Japan to renew refueling for Afghan mission

NY Times:

The Japanese government rammed through a special law Friday authorizing its navy to resume a refueling mission in the Indian Ocean as part of the American-led war in Afghanistan.

In an extremely rare parliamentary move, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s governing Liberal Democratic Party used its two-thirds majority in the Japanese Parliament’s lower house to override a rejection of the law by the opposition-controlled upper house. The last time a government did this was in 1951.

The refueling mission, which was suspended in November after the opposition Democratic Party gained power in the upper house last summer, is now expected to resume by the end of the month.

“That our country can participate again in the ‘war against terror’ truly has great significance,” Mr. Fukuda said in a statement.

A Japanese refueling vessel and a destroyer had operated in the Indian Ocean since 2001, supplying 500 million liters, or 132 million gallons, of fuel to warships from the United States, Britain, Pakistan and other countries. Though the mission was not considered militarily significant, it carried political significance for a country whose military activities are severely curtailed by its pacifist Constitution.

The Democratic opposition said it would endorse only missions led by the United Nations and said that the Liberal Democrats were slavishly following the United States.

...

Democrats in Japan are undercutting the Japanese reputation for intelligence. Why would any rational person want to limit operations to those led by a corrupt organization like the UN? Based on the presumption of intelligence, I can only assume they put that condition forward as a excuse to stop aid to an ally who spends much more defending Japan's interest including the free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. The Democrats should be ashamed. Theirs was not the action of an honorable country.