United States war crimes
United States war crimes are violations of the law of war which were committed by members of the United States Armed Forces after the signing of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the signing of the Geneva Conventions. The United States prosecutes offenders through the War Crimes Act of 1996 as well as through articles in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The United States signed the 1999 Rome Statute but it never ratified the treaty, taking the position that the International Criminal Court (ICC) lacks fundamental checks and balances.[1] The American Service-Members' Protection Act of 2002 further limited US involvement with the ICC. The ICC reserves the right of states to prosecute war crimes, and the ICC can only proceed with prosecution of crimes when states do not have willingness or effective and reliable processes to investigate for themselves.[2] The United States says that it has investigated many of the accusations alleged by the ICC prosecutors as having occurred in Afghanistan, and thus does not accept ICC jurisdiction over its nationals.[3][4]
This article contains a chronological list of incidents in the
Definition
Philippines
During the Philippine–American War (1899–1913), numerous war crimes were committed by the U.S. military against Filipino civilians. American soldiers and other witnesses sent letters home which described some of these atrocities; for example, In November 1901, the Manila correspondent of the Philadelphia Ledger wrote:
The present war is no bloodless,
opera bouffe engagement; our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of ten up, the idea prevailing that the Filipino as such was little better than a dog...[8]
In an editorial written by Clinton Coulter, published in the San Francisco Call in July 1899, he wrote that an "officer of the Oregon regiment", while being entertained at his home, told Colter that "Americans immediately upon entering a captured village would proceed to ransack every house, church, and even hold up the natives and procure everything of value, also that all the natives discovered coming toward the lines with a flag of truce were shot down."[9] In 1899, the American Anti-Imperialist League published a pamphlet of letters which documented abuses against civilians by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.[10]
A letter of a soldier from New York reported:
The town of Titatia was surrendered to us a few days ago, and two companies occupy the same. Last night one of our boys was found shot and his stomach cut open. Immediately orders were received from General Wheaton to burn the town and kill every native in sight; which was done to a finish. About 1,000 men, women and children were reported killed. I am probably growing hard-hearted, for I am in my glory when I can sight my gun on some dark skin and pull the trigger.[11]
Corporal Sam Gillis stated:
We make everyone get into his house by seven p.m., and we only tell a man once. If he refuses we shoot him. We killed over 300 natives the first night. They tried to set the town on fire. If they fire a shot from the house we burn the house down and every house near it, and shoot the natives, so they are pretty quiet in town now.[11]
Samar Campaign
During the
Concentration camps
In late 1901, brigadier general
Between January and April 1902, 8,350 people died in the camps out of a population of 298,000. Some camps experienced mortality rates as high as 20 percent. According to American historian
Battle of Bud Dajo
During the First Battle of Bud Dajo on 5–8, March, 1906, General Leonard Wood ordered an assault by U.S. Marines on an encampment of Moros in the Bud Dajo crater, which was populated by 800 to 1,000 Tausug villagers. During the assault, Marines bombarded the crater with heavy artillery and machine-gun fire. By the end of the battle, only six Moros survived, with up to 99% of the villagers, much of them women and children, having been wiped out.[26][27] Despite being an American victory, it was a massive public-relations disaster, and was criticized by numerous anti-imperialists at home. Author Mark Twain wrote of the massacre: “In what way was it a battle? It has no resemblance to a battle... We cleaned up our four days’ work and made it complete by butchering these helpless people.”[28] Major Hugh Scott denounced the Marine Corps’ actions, stating that those who had fled to the crater were peaceful villagers and that they had, in Scott’s words, “declared they had no intention of fighting, ran up there only in fright, and had some crops planted and desired to cultivate them.”[29]
General Wood responded to the public outcry by claiming that Moro fighters had used women and children as living shields during the assault, and that some women had dressed as men to join the fight.[30][27] Philippine Governor-General Henry Clay Ide, however, gave a differing explanation, claiming that the high civilian casualties were collateral damage that resulted from the heavy artillery fire; these conflicting explanations only brought accusations of a cover-up, further adding to the criticism. According to historian Joshua Gedacht, the heavy civilian death toll can be attributed to indiscriminate machine-gun fire from a Maxim gun that had been placed to sweep the edge of the crater.[31]
Haiti
During the First (1915) and Second (1918–1920) Caco Wars which were both waged during the United States occupation of Haiti (1915–1934), human rights abuses were committed against the native Haitian population.[32][33] Overall, the United States Marine Corps and the Haitian gendarmerie killed several thousand Haitians during the rebellions between 1915 and 1920, though the exact death toll is unknown.[33] During Senate hearings in 1921, the Commandant of the Marine Corps reported that, in 20 months of conflict, 2,250 Haitian rebels had been killed. However, in a report to the Secretary of the Navy, he reported a higher death toll of 3,250.[34] Haitian historian Roger Gaillard, estimated that in total, including rebel combatants and civilians, at least 15,000 Haitians were killed during the occupation from 1915 to 1934.[33] According to American anthropologist Paul Farmer, the higher estimates are not accepted by most historians outside Haiti.[35]
During the Second
The torture of rebels and civilians suspected of rebelling against the United States was commonly practiced by Marines. Some of the torture methods used included the use of water cure, hanging prisoners by their genitals, and ceps, which involved pushing both sides of the tibia with the butts of two rifles.[33]
World War II
Pacific theater
On 26 January 1943, the submarine
During and after the
American servicemen in the Pacific War deliberately killed Japanese soldiers who had surrendered, according to Richard Aldrich, a professor of history at the University of Nottingham. Aldrich published a study of diaries kept by United States and Australian soldiers, wherein it was stated that they sometimes massacred prisoners of war.[43] According to John Dower, in "many instances ... Japanese who did become prisoners were killed on the spot or en route to prison compounds."[43] According to Professor Aldrich, it was common practice for U.S. troops not to take prisoners.[44] His analysis is supported by British historian Niall Ferguson,[45] who also says that, in 1943, "a secret [U.S.] intelligence report noted that only the promise of ice cream and three days leave would ... induce American troops not to kill surrendering Japanese."[45]: 150
Ferguson states that such practices played a role in the ratio of Japanese prisoners to dead being 1:100 in late 1944. That same year, efforts were taken by Allied high commanders to suppress "take no prisoners" attitudes[45]: 150 among their personnel (because it hampered intelligence gathering), and to encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. Ferguson adds that measures by Allied commanders to improve the ratio of Japanese prisoners to Japanese dead resulted in it reaching 1:7, by mid-1945. Nevertheless, "taking no prisoners" was still "standard practice" among U.S. troops at the Battle of Okinawa, in April–June 1945.[45]: 181 Ferguson also suggests that "it was not only the fear of disciplinary action or of dishonor that deterred German and Japanese soldiers from surrendering. More important for most soldiers was the perception that prisoners would be killed by the enemy anyway, and so one might as well fight on."[45]: 176
Ulrich Straus, a U.S.
U.S. historian James J. Weingartner attributes the very low number of Japanese in U.S.
Mutilation of Japanese war dead
In the Pacific theater, American servicemen engaged in
War rape
U.S. military personnel raped Okinawan women during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.[53]
Based on several years of research, Okinawan historian Oshiro Masayasu (former director of the Okinawa Prefectural Historical Archives) writes:
Soon after the U.S. Marines landed, all the women of a village on Motobu Peninsula fell into the hands of American soldiers. At the time, there were only women, children, and old people in the village, as all the young men had been mobilized for the war. Soon after landing, the Marines "mopped up" the entire village, but found no signs of Japanese forces. Taking advantage of the situation, they started 'hunting for women' in broad daylight, and women who were hiding in the village or nearby air raid shelters were dragged out one after another.[54]
According to interviews carried out by The New York Times and published by them in 2000, several elderly people from an Okinawan village confessed that after the United States had won the Battle of Okinawa, three armed Marines kept coming to the village every week to force the villagers to gather all the local women, who were then carried off into the hills and raped. The article goes deeper into the matter and claims that the villagers' tale—true or not—is part of a "dark, long-kept secret" the unraveling of which "refocused attention on what historians say is one of the most widely ignored crimes of the war": "the widespread rape of Okinawan women by American servicemen."[55] Although Japanese reports of rape were largely ignored at the time, one academic estimated that as many as 10,000 Okinawan women may have been raped. It has been claimed that the rape was so prevalent that most Okinawans over age 65 around the year 2000 either knew or had heard of a woman who was raped in the aftermath of the war.[56]
Professor of East Asian Studies and expert on Okinawa,
There is substantial evidence that the U.S. had at least some knowledge of what was going on. Samuel Saxton, a retired captain, explained that the American veterans and witnesses may have intentionally kept the rape a secret, largely out of shame: "It would be unfair for the public to get the impression that we were all a bunch of rapists after we worked so hard to serve our country."[56] Military officials formally denied the mass rapes, and all surviving related veterans refused request for interviews from The New York Times. Masaie Ishihara, a sociology professor, supports this: "There is a lot of historical amnesia out there, many people don't want to acknowledge what really happened."[56] Author George Feifer noted in his book Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb, that by 1946 there had been fewer than 10 reported cases of rape in Okinawa. He explained it was "partly because of shame and disgrace, partly because Americans were victors and occupiers. In all there were probably thousands of incidents, but the victims' silence kept rape another dirty secret of the campaign."[57]
Some other authors have noted that Japanese civilians "were often surprised at the comparatively humane treatment they received from the American enemy."[58][59] According to Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power by Mark Selden, the Americans "did not pursue a policy of torture, rape, and murder of civilians as Japanese military officials had warned."[60]
According to numerous academics, there were also 1,336 reported rapes during the first 10 days of the occupation of
European theater
In the
During the Allied invasion of Sicily, some massacres of civilians by US troops were reported, including the Vittoria one, where 12 Italians died (including a 17-year-old boy),[62] and in Piano Stella, where a group of peasants was murdered.[63]
The Canicattì massacre involved the killing of Italian civilians by Lieutenant Colonel George Herbert McCaffrey; a confidential inquiry was made, but McCaffrey was never charged with any offense relating to the massacre. He died in 1954. This fact remained virtually unknown in the U.S. until 2005, when Joseph S. Salemi of New York University, whose father witnessed it, reported it.[64]
In the Biscari massacre, which consisted of two instances of mass murder, U.S. troops of the 45th Infantry Division killed 73 prisoners of war, mostly Italian.[65][66] Only two soldiers were tried for the Biscari massacre, both of whom claimed in their defense that they were acting under orders from Patton not to take prisoners if enemy combatants continued to resist within two hundred yards of their position.[66]: 28–29 Major General Everett Hughes, an old friend of Patton's, defended him, asserting that Patton had not "at any time advocated the destruction of prisoners of war under any circumstances".[66]: 36 James J. Weingartner argues that Patton's innocence in inciting violence against prisoners of war is uncertain, stating that "The testimony of multiple witnesses indicated beyond a reasonable doubt that Patton had urged the killing of enemy troops who continued to resist at close quarters, even if they offered to surrender. Patton probably wished his troops to deny quarter or refuse to accept the surrender of enemy combatants who continued to resist at close range, itself a violation of the laws of war (although common practice) by the twentieth century, but it should not be surprising if some Americans concluded that they were authorized to kill resolute enemy soldiers after they had placed themselves under American control".[67] No official action was taken against Patton for any complicity in the massacre.
According to an article in
Historian Peter Lieb has found that many U.S. and Canadian units were ordered not to take enemy prisoners during the D-Day landings in Normandy. If this view is correct, it may explain the fate of 64 German prisoners (out of the 130 captured) who did not make it to the POW collecting point on Omaha Beach on the day of the landings.[68]
Near the French village of
In the aftermath of the 1944
In the Chenogne massacre during the Battle of the Bulge on 1 January 1945, members of the 11th Armored Division killed an estimated 80 German prisoners of war, which were assembled in a field and shot with machine guns.[70] The events were covered up at the time, and none of the perpetrators were ever punished. Postwar historians believe the killings were carried out on verbal orders by senior commanders that "no prisoners were to be taken".[71] General George S. Patton confirmed in his diary that the Americans "...also murdered 50 odd German med [ics']. I hope we can conceal this".[72]
James J. Weingartner identifies what he views as a disparity in treatment between American and German war crimes in the court martial of American soldiers and the post-war trials of Germans, arguing that United States war crimes were judged "by a more indulgent standard" than comparable German atrocities, particularly in regard to the principle of following orders.[74]
Among American WWII veterans who admitted to having committed war crimes was former
- 1. Revenge killings in the heat of battle. Sheeran told Brandt that, when a GIs.[75]: 50
- 2. Orders from unit commanders during a mission. When describing his first murder for organized crime, Sheeran recalled: "It was just like when an officer would tell you to take a couple of German prisoners back behind the line and for you to 'hurry back'. You did what you had to do."[75]: 84
- 3. The Dachau massacre and other reprisal killings of concentration camp guards and trustee inmates.[75]: 52
- 4. Calculated attempts to dehumanize and degrade Harz Mountains, they came upon a Wehrmacht mule train carrying food and drink up the mountainside. The female cooks were first allowed to leave unmolested, then Sheeran and his fellow GIs "ate what we wanted and soiled the rest with our waste." Then the Wehrmacht mule drivers were given shovels and ordered to "dig their own shallow graves." Sheeran later joked that they did so without complaint, likely hoping that he and his buddies would change their minds. But the mule drivers were shot and buried in the holes they had dug. Sheeran explained that by then, "I had no hesitation in doing what I had to do."[75]: 51
Elements of Sheeran's reasoning are supported by historian James J. Weingartner. Weingartner states that "Prisoners were killed in reprisal for real or imagined atrocities, for the utilitarian reason that keeping them was impractical or inconvenient, or out of frustration with a war that was going badly or was being unnecessarily prolonged by the enemy. Civilians often fell victim to the fury of ground combatants, particularly in situations where occupying forces were real or imagined objects of guerilla warfare".[76]
Rape
Secret wartime files made public only in 2006 reveal that American GIs committed 400 sexual offenses in Europe, including 126 rapes in England, between 1942 and 1945.[77] A study by Robert J. Lilly estimates that a total of 14,000 civilian women in England, France and Germany were raped by American GIs during World War II.[78][79] He estimates that there were around 3,500 rapes by American servicemen in France between June 1944 and the end of the war. Historian William Hitchcock states that sexual violence against women in liberated France was common.[80]
Human experimentation
The US military conducted experiments with chemical weapons like lewisite and mustard gas on Japanese American, Puerto Rican and African Americans in the US military in World War II to see how non-white races would react to being mustard gassed, with Rollin Edwards describing it as "It felt like you were on fire, Guys started screaming and hollering and trying to break out. And then some of the guys fainted. And finally they opened the door and let us out, and the guys were just, they were in bad shape." and "It took all the skin off your hands. Your hands just rotted". White soldiers were not experimented on.[81]
At Fort Detrick, a number of experiments on human subjects, including infants, were conducted by a team of military microbiologists under the direction of Colonel Murray Sanders. The experiments occasionally resulted in deaths, and, in one case, the infant grandson of governor Gifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania nearly died during an experiment. As a result, Sanders was placed under house arrest, though was released within 48 hours.[82]
Between 1943 and 1945, the Office of Strategic Services conducted a series of interrogation experiments on human subjects in hopes of developing a potential truth serum.[83][84] According to a 1977 report from journalist John M. Crewdson, cannabis-derived "T-drugs" were sometimes administered on "unwitting subjects".[83]
America and occupied Japan
The US army and Japanese government they installed refused to help Japanese atomic bomb victims (Hibakusha) and instead collected data on them and took samples of their organs after they died.[85][86] The US military paid Japanese members of Unit 731 to conduct experiments on Japanese people in Japan in 1952, with a Japanese girl dying after multiple Japanese babies were deliberately infected with colt bacteria at Nagoya City University Hospital by Jiro Ogawa. Japanese patients at a mental hospital were infected with scrub typhus in 1953-1956 with one of them killing himself to escape the torture and another 9 Japanese patients died of the typhus itself.[87]
Korea
Bombing of North Korea
The US bombing of North Korea during the Korean War has been condemned as a war crime by various authors. According to journalist Max Fisher, the U.S. bombing campaign "often deliberately targeted civilian as well as military targets".[88] Historian Bruce Cumings has likened the bombings to a genocide, stating, "What hardly any Americans know or remember is that we carpet-bombed the north for three years with next to no concern for civilian casualties." Author Blaine Harden has called the bombing campaign a "major war crime."[89][90]
On 13 May 1953, the US Air Force destroyed five North Korean dams after having exhausted most military targets, causing widespread flooding and destruction to farmlands and drowning of large numbers of people. According to Charles K. Armstrong, the flooding threatened several million North Koreans with starvation and "only emergency assistance from China, the USSR, and other socialist countries prevented widespread famine."[91] General Curtis LeMay, who was head of the Strategic Air Command during the war, stated to Air Force historians that "Over a period of three years or so we killed off, what, 20 percent of the population of Korea, as direct casualties of war or from starvation and exposure?"[92] The Air Force also reported in an article from the Air and Space Power Journal that:
- "Toksan strike and similar attacks on the Chasan, Kuwonga, Kusong, and Toksang dams... [were] furnishing 75 per cent of the controlled water supply for North Korea’s rice production" and that "to the Communists the smashing of the dams meant primarily the destruction of their chief sustenance—rice. The Westerner can little conceive the awesome meaning which the loss of this staple food commodity has for the Asian—starvation and slow death. 'Rice famine,' for centuries the chronic scourge of the Orient, is more feared than the deadliest plague.... The irrigation dam attacks, though small in scale and relatively unimportant strategically in comparison to what could have been exerted against 20 dams instead of 5, gave the enemy a sample of the totality of war that an air strategy makes possible–a totality embracing the whole of a nation’s economy and its people..."[93]
Stephen Endicott,
A 2001 report by The Chosun Ilbo claims that approximately 282,000 North Korean civilians perished from the bombings, citing a report by Soviet ambassador to Korea V. N. Razuvaev.[100]
No Gun Ri massacre
The No Gun Ri massacre refers to an incident of mass killing of an undetermined number of South Korean refugees by U.S. soldiers of the
Vietnam War
During the war, 95 U.S. Army personnel and 27 U.S. Marine Corps personnel were convicted by court-martial of the murder or manslaughter of Vietnamese.[106]: 33
U.S. forces also established numerous free-fire zones as a tactic to prevent Viet Cong fighters from sheltering in South Vietnamese villages.[107] Such practice, which involved the assumption that any individual appearing in the designated zones was an enemy combatant that could be freely targeted by weapons, is regarded by journalist Lewis M. Simons as "a severe violation of the laws of war".[108] Nick Turse, in his 2013 book, Kill Anything that Moves, argues that a relentless drive toward higher body counts, a widespread use of free-fire zones, rules of engagement where civilians who ran from soldiers or helicopters could be viewed as Viet Cong and a widespread disdain for Vietnamese civilians led to massive civilian casualties and endemic war crimes inflicted by U.S. troops.[109]: 251
My Lai Massacre
The
Following the massacre a
Operation Speedy Express
Operation Speedy Express was a controversial military operation aimed at pacifying large parts of the Mekong delta from December 1968 to May 1969. The U.S. Army claimed 10,899 PAVN/VC were killed in the operation, while the US Army Inspector General estimated that there were 5,000 to 7,000 civilian deaths from the operation.[116][117] Robert Kaylor of United Press International alleged that according to American pacification advisers in the Mekong Delta during the operation the division had indulged in the "wanton killing" of civilians through the "indiscriminate use of mass firepower."[118]
Phoenix Program
The Phoenix Program was coordinated by the CIA, involving South Vietnamese, US and other allied security forces, with the aim identifying and destroying the
Tiger Force
Tiger Force was the name of a long-range reconnaissance patrol unit of the 1st Battalion (Airborne), 327th Infantry, 1st Brigade (Separate), 101st Airborne Division, which fought from November 1965 to November 1967.[122] The unit gained notoriety after investigations during the course of the war and decades afterwards revealed extensive war crimes against civilians, which numbered into the hundreds. They were accused of routine torture, execution of prisoners of war and the intentional killing of civilians. US army investigators concluded that many of the alleged war crimes took place.[121]: 235–238
Other incidents
On 12 August 1965 Lcpl McGhee of Company M, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines, walked through Marine lines at Chu Lai Base Area toward a nearby village. In answer to a Marine sentry's shouted question, he responded that he was going after a VC. Two Marines were dispatched to retrieve McGhee and as they approached the village they heard a shot and a woman's scream and then saw McGhee walking toward them from the village. McGhee said he had just killed a VC and other VC were following him. At trial Vietnamese prosecution witnesses testified that McGhee had kicked through the wall of the hut where their family slept. He seized a 14-year-old girl and pulled her toward the door. When her father interceded, McGhee shot and killed him. Once outside the house the girl escaped McGhee with the help of her grandmother. McGhee was found guilty of unpremeditated murder and sentenced to confinement at hard labor for ten years. On appeal this was reduced to 7 years and he actually served 6 years and 1 month.[106]: 33–4
On 23 September 1966, a nine-man ambush patrol from the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, left Hill 22, northwest of Chu Lai. Private First Class John D. Potter, Jr. took effective command of the patrol. They entered the hamlet of Xuan Ngoc (2) and seized Dao Quang Thinh, whom they accused of being a Viet Cong, and dragged him from his hut. While they beat him, other patrol members forced his wife, Bui Thi Huong, from their hut and four of them raped her. A few minutes later three other patrol members shot Dao Quang Thinh, Bui, their child, Bui's sister-in-law, and her sister in- law's child. Bui Thi Huong survived to testify at the courts-martial. The company commander suspicious of the reported "enemy contact" sent Second Lieutenant Stephen J. Talty, to return to the scene with the patrol. Once there, Talty realized what had happened and attempted to cover up the incident. A wounded child was discovered alive and Potter bludgeoned them to death with his rifle. Potter was convicted of premeditated murder and rape, and sentenced to confinement at hard labor for life, but was released in February 1978, having served 12 years and 1 month.[123] Hospitalman John R. Bretag testified against Potter and was sentenced to 6 month's confinement for rape. PFC James H. Boyd, Jr., pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 4 years confinement at hard labor. Sergeant Ronald L. Vogel was convicted for murder of one of the children and rape and was sentenced to 50 years confinement at hard labor, which was reduced on appeal to 10 years, of which he served 9 years. Two patrol members were acquitted of major charges, but were convicted of assault with intent to commit rape and sentenced to 6 months' confinement. Lt Talty was found guilty of making a false report and dismissed from the Marine Corps, but this was overturned on appeal.[106]: 53–4 [124]
PFC Charles W. Keenan was convicted of murder by firing at point-blank range into an unarmed, elderly Vietnamese woman, and an unarmed Vietnamese man. His life sentence was reduced to 25 years confinement. Upon appeal, the conviction for the woman's murder was dismissed and confinement was reduced to five years. Later clemency action further reduced his confinement to 2 years and 9 months. Corporal Stanley J. Luczko, was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to confinement for three years.[106]: 79–81
From 31 January to 1 February 1967, 145 civilians were purported to have been killed by Company H, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, during the
On 5 May 1968, Lcpl Denzil R. Allen led a six-man ambush patrol from the 1st Battalion, 27th Marines near Huế. They stopped and interrogated two unarmed Vietnamese men who Allen and Private Martin R. Alvarez then executed. After an attack on their base that night the unit sent out a patrol who brought back three Vietnamese men. Allen, Alvarez, Lance Corporals John D. Belknap, James A. Maushart, PFC Robert J. Vickers, and two others then formed a firing squad and executed two of the Vietnamese. The third captive was taken into a building where Allen, Belknap, and Anthony Licciardo, Jr., hanged him, when the rope broke Allen cut the man's throat, killing him. Allen pleaded guilty to five counts of unpremeditated murder and was sentenced to confinement at hard labor for life reduced to 20 years in exchange for the guilty plea. Allen's confinement was reduced to 7 years and he was paroled after having served only 2 years and 11 months confinement. Maushart pleaded guilty to one count of unpremeditated murder and was sentenced to 2 years confinement of which he served 1 year and 8 months. Belknap and Licciardo each pleaded guilty to single murders and were sentenced to 2 years confinement. Belknap served 15 months while Licciardo served his full sentence. Alvarez was found to lack mental responsibility and found not guilty. Vickers was found guilty of two counts of unpremeditated murder, but his convictions were overturned on review.[106]: 111–4
On the morning of 1 March 1969 an eight-man Marine ambush was discovered by three Vietnamese girls, aged about 13, 17, and 19, and a Vietnamese boy, about 11. The four shouted their discovery to those being observed by the ambush. Seized by the Marines, the four were bound, gagged, and led away by Corporal Ronald J. Reese and Lance Corporal Stephen D. Crider. Minutes later, the 4 children were seen, apparently dead, in a small bunker. The Marines tossed a fragmentation grenade into the bunker, which then collapsed the damaged structure atop the bodies. Reese and Crider were each convicted of four counts of murder and sentenced to confinement at hard labor for life. On appeal both sentences were reduced to 3 years confinement.[106]: 140
On 19 February 1970, during the
On 2 June 1971, Brigadier General John W. Donaldson was charged with the murder of six Vietnamese civilians but was acquitted due to lack of evidence. In 13 separate incidents Donaldson was alleged to have flown over civilian areas shooting at civilians. He was the first U.S. general charged with war crimes since General Jacob H. Smith in 1902 and the highest ranking American to be accused of war crimes during the Vietnam War.[126] The charges were dropped due to lack of evidence.
American Marine Corporal Bill Hatton admitted that when he was in Dong Ha and Quang Tri as part of an engineer maintenance platoon that he and his fellow American soldiers burned the membrane of the throats of Vietnamese children and holes in their stomachs by feeding them trioxane heat tablets in the middle of peanut butter cracker sandwiches from their rations.[127][128][129][130][131]
War on Terror
In the aftermath of the
Command responsibility
A presidential memorandum of 7 February 2002, authorized U.S. interrogators of prisoners captured during the
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and others have argued that detainees should be considered "unlawful combatants" and as such not be protected by the Geneva Conventions in multiple memoranda regarding these perceived legal gray areas.[134]
Gonzales' statement that denying coverage under the Geneva Conventions "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the
Human Rights Watch claimed in 2005 that the principle of "
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is seen by some as an amnesty law for crimes committed in the War on Terror by retroactively rewriting the War Crimes Act[142] and by abolishing habeas corpus, effectively making it impossible for detainees to challenge crimes committed against them.[143]
Shortly before the end of President Bush's second term in 2009, news media in countries other than the U.S. began publishing the views of those who believe that under the
War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)
In 2005,
The Maywand District murders involved the killing of three Afghan civilians by a group of soldiers during the period June 2009 to June 2010. The soldiers referred to their group as "Kill Team"[149][150] and were members of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, of the 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. They were based at FOB Ramrod in Maiwand, from Kandahar Province of Afghanistan.[151][152] During the summer of 2010, the military charged five members of the platoon with the murders of three Afghan civilians in Kandahar Province and collecting their body parts as trophies.
The Kandahar massacre was a mass murder that occurred in the early hours of 11 March 2012, when Staff Sergeant Robert Bales killed 16 Afghan civilians and wounded six others in the Panjwayi District of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. Nine of the victims were children, and 11 of the dead were from the same family. Bales was taken into custody later that morning when he confessed to authorities that he had committed the murders.
First Lieutenant Clint Lorance was an infantry platoon leader in the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne Division. In 2012, Lorance was charged with two counts of unpremeditated murder after he ordered his soldiers to open fire on three Afghan men who were on a motorcycle. He was found guilty by a court-martial in 2013 and sentenced to 20 years in prison (later reduced to 19 years by the reviewing commanding general).[153][154][155] He was confined in the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for six years. Lorance was eventually pardoned by President Donald Trump on 15 November 2019.[156]
Iraq War
During the early stages of the
On 12 March 2006, a 14-year-old Iraqi girl named Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi was
The
The Haditha massacre occurred on 19 November 2005, in Haditha, Iraq. After Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas (20 years old) was killed by a roadside improvised explosive device, Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich led Marines from the 3rd battalion into Haditha.[168] 24 Iraqi women and children were fatally shot. Wuterich acknowledged in military court that he gave his men the order to "shoot first, ask questions later"[169] after the roadside bomb explosion. Wuterich told military judge Lt. Col. David Jones "I never fired my weapon at any women or children that day." On 24 January 2012, Frank Wuterich was given a sentence of 90 days in prison along with a reduction in rank and pay. The day prior, Wuterich pled guilty to one count of negligent dereliction of duty.[168] No other marine that was involved that day was sentenced to any jail time. For the massacre, the Marine Corps paid $38,000 total to the families of 15 of the dead civilians.[170]
The Nisour Square massacre occurred on 16 September 2007, when employees of Blackwater Security Consulting (now Constellis), a private military company contracted by the US government to provide security services in Iraq, shot at Iraqi civilians, killing 17 and injuring 20 in Nisour Square, Baghdad, while escorting a U.S. embassy convoy.[171][172][173] The killings outraged Iraqis and strained relations between Iraq and the United States.[174] In 2014, four Blackwater employees were tried[175] and convicted in U.S. federal court; one of murder, and the other three of manslaughter and firearms charges;[176] all four convicted were controversially pardoned[177] by President Donald Trump in December 2020,[178] in violation of international law.[179]
Notes
- ^ The caption for the photograph in the U.S. National Archives reads, "SC208765, Soldiers of the 42nd Infantry Division, U.S. Seventh Army, order SS men to come forward when one of their number tried to escape from the Dachau, Germany, concentration camp after it was captured by U.S. forces. Men on the ground in background feign death by falling as the guards fired a volley at the fleeing SS men. (157th Regt. 4/29/45)."
References
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Further reading
General
- ISBN 978-0-8050-7969-2.
- ISBN 978-1-59315-481-3.
- Frederick Henry Gareau (2004). State terrorism and the United States: from counterinsurgency to the war on terrorism. Zed Books. ISBN 978-1-84277-535-6.
- Michael Haas (2008). George W. Bush, war criminal?: the Bush administration's liability for 269 war crimes. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-0-313-36499-0.
- Jordan J. Paust (2007). Beyond the law: the Bush Administration's unlawful responses in the "War" on Terror. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-71120-3.
- Physicians for Human Rights; Human Rights First (August 2007). Leave No Marks: Enhanced Interrogation Techniques and the Risk of Criminality (PDF). Washington, DC. OCLC 19187545. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 August 2010. Retrieved 17 August 2010.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - Mark Selden; Alvin Y. So, eds. (2004). War and state terrorism: the United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the long twentieth century. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-7425-2391-3.
By nation
Iraq
- ISBN 978-1-56025-803-2.
- ISBN 978-0-944624-15-9.
- Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed (2003). Behind the war on terror: western secret strategy and the struggle for Iraq. New Society Publishers. p. 86. ISBN 978-0-86571-506-6.
- Marjorie Cohn (9 November 2006). "Donald Rumsfeld: The War Crimes Case". The Jurist.
- Ulrike Demmer (26 March 2007). "Wanted For War Crimes: Rumsfeld Lawsuit Embarrasses German Authorities". Der Spiegel.
- Patrick Donahue (27 April 2007). "German Prosecutor Won't Set Rumsfeld Probe Following Complaint". Bloomberg L.P.
Vietnam
- Greiner, Bernd; Anne Wyburd (2009). War Without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-15451-1.
- Deborah Nelson (2008). The war behind me: Vietnam veterans confront the truth about U.S. war crimes. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-00527-7.
- Nick Turse (2013). Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. New York: Metropolitan Books. ISBN 978-0-8050-8691-1.