The Japanese government should formally apologize for the unspeakable crimes committed against the Korean, Chinese, Filipino, and sundry Asian and Pacific peoples in the name of the Emperor in the half-century of conquest between the occupation of Korea and Taiwan at the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 and the unconditional surrender of the Empire of Japan in 1945. That said, when the three surviving Black September terrorists who murdered the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Games were set free by the craven West German government, what comfort do you suppose the Israelis' families derived from that selfsame Bonn government's apologies for the monstrous crimes of Nazi Germany? In the face of genocidal murder and systematic rape and degradation, how much mileage do you get out of "sorry"?

And while I am not unsympathetic to the surviving women and the families of the deceased women who were forced to act as sex slaves by the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy, does the United States Congress not have more pressing matters to address? Nihonlink. The war in Iraq? Our porous border with Mexico? The ticking time bomb of Social Security? Our dependence on foreign oil? Sleeper cells and/or homegrown terrorists hiding in our midst? The insanely fragile power grid, which hasn't really been improved since the great blackout of August 2003? None of these things and a thousand others like them is more pressing than a non-binding, purely symbolic resolution against our closest friend and ally in East Asia?