. 20 - They arrived by the busload this weekend in this Southern river city, protesters from St. Louis, Chicago, San Francisco and other cities across the country, slightly bedraggled, clutching boxes of cereal, which, it turns out, is a young protester's M.R.E.

Though tired, they were energized at the prospect of demonstrating outside of the gates of Fort Benning, calling for the base to close its training school for Latin American officers.

There was some mischief reported over the weekend, including loud music blasted at the demonstrators' tent Friday night. As involved as each side was in its own efforts, there seemed to be little face-to-face dialogue between the two groups.

Still, at midnight Saturday a group of soldiers recently graduated from basic training staying at the downtown Marriott ran into a group of college women by the lobby elevators.

A debate started (accompanied by a few flirtatious remarks by the soldiers), but it ended suddenly when both sides said the same thing: they just wanted to help the Iraqi people.

The soldiers said they expected to be shipped off to Iraq soon.

"We'll do everything we can to get you back safe," said a youth minister with the women, alluding to his hope that the protests would help bring the troops home. "That's what we do."

Multiple Deployments?

"The Health Of Service Members Deteriorates"

November 14, 2005 By Rick Maze, Army Times staff writer [Excerpt]

The [The Government Accountability Office] report said the health of service members deteriorates with multiple deployments, based on answers service members give on pre- and post-deployment questionnaires.

"The impact could be significant for future deployments as the pool of Guard and reserve members from which to fill requirements is dwindling and those who have deployed are not in as good health as they were before deployment."

FORWARD OBSERVATIONS

What Murtha Is Proposing:

"It Is Not Withdrawal, It Is Not Immediate, And It Is Not Worthy Of The Name 'Antiwar'"

23/11/05 by Michael George Smith, Monthly Review

Michael George Smith is a student at the University of California, Berkeley. His writing has appeared in Socialist Worker, Z Magazine, and the International Socialist Review. He can be reached at michael.smith3@gmail.com.

Until last Thursday, the ideological battle lines of the occupation of Iraq were drawn around a central question -- to "stay the course" or withdraw the troops immediately.

Of course, the reality was more complicated, with many Americans who opposed the war arguing that to leave now would be "abandoning our responsibility" to Iraq, letting loose civil war, an Islamic theocracy, or worse. With more and more of those people now being won to the idea that the American occupation is actually making things worse, however, the hardening of the basic dichotomy between the Bush administration's position and that of the antiwar movement was well underway.

Rep. John Murtha has opened up a new front in the ideological war over Iraq and created a new, third option -- changing course, to be sure, but not quite withdrawal, either. What do we make of this third way, and how should we in the antiwar movement respond?

Murtha's press release announcing his resolution ends with the line, "IT IS TIME TO BRING THEM HOME" (capitalized in the original), (1) yet his plan would do nothing of the sort for tens of thousands of American troops.

Instead, it would "redeploy" them -- Murtha said on Meet the Press last Sunday to the "periphery," meaning just outside Iraq (2) -- in order to create a "quick-reaction U.S. force and an over-the-horizon presence of U.S. Marines."

This presence would, presumably, be available for US incursions into Iraq should the Iraqis get out of hand, much as Israel "withdrew" from Gaza only to retain the right to intervene at will should events go against their wishes.

So what exactly would this redeployment look like? A report put out by the Center for American Progress, interestingly titled " Strategic Redeployment: A Progressive Plan for Iraq and the Struggle Against Violent Extremists" (emphasis added),3 suggests:

"As redeployments begin, the remaining forces in Iraq would focus on our core missions: completing the training of Iraqi forces; improving border security; providing logistical and air support to Iraqi security forces engaged in battles against terrorists and insurgents; serving as advisors to Iraqi units; and tracking down terrorists and insurgent leaders with smaller, more nimble Special Forces units operating jointly with Iraqi units." (3)

"By the end of 2007, the only US military forces in Iraq would be a small Marine contingent to protect the US embassy, a small group of military advisors to the Iraqi Government, and counterterrorist units that works closely with Iraqi security forces. This presence, along with the forces in Kuwait and at sea in the Persian Gulf area will be sufficient to conduct strikes coordinated with Iraqi forces against any terrorist camps and enclaves that may emerge and deal with any major external threats to Iraq." (3)

"14,000 troops would be positioned nearby in Kuwait and as part of a Marine expeditionary force located offshore in the Persian Gulf to strike at any terrorist camps and enclaves and guard against any major acts that risk further destabilizing the region." (3)

So what has been portrayed as a proposal for "immediate withdrawal" of US troops is, in fact, what Murtha has called it all along -- redeployment of troops away from Iraq in order for the greater aims of US imperialism to be more successfully carried out.

In addition,

"Up to two active brigades -- approximately 20,000 troops -- would be sent to bolster US and NATO efforts in Afghanistan and support counterterrorist operations in Africa and Asia. In Afghanistan, more troops are urgently needed to beat back the resurging Taliban forces and to maintain security throughout the country. If NATO is unwilling to send more troops, the United States must pick up the load. In the Horn of Africa, countries like Somalia and Sudan remain a breeding ground for terrorists." (3)

Simply moving troops from one imperialist adventure to another is, to say the least, a less than ideal solution insofar as self-determination and the struggle against imperialism are concerned.

None of this is to say that, were Murtha's proposal to be adopted, it would not be a major setback for American imperialism.

The Iraqi resistance has, in the opinion of a growing section of the ruling class and the upper echelon of the military, made the Iraq war unwinnable and further attempts to bring the country to heel futile.

It is this fact that has caused such an hysterical backlash against Murtha -- ranging from Dick Cheney's predictable tirades to Rep. Jean Schmidt's comments on the House floor calling Murtha a "coward."

Not to mention the Democratic leadership's shameful response -- from the likes of Harry Reid, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton -- which consisted of running as quickly as possible in the other direction, yet another reminder of their status as the second party of American imperialism.

What we are witnessing is a -- tentative, hesitant -- split in the ruling class.

One camp consists of those who wish to "stay the course" with all its corollaries: a puppet regime, permanent military bases, etc. This is a continuation of the line espoused since the beginning of the war, an attempt to revolutionize the Middle Ease, redraw borders, and upend regimes according to the dictates of Washington, and establish US dominance over oil reserves that would define geopolitics for the next 50 years.

This dream is in tatters, largely due to the resistance in Iraq, but dreams die hard for those who refuse to open their eyes.

The other camp is noticing the obvious -- that the US is losing in Iraq, losing support at home, and that without a dramatic change in course all hell is going to break loose. Saving imperialism from itself is its battle cry, or put another way, living to fight (invade, conquer, invade) another day.

Most of the Democratic leadership is too slow-footed or dim-witted to read the writing on the wall, so to speak, and argue for the second option. Enter Murtha, the canary in the mineshaft for those who believe the war is now unwinnable and that grand schemes for a radically different Middle East more favorable to US interests ought to be abandoned in the interest of preserving the US Armed Forces and the image of US imperialism.

So this is an important moment, sure to be remembered by history and worthy of attention and optimism from those of us in the antiwar movement.

But it is so because of what it represents, namely that our side has the momentum, that more and more Americans are growing disgusted by the war and its attendant immiseration at home, and that the ruling class has gone in four short years from proclaiming new doctrines of pre-emption and the resurrection of imperialism (in a kinder, gentler guise, no less) to scrambling to find a way to get out of the mess they've created.

There is a tremendous disconnect between the beliefs of ordinary Americans who no longer support the occupation, and the political force that we can bring to bear in order to actually end it.

There are, of course, no magic formulae for bridging that gap between consciousness and action, but the continued unraveling of the Bush administration and the ever-worsening situation in Iraq, when combined with the serious discussion on the possibility of withdrawal that has now been engendered by Murtha's (half-hearted) broadside against the occupation, has opened up opportunities for the antiwar movement that were difficult to imagine six months ago..

Add to that the effects of Cindy Sheehan's protests and the burgeoning work on campuses against military recruitment, and the light at the end of the tunnel -- actual withdrawal of American troops from Iraq -- is getting brighter by the day.

1 John P. Murtha, "War in Iraq" (17 November 2005).

2 "Transcript for November 20: John Murtha, Anthony Fauci, Julie Gerberding, Michael Leavitt, and Michael Ryan," Meet the Press, NBC (21 November 2005).

3 Lawrence Korb and Brian Katulis, "Strategic Redeployment: A Progressive Plan for Iraq and the Struggle Against Violent Extremists," Center for American Progress, (29 September 2005).

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Responsibility Of Intellectuals: Kobayashi Hideo On Japan At War

11.10.05 By Zeljko Cipris, Posted at Japan Focus

Zeljko Cipris teaches Japanese language and literature at the University of the Pacific in California. He is co-author with Shoko Hamano of Making Sense of Japanese Grammar, and translator of Ishikawa Tatsuzo's Soldiers Alive and of Kuroshima Denji's A Flock of Swirling Crows & Other Proletarian Writings. The present essay for Japan Focus, a revised and expanded version of a paper presented at a 2004 AAS conference in Seattle, is dedicated to Shane Satori and Ljubomir Ryu.

As Randolph Bourne discerned as far back as 1917, a state waging war is readily able to obtain support for its undertaking from sizable numbers of intellectuals.

Such factors as jingoism, combative egos, power worship, or considerations of profit and prestige ensure that numerous academics, journalists, writers, and critics will pronounce eloquently in favor of the warring state and exhort their compatriots to back it without question.

Although a uniformly pro-war consensus is seldom attained, hawkish intellectuals play an important role in engineering consent and discrediting opposition to official policies. Appreciative of the services rendered by its intellectual myrmidons, the state rewards them, directly or indirectly.

When Japan launched its war against China in the 1930s, it did so proclaiming the loftiest of motives: to deliver peace, stability, and freedom to a chaotic land, and to liberate a troubled continent. A humanitarian intervention fused seamlessly with an imperial missionthe entire affair foreshadowing the sort of grand overseas enterprise that in a later age would elicit enthusiastic approbation elsewhere from a Robert Kaplan or a Michael Ignatieff.

One writer explained that "The objective of Japanese expansion is neither the attainment of capitalistic supremacy nor the acquisition of colonies, but the realization of harmony and concord among the nations of East Asia and the promotion of their common happiness and prosperity. [1]"

The Responsibility Of The Intellectuals In A Time Of War

Japanese intellectuals' response to their nation's war against China offered few surprises. While a bold handful attempted to swim against the current, many more drifted within the mainstream, and quite a number enthusiastically paddled with the flow toward the distant cataracts. Parameters of dissent were constricted by political, social and legal pressures, backed by police powers, and those who attempted to challenge them paid a heavy price. The majority assented tacitly or overtly to the state's bellicose project.

Widely considered the finest literary critic of modern Japan, Kobayashi Hideo (1902-1983) combined cosmopolitan learning with cultural nativism. A graduate of the highly prestigious Tokyo Imperial University (now Tokyo University), well-versed both in Europeanespecially Frenchand Japanese literature, Kobayashi did not confine his commentary to literary matters.

He also wrote about other arts, history, culture, and ethics. His high stature as a critic established by the early 1930s, Kobayashi's lifelong aversions to abstract ideas, and conceptualizing in general, were widely known to his readers, as was his admiration for spontaneous action grounded in an intuitive grasp of reality. In literature, his preferences led him to accord the highest praise to the stories and novels of Shiga Naoya and Kikuchi Kan, which struck him as vigorous, unpremeditated acts, while expressing a low opinion of Akutagawa Ryunosuke's coolly cerebral short stories. In politics, the militant nationalist Okawa Shumei was more to his liking than any analytic-minded Marxist [2].

In November 1937, Kobayashi's essay "Senso ni tsuite" (On war) appeared in Kaizo, a leading intellectual magazine. It was a powerful combination: a distinguished critic, an influential magazine, and a timely topic of vital importance. Full-scale war between China and Japan had broken out just four months earlier. Although he often wrote in a dense style, Kobayashi on this occasion made his view unmistakably clear:

If the time comes when I have to take up the gun, I will be happy to die for the nation. I can conceive of no resolution beyond that, nor do I think one necessary. Taking up the gun as a man of letters makes no sense. All who fight, fight as soldiers.

Literature exists for the sake of peace, not war. The attitude of a man of letters toward peace can be infinitely complex, but in the vortex of war, there is only one attitude he can take. A war must be won. If he then notices that the idea that a war must be won is to be found nowhere in literature, he ought to drop literature at once [3].

In the same didactic tone, Kobayashi reprimands those intellectuals who continue to entertain doubts in the face of what he calls the "simple, all too simple reality of war. [4]" Many writers, he charges, are quick to indulge in undignified contemplation of the way foreign writers reacted to the 'Great War' in Europewhen a few literary artists, like Hermann Hesse, even left for neutral territoryand they tend to be critical of the present conflict. Such people, in Kobayashi's view, are oblivious to reality. Kobayashi chastises these straying minds and lays down the patriotic imperative:

the aimless confusion felt by an intellectual mind upon colliding with the violent actuality of war ought not to be mistaken for criticism of war. There is only one way of getting a grip on oneself: by stopping the bad habit of always wanting to predict the fate of humanity, and reflecting instead on one's own present life. This should lead to the observation that, the war having begun, one's irreplaceable life is already no longer one's own. It is a harsh fact but once a war has started, all those born in Japan no longer possess the freedom to determine their own fate, not even in the name of humanity [5].

Having posited the supreme claim of nationalism, Kobayashi denounces opposition to the war as addlebrained defeatism, and aims a few slaps at Japan's revolutionary internationalistswho still exerted a lingering if declining intellectual influence in late 1937:

It is our destiny to have been born in Japan. ... I am no blind believer in nation and race, but I on no account wish to become a pathological proponent of historical inevitability. Let idle men repeat forever that Japanism is mysticism or irrationalism. I can no longer expect anything from the intelligentsia who, not satisfied with having gorged on enough isms to have damaged their stomachs and grown utterly limp, cannot abandon the pleasure of finding flaws in each other's rational interpretations of history even after the war has broken out, and are incapable of so much as clearly pronouncing the words "if the time comes, I will happily take up the gun" for fear they might be viewed as reactionaries.

Kobayashi lashes out at what he calls defeatism in an effort to rally intellectuals to the flag:

I am convinced that the present war is a test of Japanese capitalism, and of the Japanese people as a whole. I also think it proper to accept such a test with no hesitation. I do not believe in the so-called defeatist thought which tries to shirk this test. To put it strongly, such a stance cannot even be called thought. ...

Casting an unprejudiced eye over the world, where today do we see a country so enviable as to make us want to change our nationality? Further, where do we detect the sprouting of a classless, international solidarity? I would like to think that in such a time no one could seriously believe in defeatism. And yet the defeatist mode of thinking has permeated the general intelligentsia surprisingly deeply. Moreover, it has become not so much a mode of thinking as a psychological inclination. Consequently, when called upon to fight, they grow bewildered, less intellectually than psychologically [6].

Kobayashi heaps scorn on those who regard the present as merely a historical phase and place their trust in the future [7]:

History's greatest lesson is that only those men made history who did not blindly believe in predictions of future but were vigorously attached to the present alone. ...

The present cannot be sacrificed for the sake of a foreknown future. Foreknowledge, in fact, is like a radiant light which visits only the men unflinchingly resolved to deal with the present [8].

To Kobayashi, dealing with the present in autumn 1937 clearly denotes active participation in the war against China. The Japanese government of the time insisted repeatedly that the war was being fought for the sake of freedom, stability, and peace in East Asia. Kobayashi neither questions the truthfulness of the claim nor the nature of the envisioned peace. Having accepted the war's desirability, Kobayashi concludes by endorsing any means of waging it, and reiterates his willingness to cooperate on the basis of the argument that the end justifies the means:

However clumsy the means of a war's conduct, it must be affirmed that the end redeems the means. But this political principle is absolutely inapplicable to literature. A writer's work may be compared to that of a carpenter building a house. Clumsy means end in nonsense. So long as a man of letters remains a man of letters, he is no other than a thoroughgoing pacifist. Consequently, it is natural he should feel a sense of contradiction when the political principle is displayed in the form of war. I do not intend to try to sort out this contradiction for myself. If the time comes when I must die for my compatriots, I trust I will die bravely. I am an ordinary person. I am neither a sage nor a prophet [9].

The modesty, indeed servility, of the final sentences is in keeping with the soldierly, resolute tenor of the entire essay. "On war" is a sharp reminder to writers, critics, and other mental workers that their duty as subjects of the nation-state takes precedence over all else. It makes little difference what the war is about, all that matters is its "violent actuality." Kobayashi speaks of the huge military onslaught almost as though it were an act of nature, such as a storm, impervious to analysis and beyond human control. What is a storm about? It simply is. A storm must be weathered, a war must be won.

Kobayashi's article was published at a time when the Japanese government was making a concentrated attempt to direct popular thought and conduct through persuasion and force. The National Spiritual Mobilization Movement had been launched the previous month, and the arrests of several hundred leftwing socialists in the Popular Front Incident were to follow the next. Whatever the impact of Kobayashi's injunction to conformity, nowhere was it challenged in print [10].

Mission To China: Writers Writing War

In the summer of the following year, 1938, dozens of writers eagerly accepted the government's invitation to travel to China at public expense and write about the Japanese offensive. The Pen Corps (Pen butai), organized after an amicable meeting between government officials and leading literary figures, received so many applicants that some had to be turned away. (A few declined the invitation, without repercussions).

The authorities, confident that hortatory narratives from the battlefront would boost support for the war and inspire home-front civilians to emulate the soldiers' spirit of cheerful self-sacrifice, promptly assembled the Pen Corpsincluding such critically and popularly acclaimed writers as Kishida Kunio and Hayashi Fumikoand flew it overseas [11]. Kobayashi Hideo traveled to China for the first time in March 1938 as a special correspondent for the mass circulation magazine Bungei shunju.

This, the first of six wartime trips to the continent, lasted until December and took him through numerous conquered territories: eastern and northern China, the puppet state of Manzhouguo, and colonized Korea [12]. Kobayashi's reports on the first portion of his journey appeared in the May 1938 regular and special issues of Bungei shunju.

The two essays, 'Koshu" (Hangzhou) and "Koshu yori Nankin" (From Hangzhou to Nanjing), are thematically unified and sequentially linked. Covering only the "pacified" territories, they are ruminations based largely on leisurely sightseeing [13]. A striking feature of the reports is the respect, verging on wide-eyed admiration, with which Kobayashi regards Japan's fighting men.

They seem to embody both nationalism and life of action, values that Kobayashi holds in highest esteem. A guest throughout his travels of the army information section, comfortably lodged and sumptuously feted, Kobayashi clearly rejoices at being in the company of heroes. One of the paragons of heroism is Corporal Hino Ashihei (1907-1960), a writer whom Kobayashi has come to present with the Akutagawa Prize for a recently published novella.

The critic and the soldier soon become friends. Impressed by Hino's passionate eyes, calm nature, and indelibly stained uniform, Kobayashi listens attentively to all the younger man has to say, recording even a tasteless quip as if it were a peerless aphorism. (Hino's joke is this: "The three attractions of Hangzhou are fires, mosquitoes, and the third I forget. [14]") In his lofty role as a man of action, it appears, the soldier commands intellectual and moral authority.

A staunch believer in the war, Hino Ashihei would go on to become its best-selling writer, a lovingly lyrical chronicler of the brave lives and tragic deaths of Japan's imperial grunts. Hino's immensely successful book Mugi to heitai (Wheat and Soldiers), published in the summer of 1938, would sell about 1,200,000 hardcover and paperback copies (in a nation of some seventy million people), turning its author into a national hero and inspiring a series of haiku as well as a still popular war song bearing the same title [15].

Kobayashi Hideo, a notoriously hard critic to please, praised the book lavishly, locating within it "a traditional spirit which we Japanese recognize with our very flesh. [16]" Fifteen years after the war ended, haunted by attacks over his militarist past and perhaps worn out with efforts to justify his wartime conduct, Hino Ashihei would kill himself.

Like Hino himself, Kobayashi presents the Japanese soldiers as sturdy and cheerful. Sensitive to nature's beauty, they march carrying peach blossoms. Kobayashi salutes them with his consistently reverent attitude, never referring to them merely as soldiers (heitai) but invariably writing heitai-san, using the honorific suffix. Listening to an officer he has known since childhood talk calmly of the fierce fighting he has taken part in, Kobayashi's heart characteristically wells up with gratitude.

Kobayashi accords far less respect to the Chinese. They have their attractive aspectsthe women sing as they do laundry, and the "astonishingly filthy" children trading in the streets are rated "rather charming"but on the whole Kobayashi's Chinese are unimpressive specimens of humanity [17]. A case in point is the oarsman of a rented boat hired to row Kobayashi and his soldier friend Hino during their tour of Hangzhou's West Lake.

This man, the only Chinese adult described in any detail as an individual, is sketched in as hardly more than a filching servant from a kyōgen farce. Carrying his Japanese masters' wine ashore at various islands, the oarsman surreptitiously drinks it, but vigorously denies the deed. His yellow, emaciated body prompts Hino to observe that Chinese soldiers all look like that, though one notices it only after having killed them. The besotted oarsman, becoming at length incapable of rowing, is abandoned by the Japanese.

Such a detached, mildly amused view of the Chinese dominates the essays. The natives' ineptness and lack of dignity sets them implicitly apart from the author and his readers. The Chinese love loitering and parading. Even the night-soil men have their own parade. Kobayashi describes with merriment a procession of firemen preceded by noisy gongs and an unrecognizable fire truck, the men marching out of uniform, barefoot or shod in straw sandals. Only a handful are wearing antiquated brass helmets that seem to belong in an ancient war tale.

One of his excursions takes him to the Great World, a Hangzhou amusement center crowded with Chinese civilians and Japanese soldiers, which allows Kobayashi to be contemptuous of simple magic tricks, "ridiculous music," and clumsy stagecraft [18]. Only the acrobatics of a child without arms and legs who ends his act by writing the phrase "Peace in East Asia" are spared criticism. The spectacle of a limbless Chinese spelling out the Japanese wartime slogan for the benefit of the imperial soldiers in the audience is not devoid of symbolic irony, but Kobayashi supplies no hint of perceiving any.

Instead, he writes of such lighter subjects as loudly quarreling slum dwellers, monks skilled at extracting tips, and unpromising students struggling to master Japanese. Although the sights he encounters in his urban wanderings are often entertaining, they fail to dispel Kobayashi's feeling of being immersed in totally alien surroundings:

But whatever procession passed was like a boat going down a river, leaving in its wake only clamor and stench and waves of indistinguishable people. Watching them, I grew dazed. Putting down ten sen and sipping a lingering cup of tea, I felt a solitude I had not known before [19].

The Chinese are ultimately an anonymous, swirling mass in which the author is lost and utterly out of place. Somewhat like Yokomitsu Riichi, whose novel Shanghai had appeared a few years earlier, Kobayashi finds the Chinese reality filthy, chaotic, and profoundly alien. Its people are irrevocably different, down to their defecating habits which Kobayashi coolly surveys from his second-floor room provided by the army information section in Nanjing:

Even the way they wiped themselves was the reverse of ours. Such a custom was bound to produce a certain psychological inclination but it was not clear just what kind of inclination [20].

Even though a Japanese slogan of the period insisted that " Asia is one," Kobayashi seems less than convinced.

As for dirt, Kobayashi finds it in abundance. The children are filthy, the streets stink, shantytown inhabitants wear rags. The reader is casually informed that the purpose of a policeman's white sleevelets is "to protect his clothing when apprehending dirty Chinese. [21]" The remark typifies Kobayashi's overall attitude toward the Chinese. An observer less obsessed with Chinese filth might have inferred that the white sleevelets are there to make the policeman's arms visible in directing traffic.

Given the Chinese ineptitude at virtually everything, it is no surprise that Kobayashi holds most objects conceived and created by them in low esteem. He is sharply critical of a poorly executed anti-Japanese poster, and mystified by a superfluously ornamented wall. Hangzhou's temples and statuary are dismissed as pretentiously vulgar, evoking no sense of beauty in the eyes of one accustomed to Japan's ancient temples.

Like an eighteenth century exponent of National Learning, Kobayashi extols what is Japanese and denigrates the foreign, especially Chinese. The only facet of China capable of eliciting Kobayashi's enthusiasm is its natural scenery. Hangzhou's West Lake, he rhapsodizes, is "beautiful as a