Japan's Military Sculpts New Image in Iraqi Sand

[kskiska]

Deployment Furthers Break With Pacifism

Tuesday, February 10, 2004; Page A01

SAPPORO, Japan -- Fresh-faced soldiers in crisp camouflage and new black boots eagerly bounded onto towering blocks of hard snow. Armed with shovels and sculpting tools, they were deploying on one of the trademark missions for Japanese troops -- carving statues for the annual Sapporo Snow Festival.

Under the gaze of superior officers, a squadron of field artillery specialists chipped away at a Manhattan skyline magically taking shape behind a mammoth bust of New York Yankees slugger Hideki Matsui. A few strides away, members of the Self-Defense Forces' 11th Division etched a 40-foot-high scene from Peach Boy Railroad, a video game. These were just a few of the dazzling works created by 23,000 troops for the festival's 2 million visitors.

In a nation with a constitution that renounces war, the sculpture mission reinforces the affable image of what is essentially a pacifist military. But today Japan is in the midst of a historic deployment of roughly 1,000 troops to Iraq, including many of the men who once carved similarly glistening shapes here.

(snip)

The dispatch of soldiers to Iraq has jarred the national psyche. No Japanese soldier has fallen -- or killed an enemy -- since the surrender to the United States in 1945. Pacifism has run deep here since the Imperial Army led 2 million soldiers to their deaths in World War II and the United States dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that led to the end of the conflict. So, today, many Japanese are deeply torn, even tormented, about the military's new postwar role.

There are concerns over whether the Self-Defense Forces are suitable for a place as dangerous as Iraq. The troops, though backed by the world's fourth-largest military budget, are so new to hot spots that those soldiers chosen for Iraq duty required special training on matters as basic as how to handle their guns. Furthermore, their strict rules of engagement do not allow them to fire unless it is clearly necessary for self-defense. That calculation, many fret, may cause soldiers to pause for a fatal split second.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26984-2004Feb9.html

[cprise]

1. Robots

I want to see robots.

...and science-ninjas!

[renegade000]

2. kick n/t

[kskiska]

3. These guys are sitting ducks

"The pressure is tremendous for the men of the SDF," said Yoshinobu Okubo, editor of the Tokyo monthly magazine Military Study. "This operation is a totally different level of danger for them. . . . Their training with live ammunition is very limited. Just about once a year, the ground forces . . . freely train with live ammunition in a realistic situation. Their training zone is small and limited, and done all in an extremely prescribed way. You can fire only from certain angles, for instance, to avoid accidents with civilians."

[AZCat]

4. I confess- I'm disappointed

After reading the 1st para of the article, I thought this would be about a sand-sculpting competition in Iraq not unlike the beach competitions I've seen.
Wouldn't that be cool? Maybe they could sculpt a WMD, since there don't seem to be any real ones there...