Reply #13: I've read up about the subject a bit since my first post

[Kagemusha]

No I haven't been there, but certainly online sources confirm every bit of what you have said. I find the slipping in to be despicable, and the lack of will to do anything to be rather sad.

However.

That does not make it the business of Henry Hyde. If I was an American politician, I wouldn't even DREAM of demanding that names be removed from a shrine, because foreigners have a right to freedom of religion too. Don't have to agree with it. In this case, I cetainly do not. But being seen to be dictating religious policy for a country where there is constitutional separation of church and state would not fail to be seen as tyranny.

Not, mind you, that's what Hyde is doing at all here. But, nonetheless, er.. ok. Let me explain an entirely different issue.

Hyde seems to be saying, he (Hyde) should have the power to dictate the religious worship of the Prime Minister of Japan (Koizumi) because Hyde has the power (he assumes anyway) to block Koizumi from defiling the sacred ground where Roosevelt stood to make his Day of Infamy speech. In other words, one state religion for the goose, another state religion for the gander. Respect America's religion of state by the wise practice of your own or suffer for heresy against the American Way.

That's just as bad. Every bit as bad. This is way out of line for a congressman; to even begin to equate the two - and for that matter, act like this is a state religion issue for Japan, which legally speaking, it sure as hell is not, and ought not be - is to act like, well, a bully, using a potential Congressional invitation as cause to wield a stick to engage in foreign policy, and specifically, to make personal (or if you think it goes that far, which is in dispute, state) religious functions a valid subject for hardball political dictation by a foreigner, Christian, and congressional chairman.

Would have been better to simply not invite him at all than to deliver an ultimatum like this. The shrine thing is Koizumi's taint by personal choice. But to make it America's business to beat him out of it is bad diplomacy to the extreme.