News / Interviews

US forces in Japan protecting US interests, not Japan’s: Commentator

Monday, 20 June 2016 4:33 AM [ Last Update: Monday, 20 June 2016 4:33 AM ]

This file photo, taken on November 14, 2014, shows multi-mission tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft at the US Marine Corps Camp Futenma in a crowded urban area of Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. (By AFP)

Press TV has interviewed Jim W. Dean, a political commentator, and Michael Lane, the founder of the American Institute for Foreign Policy, to discuss protests in Japan to call for the withdrawal of US military forces from the Japanese island of Okinawa.

Dean says the United States is not deploying forces to foreign bases to protect the interests of other nations.

The Americans are “basically using the military as a bully to… impose their will on other countries in terms of economic, trade and resource allotment,” he says.

The US military industrial complex needs a justification to increase its footprint around the world, so they speak of so-called threats from China and Russia to justify their presence on Okinawa, Dean says.

Japanese citizens are calling on their government to close down the US base on the island because they have witnessed huge “social unrest” as a result of the US military presence in their homeland, he says.

Lane, for his part, refers to the recent rape and murder of a local Japanese woman blamed on an American personnel of the base and says it is not the first time such behavior is being displayed by American forces on Okinawa.

The perpetrators of such crimes must be held accountable, he emphasizes.

He says, however, that the US and Japan have mutual interests in continued American military presence on Okinawa.

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www.presstv.co.uk