US pretends to believe Abe

He has never, ever, retracted his comments that the Japanese military forced women into sex slavery in WW2. However, he claims to support the 1993 quasi-official apology that says Japan did do so. Many in the US government accept this. America's friends are nationalists who believe that Japan was essentially a victim of WW2 and are determined to revise history no matter what the rest of the world thinks---including the US. So therefor, we will just pretend he is not lying. In the near term, it seems to be best.

Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said that Abe "expressed regret that his comments were not as he intended for them to be and expressed great sympathy with people who had been placed in that kind of situation."

...U.S. officials now say that Abe's recent public statements supporting the 1993 apology have been convincing and that Bush is unlikely to bring up the matter during meetings Thursday and Friday with Abe. From ABC News.

His comments were "not as he intended them to be." Of course not. He didn't intend them to raise such a stink. He did say what he personally has said he believed for years. Japan's Imperial Army did not force women to become sex slaves. It was contractors. This if true, makes a huge difference. To the right-wingers and most likely more and more Japanese. That is what they want. That is Abe's "Beautiful Country."

Is the US making a mistake jumping into bed with Japanese nationalists? They are conservatives, but Japanese conservatives are not in any way American-style conservatives. Well, traditionally. American conservatives are now big government, intrusive government folks too. But there are still huge differences.

Japanese nationalists also go a lot farther than denying the sex slave issue. They have simlar views of the Nanjing Massacre, Unit 731, WW2, the Tokyo Tribunal, (which is easy to criticize due to its sloppiness) and the San Francisco Treaty, as well as all other issues related to the outside world as well as Japanese society, past and present. The criticism of "too many" human rights, and all these "gaffes" that the nationalist make are made because they believe what they say. They are not really gaffes. .