The Iraqi electoral commission has decided to ban as many as over 500 potential candidates allegedly tied  to the outlawed Baath Party of Saddam Hussein and will be barred from running in the March 7 elections.

Many are known to be Iraq’s minority Sunni Muslims, formerly mostly allied with Hussein. The decision last week by the Justice and Accountability Commission, which handles Iraq’s “de-Baathification” efforts, outraged the Sunni population.

Many think that this is an effort to disenfranchise Sunnis and allow the Shiite population to win more seats and thus continue to control the government. The Shiites now dominate the government mostly because the Sunnis boycotted the last election.

This is a dangerous path to follow and could lead to the Sunni return to supporting the insurgents or even lead to a civil war.

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It is well know that a large portion of the Japanese population demand a major reduction in the amount of U.S. military bases in Japan.

The U.S. military on Okinawa has been a sore point for years.

 Many of the bases, such as Yokota Air Base, Iwakuni Marine Air Base and Naval Air Facility Atsugi on mainland Japan and Futenma and Kadena Air Bases on Okinawa, are located in the vicinity of residential districts, and local citizens have complained about excessive aircraft noise.

The U.S. and Japan agreed in 2006 to move Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to another part of the Okinawa Island in five years. That agreement also called for 8,000 Marines to be moved off Okinawa to the U.S. territory of Guam. The plan came after 15 years of negotiations but Japan’s new government now wants to reconsider it.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won a historic election in August, 2009, in part by calling for a review of that 2006 agreement. Four DPJ members from Okinawa won parliamentary seats with promises of reducing the US troop presence on the island.

U.S. Defense Secretary Gates has said that the U.S. and the Japanese government have an agreement and he wants them to keep that agreement.

The U. S. government’s plan to fortify Guam, upgrading its military infrastructure on the island into a strategic staging post, would allow rapid access to potential flash points in the Western Pacific.

For over 50 years the U.S. has provided Japan a protective shield on the sea, on land and in the air. If there is something that disturbs Americans more than anything  in global national security issues it’s allies squabling over mutual national defense issues.

For anyone in the U.S. or Japan looking for short range costs savings or political advantage, withdrawal of U.S. forces from Japanese territory would be a simple answer. However, the long rang dangers from North Korea and/or China makes this idea dubious at best.

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