Liberal Japan

Never let yourself be goaded into taking seriously problems about words and their meanings. — Karl Popper

A post about article 9, refueling ships, and the meaning of refuel … what does it mean to refuel a ship?

Get a load of this (from the Japan Times):

U.S. Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer denied allegations Thursday that fuel provided by the Maritime Self-Defense Force in February 2003 may have been used for U.S. operations in Iraq, and promised to undertake further fact-finding to show it was used for antiterrorism operations in and around Afghanistan in line with a Japanese law. “The war on Iraq did not start until March 20. The amount of fuel that was provided to the Kitty Hawk was not sufficient to get to March 20. It would have expired in a few days time,” Schieffer told reporters. Schieffer was referring to fuel that was supplied to a U.S. oiler by an MSDF replenishment ship on Feb. 25, 2003, in the Arabian Sea and then transferred to the USS Kitty Hawk, an aircraft carrier that took part in the Iraq war. The Kitty Hawk had been originally dispatched into the area under orders to participate in the Afghan-related Operation Enduring Freedom, Schieffer said.

Okay, so the MSDF gave fuel to an oiler and this oiler gave fuel to the Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier. This happened in February. In March, the Kitty Hawk was involved in fighting in Iraq. Minute quantities of microscopic Japanese fuel probably adhered to the tanks and then dislodged sometime during operations in Iraq. So it probably did have some Japanese fuel, right?

To be realistic here, it’d be truly absurd for America to be worried about which ship got fuel from which in determining its logistics and strategy. Then again, the writing was all over the wall as far as what the Kitty Hawk would be doing that February when it go refueled, right?

Whatcha gonna do?

Imagine some sudden situation arising, and a US admiral wanting to move some ship into the area to resolve it. The captain then says, “but sir, we’ve got Japanese fuel and we’re only allowed to help out in Afghanistan.”

The general would then say, “damn, I’ll have to just sit on my hands and do nothing then.”

It’d be silly and absurd. It’d be dangerous. Not to say DC politicians don’t actually cause things like that to happen …

Ultimately, I think this is the result of too much hairsplitting and pretending that article 9 of the Japanese constitution some how supports these missions, when it plain out doesn’t. Either revise to the constitution or just stop these missions.

Part of the problem is politicians who think like this, “Well, I know we need to revise the constitution because it’s absurd given the current world political situation. But we can’t revise the constitution because it’d be politically too hard. So instead let’s just continuously and incrementally revise our interpretation until we get what we want that way.”

Yet the more the constitutional interpretation is revised, the harder and harder it gets to revise it for real because there’s less and less to be gained.

The end result though is you end up with this convoluted situation where supposedly America needs to be watching carefully what it does with ships containing Japanese fuel while it’s engaged in fighting two different wars fairly near to each other.

Shikata ga nai ne.