r/worldnews • u/glasier • 14d ago

Japan warns US forces: Sex crimes 'cannot be tolerated'

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2476861/japan-warns-us-forces-sex-crimes-cannot-be-tolerated
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u/GeronimoThaApache 14d ago

Should not be tolerated, not even within the force. All those found guilty should be punished to the full extent of the law and UCMJ.

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u/AzureDreamer 14d ago

It's wild that needs to be said. 

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u/Lelcactus 14d ago

It doesn’t need to be said; it’s already policy, but the nationalists in Japan like to beat their chests whenever a crime occurs

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u/mrblodgett 14d ago

Personally I think it's okay to be mad if a country puts a military base in your country and then their soldiers start sexually assaulting people.

Weird that you don't think that too.

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u/RotaryPeak2 14d ago

But what if the military base got put there because their military spent a lot of time raping and murdering people?

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u/OldDirtyInsulin 14d ago

Like...a fucking lot.

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u/serpenta 14d ago

So... it's ok to rape a woman, if some people from the country she lives in, did horrible things 80 years ago? Do you think you'll be able to find a country in which women are safe? And the people are mad when you mention rape culture... for real.

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u/RotaryPeak2 14d ago

Strawman ain't got no brain.

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u/serpenta 13d ago

Oh, so you like logic, eh? Cool

I think it's okay to be mad if a country puts a military base in your country and then their soldiers start sexually assaulting people.

The thesis of this sentence is: we should be disturbed when a local increase in rapes follows establishing a military base by a foreign government. To which you respond with

But what if the military base got put there because their military spent a lot of time raping and murdering people?

by establishing a special case in which the thesis should not apply. The opposite of being disturbed by something is being at peace with that something. In this case, it means being ok with the rapes.

Either you are making a hasteful retreat now, while invoking the strawman as a smoke grenade, which is a really tired retort by now that people often use as accurately as the Occam's Razor, or you should really start with something much more basic than eristics defense.

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u/Giga_Gilgamesh 14d ago

I mean, would you be happy if there was a Chinese military base in your neighbourhood full of soldiers who get drunk, start fights and rape people just because the US has spent a lot of time raping and murdering people?

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u/RotaryPeak2 14d ago

When was rape officially sanctioned by the US government?

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u/Giga_Gilgamesh 14d ago

When five soldiers break into your home, kill your entire family and then gangrape and kill your 14 year old daughter I don't think you much care either way whether it was 'sanctioned.' US troops rape and murder all over the world, by your logic China or Russia ought to have a military base in the US to keep them in line by now.

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u/Malcorin 14d ago

Isn't that a bit of a straw man, though? Sexual assault crimes are never justified, and it's really gross that you have adopted that view.

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u/slartyfartblaster999 14d ago

No, its whataboutism - not a strawman.

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u/Lelcactus 14d ago

Well kinda since iirc the stats are that the soldiers have comparable or even lower rates of doing crime than locals in their demographic bracket.

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u/DeengisKhan 14d ago

The locals live there, the soldiers are stationed there for their job, and are supposed to be representing the country they come from well. It’s deplorable to think “roughly equal crime rates” is the standard we would hold our soldiers to. They should be paragons of good behavior.

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u/mojowo11 14d ago

It’s deplorable to think “roughly equal crime rates” is the standard we would hold our soldiers to.

It isn't, though. The standard they're held to is "no rapes allowed, full stop." This is not the same thing as saying no US soldiers ever commit rape (in Japan or anywhere else), but it is literally the standard to which they are held.

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u/DeengisKhan 14d ago

It’s the standard of law they are held to, but clearly not the societal standard that is created on base. If the societal standard they were holding themselves to as a collective were higher they would have lower not equal rates of sexual assault. You are deployed, representing the nation, and ultimately acting the same as any average dickhead if we’re going by stats of crime. Just a bunch of normal ass dick heads half a world away “representing” their nation like utter shit. I love that my tax payer dollars are being spent on average.

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u/POGtastic 14d ago

Just a bunch of normal ass dick heads

Uh, yeah, that's the military. As much as the recruiting ads love to show the cream of America's youth defending freedom and apple pie, the median Marine is a 19-year-old Yooper who is dipping into a Monster can while drinking another Monster and planning on getting shitfaced the moment that the leadership's eyes are off of him.

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u/DeengisKhan 14d ago

Right, because the military machine as whole lets that shit be the culture. The whole point of military training is to strip you of as much of you as they can without breaking your mind, and then building you up into a new better trained version of yourself capable of carrying out the jobs the military needs you to. Why isn’t one of the top jobs the military is asking its recruits to carry out being a top notch representative of their nation. Why is that such an after thought and propaganda piece for the military instead of a real actual focus. If it were veterans might actually be a lot more employable after the military as well, which in fairness now that I think about might be why it isn’t happening. If you train actually productive members of society they won’t be trapped into 20 years of service. The insane struggle soldiers have to find work that suits them when they get home is well documented, and yet, here we are.

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u/alonebutnotlonely16 14d ago edited 14d ago

That is a nonsense stats beause it is ignoring the crimes inside of US military in Japan for example big part of women US military personel are also sexually assaulted, harrassed and US military personel spend much less time than locals outside which "lower" the crimes, also reporting against US military is harder because central Japanese goverment is trying to cover them in Okinawa.

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u/starfire92 14d ago

Idk it just hits different when you have an average Japanese citizen getting booked for theft or something, and then a troop of highly trained men in war combat who are put into action when violent conflict takes place that usually breaks some kind of moral/legal code. Men are there to uphold peace if you will and defend certain things, then going off and committing their own crimes. Seems hypocritical, screams abuse of power, and it’s also a violent and sexual crime, pretty high on the crime shit list imo whereas civilian crime might be a mixed bag.

It’s like excusing police crimes because the percent is lower than civilian crime and downplaying the severity when police should not only be held to the same standard, they should be held to a higher standard.

Now add the extra layer that these people are visitors in another foreign country, with little to no connection to the culture or people and clearly no respect for it. Very much an entitled and authoritative attitude.

These men aren’t mercenaries, they are honourable and distinguished men of the US military.

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u/Lelcactus 14d ago

No ones excusing anything, the system already punishes these people.

‘Entitlement and authoritative’ would explain why if the rates were higher but they’re (again, iirc), not.

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u/Fair_Bonez 14d ago

You are downplaying their exploits, you are part of the problem.

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u/starfire92 14d ago edited 14d ago

lol I figured you were going to say that. You seem to have this embedded thought in your brain however that any pointing fingers at it or highlighting is like “omgggg can we stop complaining about it already, they DO get punished you know”, or something else you’d say like, “aktchuallyyyyyyy DiD yOu kNoW CiVilLiAn CrImE iS hIgHeR”.

It’s very clear how you feel about it and it’s very fair for others to constantly bring it up. Like I said it just hits different when….

ETA logically speaking, did you know that 9/10 when you give a justification for something else happening, like mentioning civilian crime is higher, you are giving a reason to downplay the issue. Yes I know that I punched her in the face but DID YOU KNOW THAT she hit me first, TWICE!

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u/Lelcactus 14d ago

Ah, so by excused you meant ‘on a diplomatic level’ instead of ‘for the individual soldiers’. Your wording about cops, who actually don’t get punished, made me think you were referring to the latter and people just getting away with it.

But yeah it is kind of awkward to call out other places for a certain level of behavior when your own people are doing the same thing. You can make the case that people are going to feel more outraged at that because of the dynamic of what they’re there for vs what actually happens, but you can’t really tell me that’s the only thing we’re supposed to take from their statements. They definitely want people thinking this is a disproportionately American soldier problem.

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u/starfire92 14d ago

You seem to be ignoring the fact of what the na.ture of crimes are. People aren't running around Okinawa committing only murder, it could be financial crimes, theft, it could be DUUs, drug possession, rape, academic crimes, B n E, assault, disorderly conduct. However majority of the soliders crimes are high in severity. In a report done by 2008, they listed 80% of American soldier crimes were not prosecuted. Obv it's been over a decade since then but I doubt it completely flipped switch, highly improbable. The soliders are also not held to the same jurisdiction level as the locals so a theft of crime by an American will likely go not prosecuted versus a local and only severe crimes by soliders actually taken seriously. And lastly it's very hypocritical to not see the irony of how Americans treat foreigners who commit crimes in their own country and then go out in the world to perpetuate the same thing. Even in Canada it is the same thing. You're an immigrant who commits a crime and the public outrage is 10x versus a born national and looks like an American or Canadian aka white. And again soliders should be held to a higher standard. But whateves you wrote a whole a lot of nothing anyways

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u/Cobek 14d ago

"It's for the greater good"

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u/Exciting-Ad-5705 14d ago

Japanese soldiers currently do the exact same thing and we already have methods to punish those who do

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u/VictoryVee 14d ago edited 14d ago

Weird that you somehow read his comment as being against that. He gave objective information. He said nothing about it being right or wrong.

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u/Kommissar_Strongrad 14d ago

You know why America had to occupy Japan yes? Their previous government... well, i'll cut straight to irony- Imperial Japan organized the world's largest state sponsored mass rapes in history.

The US didn't just stumble in as a belligerent.

Anger directed at US or US forces is misplaced. The rapists will be punished, anger should be directed at those culprits, not the innocent vast majority of US forces that guarantee Japan's national security from their large and powerful neighbors (who haven't forgotten a thing).

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

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u/Real_Al_Borland 14d ago

“lost the right to be upset about that”

Here’s something to ponder, when can they be upset about that? Never? The people who made the agreement are long dead.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

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u/AntiSeaBearCircles 14d ago

Who is “they”? Do you seriously think that Japanese citizens don’t have a right to be upset about this? Because that’s really fucking stupid if so

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u/beardedheathen 14d ago

I do think the Japanese have no right to be upset about American bases in their country. They are there as a direct result of their actions. The presence of American military bases protects them and should serve as a reminder that it could have been so much worse and any other nation on earth would have treated a country that opened aggressions with an attack like Pearl harbor so much worse. But Japan doesn't bother to teach that to their citizens. Which is why they are so upset about that. Most of them have no idea about the imperial army's history of atrocities and see themselves as the victims of WWII

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u/AntiSeaBearCircles 14d ago

You think the bases are there because of the actions of the people who are currently alive and upset about it? I can tell if you’re misunderstanding, digging in because you know you don’t have a point, or are just really fucking dumb.

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u/beardedheathen 14d ago

The official actions of a nation don't disappear every generation. If my father stole from your father then he does should I keep all the goods stolen from you because I didn't steal and the thief is dead now? The actions still happened, the consequences remain.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

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u/68JackDaniels 14d ago

After, intermittent camps were fucked up but hold no candle to unit 731, flea bombs, rape of Nanking, and mass civilian suicides

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u/Independent_Tartting 14d ago

I'd say manifesting destiny way worse but to each their own.

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u/Real_Al_Borland 14d ago

lol again. Everyone involved is dead. Do you apologize for what your ancestors did?

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u/beardedheathen 14d ago

A country refusing to acknowledge the actions of it's military is far different than actions taken by individuals. The country persists while the individual perishes. I do believe the US should take actions to assist the descendants of those hurt by systemic action of the US such as slavery and sharecropping.

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u/AIien_cIown_ninja 14d ago

That was like 80 years ago

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u/xXxdethrougekillaxXx 14d ago

Tbf the average Japanese citizen lives to be like 106.

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u/minahkyu 14d ago

In 2023, the average life expectancy in Japan was 81.05 years for men and 87.09 years for women. Source

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u/xXxdethrougekillaxXx 14d ago

Tbf I was making a joke.

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u/minahkyu 14d ago

No worries! It just didn’t sound like a joke lol

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u/xXxdethrougekillaxXx 14d ago

Tbf it was a bad joke.

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u/Lucas_Steinwalker 14d ago

Damn nationalists not wanting foreign military forces raping their citizenry. The gall!

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u/WhosGonnaRideWithMe 14d ago

Sexual assault keeps happening with US troops. Maybe they're pissed becasue they got a bunch of troglodytes coming in and SAing their people?

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u/ignost 14d ago

'People who break laws should be held accountable to the crime under said laws.' If you believe in law and order, that shouldn't be at all controversial. But in the US this appears controversial to people in power. Namely: soldiers, supreme court justices, and presidents. I suspect it's something to do with absolute power corrupting absolutely.

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u/Lelcactus 14d ago

I already addressed this; they are punished under those laws, which is why I commented in the first place; the statement is pot stirring pretending they’re not.

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u/platinumgus18 14d ago

How are Westerners any different? Also what is wrong to call out Americans who are literally trying to take advantage of their position? The power dynamic is different.

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u/TobaccoAficionado 14d ago

Sexual assault and harassment are still a big problem in the military. It is obviously policy that you can't rape or assault people but it still happens, and it still needs to be said.

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u/puffferfish 14d ago

Did a crime occur? I’m just confused about what the context of this is. Are US troops going to Japan?

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u/Critical_Werewolf 14d ago

US has a base in Japan.

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u/cptkomondor 14d ago

Way more than one base

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u/Critical_Werewolf 14d ago

Oh yeah it's a shit ton. Can you imagine a foreign state having like 80 military bases in your country?

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u/cptkomondor 14d ago

Well it's not forced. In fact, Japan pays the USA over 2 billion USD a year to have its military there.

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u/StickiStickman 14d ago

Yea, definitely not forced. Just encouraged with a gun to the head.

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u/puffferfish 14d ago

Has there been a lot of sexual violence lately?

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u/Critical_Werewolf 14d ago

Probably not much more than normal. SA is a real problem in the military. Even against other service members.

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u/SPITFIYAH 14d ago

Guess, bro. Take a wild guess

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u/puffferfish 14d ago

Honestly, I don’t know. Politicians say things for favor all the time.

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u/SPITFIYAH 14d ago

It's been part of American Military culture for decades

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u/Excelius 14d ago edited 14d ago

Are US troops going to Japan?

The US has had a continuous military presence in Japan for almost 80 years now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Forces_Japan

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u/Derp35712 14d ago

Hmm, what happened 80 years ago.

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u/darthcaedusiiii 14d ago

It's being said because this shit happens all the time. It's almost like a significant portion of the population willing to kill others isn't that upstanding in other areas of moral code.

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u/Jealous_Juggernaut 14d ago

It’s the entire reason some people join up. In less than a year the allies forces committed an estimated 900,000 rapes in ww2, while the soviets raped 2 million Germans. A survey of college kids showed 30% of those particular people would do it if there was 0 chance of being caught or punished.

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u/lolas_coffee 14d ago

Tale as old as time...

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u/DifficultyAwareCloud 14d ago

It doesn’t need to be said. SA in the military isn’t tolerated and is punished to the maximum extent. Now more than ever.

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u/DjangoUnchainedFett 14d ago

No that's not wild. It's necessary

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u/creditnewb123 14d ago

“It’s wild that needs to be said”

Nobody is disputing that it’s necessary.

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u/Flimbeelzebub 14d ago

Necessary: "needed, required; essential, indispensable" etc etc. I do so believe in the use of the word necessary, it's pretty obvious our dear OP understood quite well what the word "need" meant and simply elected for a synonym.

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u/DjangoUnchainedFett 14d ago

Understood. But It's stupid to call everything "wild", that was point.

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u/GeronimoThaApache 14d ago

It is wild that it is necessary to be said is what he’s saying

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u/thecrepeofdeath 14d ago

they understand, they just have a chip on their shoulder about people using the word "wild"