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By Marion Edwyn Harrison, Esq.
Febuary 15, 2007
Everyone who has read a modicum of history doubtless recognizes that over the recorded two-plus millennia human beings organized as governments, military or other commanding forces have committed vast numbers of massive, often unspeakable, moral offenses. To enumerate a few is to risk minimizing numerous others. There immediately come to mind some of those more recent and quite massive - e.g., certainly without limitation, the Holocaust, the Stalinist massacres of even greater millions of other innocents, the erratic and ongoing massacres and forced starvation in several African countries, and, of course, through all recorded history, various forms of slavery.
For a reason exemplified two paragraphs hence, it is not surprising that the President of Russia recently has been quoted as having criticized the United States for what one might term our foreign-policy, military and economic unilateralism. To which particulars, if any, that critique may be valid is another matter. The point for immediate applicability is that growing numbers of people around the world, some of them responsible people, perceive such to be true. Perception at times becomes a form of reality or at least a source of nuisance or discord.
One of the many crimes committed in the 20th Century was the Japanese program, referred to in English as the providing of (mostly Korean, some Chinese, Indonesian, Filipina) “Comfort Women” to provide sexual relations with Japanese soldiers. Presumably nobody is alive who sponsored this program. The United States, of course, had no role in it and until on or about VJ Day had no way to stop what little remained of it.
We now see a publicity-seeking, if (benefit of the doubt) perhaps well intentioned, Member of Congress who has introduced, and is promoting, House Resolution 121, 110th Congress (“H Res 121"), to attempt to admonish the Japanese Government to acknowledge, and apologize for, the Comfort Women program - a meaningless manifestation of the American alleged arrogance about which so many foreigners already are complaining. (The fact that the Member is of Japanese ancestry is irrelevant. He is American. All Americans are of some non-American ancestry - even Native Americans, formerly known as Indians, whose ancestors migrated from the Near East.)
H Res 121 is ridiculous for a variety of reasons. Some of them, without limitation and not necessarily in prioritized order: (1) Our United States Government has no jurisdiction over the Japanese Government. (2) Adverse affect upon American - Japanese relations. (3) Congress is, or should be, overwhelmed with issues within its jurisdiction (e.g., spending of taxpayers’ money out of control; unlawful immigration out of control; no effective missile defense system; Social Security headed for bankruptcy; delay and defeat in confirmation of Federal judges; so on). (4) A similar resolution failed in the 109th Congress. (5) In 2001 the Japanese Prime Minister published a letter of apology.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the H Res 121 sponsor has no experience in foreign affairs and never served in the military. His two years in the Peace Corps may manifest some altruism but hardly amount to expertise.
Fortunately H Res 121 probably will not be enacted. More important, however, is the underlying fact that the Constitutional role of Congress is to legislate, and of the Senate also to advise and consent to nominations and to ratify treaties, neither House to pontificate with resolutions of opinion or of advice to foreign sovereignties as to how publicly to atone for historical mistakes.
The number of ancestors of each of us doubles in each generation. None of us can be responsible for the misconduct of ancestors. All such resolutions of apology at best are foolish; when they tell friendly foreign governments how to apologize for historical error they are more than foolish.
Marion Edwyn Harrison is President of, and Counsel to, the Free Congress Foundation. He served four years as an American Bar Association Governor, ten in its House of Delegates, was a Section Chairman, etc.
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