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There are interesting developments in Japan over the fate of U.S. military bases in Okinawa.  The new Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has made moves to revise the mutual security alliance and change plans to relocate a U.S. Marine base within Okinawa.  Okinawans have strongly opposed the new base in the Henoko area.   The new Japanese government also wants to end its logistical support for the U.S. wars in the middle east.

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U.S. pressures Japan on military package

Washington concerned as new leaders in Tokyo look to redefine alliance

By John Pomfret and Blaine Harden

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, October 22, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/21/AR2009102100746.html?nav=rss_nation/special

Worried about a new direction in Japan’s foreign policy, the Obama administration warned the Tokyo government Wednesday of serious consequences if it reneges on a military realignment plan formulated to deal with a rising China.

The comments from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates underscored increasing concern among U.S. officials as Japan moves to redefine its alliance with the United States and its place in Asia. In August, the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won an overwhelming victory in elections, ending more than 50 years of one-party rule.

For a U.S. administration burdened with challenges in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and China, troubles with its closest ally in Asia constitute a new complication.

A senior State Department official said the United States had “grown comfortable” thinking about Japan as a constant in U.S. relations in Asia. It no longer is, he said, adding that “the hardest thing right now is not China, it’s Japan.”

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the new ruling party lacks experience in government and came to power wanting politicians to be in charge, not the bureaucrats who traditionally ran the country from behind the scenes. Added to that is a deep malaise in a society that has been politically and economically adrift for two decades.

In the past week, officials from the DPJ have announced that Japan would withdraw from an eight-year-old mission in the Indian Ocean to refuel warships supporting U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan. They have also pledged to reopen negotiations over a $26 billion military package that involves relocating a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter base in Japan and moving 8,000 U.S. Marines from Japan to Guam. After more than a decade of talks, the United States and Japan agreed on the deal in 2006.

The atmospherics of the relationship have also morphed, with Japanese politicians now publicly contradicting U.S. officials.

U.S. discomfort was on display Wednesday in Tokyo as Gates pressured the government, after meetings with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, to keep its commitment to the military agreement.

“It is time to move on,” Gates said, warning that if Japan pulls apart the troop “realignment road map,” it would be “immensely complicated and counterproductive.”

In a relationship in which protocol can be imbued with significance, Gates let his schedule do the talking, declining invitations to dine with Defense Ministry officials and to attend a welcome ceremony at the ministry.

Hatoyama said Gates’s presence in Japan “doesn’t mean we have to decide everything.”

For decades, the alliance with the United States was a cornerstone of Japanese policy, but it was also a crutch. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) outsourced many foreign policy decisions to Washington. The base realignment plan, for example, was worked out as a way to confront China’s expanding military by building up Guam as a counterweight to Beijing’s growing navy and by improving missile defense capabilities to offset China and North Korea’s increasingly formidable rocket forces.

The DPJ rode to power pledging to be more assertive in its relations with the United States and has seemed less committed to a robust military response to China’s rise. On the campaign trail, Hatoyama vowed to reexamine what he called “secret” agreements between the LDP and the United States over the storage or transshipment of nuclear weapons in Japan — a sensitive topic in the only country that has endured nuclear attacks.

He also pushed the idea of an East Asian Community, a sort of Asian version of the European Union, with China at its core.

Soon after the election, U.S. officials dismissed concerns that change was afoot, saying campaign rhetoric was to blame. Although most of those officials still say the alliance is strong, there is worry the DPJ is committed to transforming Japan’s foreign policy — but exactly how is unclear.

DPJ politicians have accused U.S. officials of not taking them seriously. Said Tadashi Inuzuka, a DPJ member of the upper house of Japan’s parliament, the Diet: “They should realize that we are the governing party now.”

Kent Calder, the director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a longtime U.S. diplomat in Japan, said that if Hatoyama succeeds in delaying a decision on the military package until next year, U.S. officials fear it could unravel.

Other Asian nations have privately reacted with alarm to Hatoyama’s call for the creation of the East Asian Community because they worry that the United States would be shut out.

“I think the U.S. has to be part of the Asia-Pacific and the overall architecture of cooperation within the Asia-Pacific,” Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, said on a trip to Japan this month.

The theatrics of Japan’s relationship with Washington are new as well. Take, for instance, the dust-up last month between Japan’s ambassador to the United States, Ichiro Fujisaki, and Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.

On Sept. 9, Morrell demanded that Japan continue its refueling operation in the Indian Ocean. The next day, Fujisaki responded that such a decision was “up to Japan” and then said that Japan and the United States were “not on such terms where we talk through spokespeople.” The Hatoyama government has said that it will not extend the refueling mission when it expires in January.

Then, at a seminar in Washington on Oct. 14, Kuniko Tanioka, a DPJ member in the upper house, went head-to-head with Kevin Maher, director of the State Department’s Office of Japan Affairs, over the Futenma Air Station deal. Maher said the deal concerning the Marine Corps base had been completed. Tanioka said the negotiations lacked transparency.

Maher noted that a senior DPJ official had agreed that the deal must go through, at which point Tanioka snapped back, “I’m smarter than he is.”

“I have never seen this in 30 years,” Calder said. “I haven’t heard Japanese talking back to American diplomats that often, especially not publicly. The Americans usually say, ‘We have a deal,’ and the Japanese respond, ‘Ah soo desu ka,’ — we have a deal — and it’s over. This is new.”

Harden reported from Tokyo.

People need to remember this when Senator Inouye tries to paint his record as anti-war.

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Posted on: Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Hawaii’s Sen. Inouye sides with McChrystal on Afghanistan

By JOHN YAUKEY

Advertiser Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, just back from Afghanistan and Pakistan, said yesterday that he backs the strategy there advocated by the top U.S. ground commander, but is awaiting “specific recommendations” from the military and White House before concluding for himself the number of troops needed for the job.

Inouye met with U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal, who has indicated that he will ask for as many as 40,000 more troops in Afghanistan to broaden a counterinsurgency strategy focused on protecting Afghan civilians.

So far, McChrystal’s approach has received a lukewarm reception at the White House, which is in the throes of a full-scale strategy review of the war in Afghanistan and the role of neighboring Pakistan.

“At this time, I believe Gen. McChrystal’s assessment of the current situation and his conclusions, including his assessment that coalition forces must have more daily contact with the people of Afghanistan, is correct and is what is needed if we are to achieve security and stability in Afghanistan,” Inouye said in a statement.

“I had the opportunity to discuss with Gen. McChrystal his assessment and the report he made to the White House. His focus on the population is a correct one. You can spend all the money in the world, but if the people aren’t with you then you’re out of business.”

Senator has clout

Inouye met with U.S. troops — some from Hawai’i — as well as with U.S., Afghan and Pakistani commanders, intelligence officials, and the presidents of both countries.

“Despite the many challenges they face, the morale of our troops remains high and their fierce dedication to the mission was truly inspiring,” said Inouye, who won a Medal of Honor for his service in World War II’s European theater.

Hawai’i’s senior senator made his trip as violence in the eight-year war in Afghanistan has been escalating and U.S. casualties have been climbing.

Attacks of all types — roadside bombs, ambushes, sniper fire, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons — have reached record levels, according to Pentagon data.

Meanwhile, public support for the war has been dropping.

Inouye heads the powerful Appropriations Committee and its defense subcommittee, which together have significant control over the purse strings of the military and potentially the course of the war in Afghanistan.

“As the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I cannot and will not close my mind to the knowledge that for each 1,000 troops (added) it will be an additional $1 billion of taxpayer support,” Inouye said. “I need not remind anyone that this is a time of global financial crisis.”

Opposing views

For the past several weeks, President Obama and his national security team have been meeting behind closed doors to reassess the strategy in Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have both said recently that the United States is committed to a regional strategy aimed at building long-standing relations with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But they have not been specific about how that might affect U.S. troop levels in the region.

Obama is already in the process of adding 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, which would bring the total number of U.S. forces there to roughly 68,000 by year’s end.

McChrystal’s 40,000 — if he gets them — would come on top of that.

But there is resistance to McChrystal.

Vice President Joseph Biden believes that the mission in Afghanistan and Pakistan should be scaled back to a counterterrorism strategy aimed more at al-Qaida than the Taliban.

Some influential lawmakers advocate training Afghan forces as quickly as possible so American troops can start moving back out of the combat zones.

Obama apparently is not close yet to a final decision on the way forward.

“I still think we’re probably several weeks away,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said at a briefing late last week. “But I think the president feels like the discussions are going well.”

Sen. Inouye wrote an Op Ed piece on defending the Stryker Brigade in Hawai’i for the Honolulu Advertiser on  12/17/06.  He wrote:

I have and will continue to do everything I can to support our troops. This issue on the Stryker brigade should not be a referendum on the Iraq war…

Today, less than 1 percent of Americans are willing to make the sacrifice to wear our nation’s uniform. They deserve our support.

They deserve the best equipment and the best training we can provide to prepare them for battle.

Why then did he drastically cut the Operations and Maintenance (O&B) budget that pays for training, maintenance and repairs? Defense budget analyst and former congressional aide Winslow Wheeler wrote in the Huffington Post:

And what did the Senate Appropriations Committee do to better support our troops in the new 2010 DOD Appropriations bill? They cut the already-skinny O&M account by over $3 billion. The Defense Subcommittee Chairman, Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI), with the full support of his Republican counterpart, Thad Cochran (R-MS), cut Obama’s request for basic O&M by $2.4 billion and for wartime O&M by another $655 million.

Is there some trick here? Did they refund the support of our troops somewhere else?

No, Inouye and Cochran have higher priorities. According to their own committee report, they wedged 778 earmarks (pork) costing $2.6 billion into their bill. That didn’t count some of their major goodies: one extra DDG-51 destroyer to be built in Cochran’s Mississippi but unrequested by the Navy ($1.7 billion) plus $2.5 billion for 10 unneeded, unrequested C-17 cargo aircraft pushed through by a gaggle of senators with parochial interests. To pay for this $6.8 billion mountain of lard without raising the total DOD budget, Inouye and Cochran picked the pockets of selected accounts in the bill. (Inouye calls them “reallocations.”) More than $3 billion of those “reallocations” came from the already-bare O&M cupboard.

All that raiding and juggling of accounts is hard work for busy senators but, as TaxPayers for Common Sense points out, it pays off in the form of campaign contributions. (See “Inouye, Cochran Benefit from Earmark Recipients” at the TCS website at http://www.taxpayer.net/.)

The lesson? Don’t believe all the rhetoric about supporting the troops.  If politicians really supported the troops, they would take decisive measures to end the wars and reverse the military expansion that threatens and antagonizes other people and countries around the world.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/winslow-t-wheeler/support-our-troops-the-se_b_314393.html

From the Pacific Business News:  “According to the indictment, Ong, 51, failed to report income he earned from selling firearms to federal, state, county and military agencies as well as the public.”

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http://pacific.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2009/10/05/daily40.html

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Feds indict Honolulu gun dealer on tax charges

Pacific Business News (Honolulu)

A federal grand jury has indicted a Hawaii firearms dealer on tax crimes, charging him with setting up phony businesses to hide the money he made from selling weapons.

Arthur Lee Ong, who owns Magnum Firearms in Honolulu, is charged with defrauding the federal government and six counts of tax evasion from 2000 to 2005, the U.S. District Attorney’s office in Hawaii said Wednesday.

According to the indictment, Ong, 51, failed to report income he earned from selling firearms to federal, state, county and military agencies as well as the public.

He created multiple businesses, falsified tax returns to hide his income, and evaded more than $300,000 in taxes during the five-year period, according to the indictment.

Ong, 51, will be arraigned on Oct. 14.

Magnum Firearms, at 940 Queen St., describes itself as one of Hawaii’s leading firearms dealers. In addition to its Kakaako showroom, it has a shooting range and is an NRA-certified training facility that provides mandatory firearms safety courses.

Source: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20091004/NEWS21/910040367/Hawaii+s+Sen.+Inouye+defends+earmarks+for+his+home+state

Posted on: Sunday, October 4, 2009

Hawaii’s Sen. Inouye defends earmarks for his home state

Appropriations chairman criticized for steering millions toward Hawaii

By John Yaukey
Advertiser Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON – Seniority has its privileges.

But it comes with burdens as well.

Sen. Daniel Inouye, new chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, can attest to that as he shepherds through federal spending bills that are boons for Hawai’i but that deficit hawks have been attacking amid fierce debates over federal spending and spiking deficits.

That was especially evident in the last week during debate over a $636 billion military spending bill flush with money for Hawai’i.

In the defense bill alone, Inouye has 31 earmarks worth $178 million, and four earmarks worth $28.5 million in concert with other members, according to Washington-based Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

Earmarks refer to funding for pet projects that lawmakers insert in spending bills, often at the behest of lobbyists working for corporations, universities and other clients. Critics say the projects amount to no-bid contracts.

As the defense bill was debated, Inouye faced attacks from budget hawks, some of whom say defense earmarks draw funds from troops in combat.

But in a recent interview, Inouye was unrepentant about his prowess as a bacon-getter for Hawai’i – and about the constitutional power of Congress to spend money.

“This is the legislative branch doing its job,” the taciturn eight-term senator said in his characteristic baritone. “If this spending is not necessary, then it shouldn’t be appropriated.”

Inouye is doing much of that appropriating now as Congress’ 12 annual spending bills move toward passage.

Overall, Congress is on its way to spending $75 billion, or 7 percent, more in 2010 than it did in 2009, according to an analysis by Congressional Quarterly.

Hawai’i consistently ranks among the top 10 states in federal spending per capita, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Consolidated Federal Funds Report.

Earmark proponents argue that their budget inserts often provide funding to organizations that do good work but otherwise wouldn’t get federal money.

Many are small businesses, Inouye pointed out.

“You think they would be able to compete with GE?” he said. “No way.”

Earmarking is bipartisan, with tradition dictating that the majority party gets about 60 percent, according to breakdowns by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Inouye’s Republican counterpart on the Appropriations Committee, Mississippi’s Thad Cochran, has sponsored 13 earmarks worth $50 million on his own, co-sponsoring another 35 worth $166 million.

Not surprisingly, almost all of Inouye’s defense earmarks are for programs in Hawai’i.

And some are whoppers, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense. It found that 18 provisions, totaling more than $68 million, are for interests that have donated more than $300,000 to Inouye’s campaign since 2007.

Inouye, who is up for re-election in 2010, can take credit for three of the five largest defense earmarks in the 2010 budget:

• $24.5 million for the Hawai’i Federal Health Care Network.

• $20 million for the Maui Space Surveillance System, a program that has received earmarks from Inouye for years.

• $25 million for the National World War II Museum at the University of New Orleans.

A cursory scan of other spending bills reinforces how well Hawai’i looks to fare across the federal spending spectrum in fiscal 2010:

• $329 million for military construction, which is separate from the core defense budget.

• $60 million for transportation, housing and urban development projects.

• $24 million for the East-West Center think tank, which Inouye helped create.

Even for an appropriations chairman, this is a noteworthy performance.

“He’s at the top of the heap,” said Laura Peterson of the Center for Responsive Politics.

Inouye’s reach as the Senate’s top banker was apparent early in his appropriations chairmanship, which began with Barack Obama’s election to the White House.

In March, when lawmakers took up a $410 billion stopgap spending measure, second-term Rep. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawai’i, led the 435-member House with more than $138 million in earmarks. That was in large part because they were sponsored by Inouye.

In fourth place was Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawai’i, with $111.4 million.

But this is not what the White House wanted.

Obama campaigned to slash earmarks to the 1994 level of $7.8 billion. Still, Congress is on track to spend more than double the president’s limit.

In this year’s spending bills, all but four Republicans and three Democrats in the Senate have accepted earmarks for their states, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

But the opponents have been vocal.

As the defense bill was debated, Inouye and Arizona’s budget hawk, GOP Sen. John McCain, clashed over, among other things, $2.5 billion for 10 new C-17 cargo planes.

The Pentagon has said it doesn’t need them, but Inouye supported the expenditure, arguing that shutting down the production line of such a versatile plane would be unwise.

McCain contended that it would draw money needed for basic military operations.

“This legislation should be vetoed in its present form,” McCain said.

Obama agrees.

“Every dollar wasted in our defense budget is a dollar we can’t spend to care for our troops, protect America or prepare for the future,” he said in an August speech to veterans in Arizona, citing some of the weapons Inouye supports.

As the second-longest-serving active senator, Inouye knows the power of Capitol Hill and the limits of even the most popular president.

“Any president can hope, dream, wish and cajole,” said Dave Levinthal, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics. “But in the end, he doesn’t run the Congress, and Congress will do what it wants.”