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5/17/2003 07:18:00 PM | Brad Plumer re: This is Democracy? Anthony Bider-Hall writes: "Even communists in Japan fared better!" Not really. People forget that the Japanese occupation was extremely strict, at times even brutal. It's true that initially, MacArthur freed the communists jailed under the military government, allowed wide freedoms on the press and encouraged unions. That changed very quickly as soon as Communism swept across Eastern Europe. Thereafter, the occupation overseers in Japan cracked down hard on unions (drawing generously on yakuza support to intimidate leaders and break strikes-- there's an interesting book about this, but I forget the title) and strengthened the power of the ruling government. There's a lot of debate over how and why Shigeru (a capitalist liberal who had close ties with the old military government) won the first nationwide election in 1946, and further debates over how and why he managed to outmaneuver the majority Socialist party in 1948, but he certainly benefitted greatly from his close ties to MacArthur. At any rate, postwar Japan was hardly a free and open democracy, and was very tightly controlled by the occupation forces. We should realistically expect the same in Iraq, which will demand even tighter controls and a more vigilant occupation. (Note that I've glossed over some important differences. I think, for instance, that there's a lot to learn from what happened during those first two "free society" years in postwar Japan, as well as what came after. I was earlier going to write a longer essay-length post that compared/contrasted the two occupation situations... but I got lazy, naturally...). perma link |
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