George Bush is STILL to blame..

So the New York Times and some Washington thinktankers are pulling out their worry beads, now that the Japanese have finally ditched the ruling Liberal Democratic Party for the relatively unknown and untested Democrats, who will now form Japan’s next government.

Ohmigod they proclaim! The US-Japan alliance is dead. Oh NO! Change in Asia? Maybe we can’t “count” on our friendship with Japan anymore??

The classic Timesian approach was in full view in a piece earlier this week, full of Beltway background and off-the-record fumbling.

The victory of the Democrats on Sunday means the White House must deal, for the first time in decades, with a Japanese government that is a complete stranger, and one that has expressed blunt criticism of the United States. The party’s leader and presumptive prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, recently spoke out against American-led globalization and called for a greater Japanese focus on Asia.

Well, who WOULDN’T express criticism of American foreign policy during the Bush years? Even our CURRENT President thinks Bush led us into a disaster in Iraq. In fact that’s why he got elected.

What all these Washington “experts” forget to point out is that it was George Bush, Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney that “forced” Japan to support an ill-fated Iraqi campaign that the vast majority of the Japanese people vehemently opposed.

Remember when George Bush decided to “take names” and figure which nations of the world were “friends or foes?” The French said “No.” The Germans said “No.” But the Japanese, nervous that they would be left “at sea” in Asia, acted in contravention to their own Constitution to support the U.S. military campaign in Iraq, even though our invasion never received United Nations sanction.

Japan’s support for the Iraqi war — a kneejerk, slavish response by then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi — effectively killed the country’s ability to win the one foreign prize it has long sought: a seat on the UN Security Council. (Remember Japan has been one of the biggest financial backer of that institution, while Washington is usually in arrears in paying its UN debts.)

You don’t get that sort of victory in the UN kowtowing to the Americans…but that’s what Tokyo did because of the Bush’s administration demand that friends “stand up and be counted.”

So the election of Hatoyama and the Democrats allow the two nations to rethink and reconceptualize the nature of their alliance now that the Cold War is dead. And despite the traditional hostility of the Japanese to the Democratic Party, I believe the new government will find a lot to agree with when Obama and Hatoyama finally sit down and meet

Hatoyama, Obama speak by telephone

Japan needs to think about it’s role in the 21st century.  Guess what? So does Washington. There’s plenty of room for mutual progress on a healthy and sustainable, now that Rumsfeld and Cheney are no longer running the world.