Aletho News

US War Crimes Since World War 2

Samizdat | April 7, 2022

Speaking before the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed Russia was responsible for “the most terrible war crimes in the world” since World War II amid its ongoing special operation in Ukraine, and demanded Russia’s expulsion from UN bodies.

Zelensky was specifically referring to film footage shown to the council of dozens of dead bodies in Bucha, a suburb of Kiev, which the Ukrainian government has claimed were executed by Russian forces before they withdrew from the city last week.

The Russian Defense Ministry has dismissed the claims as a provocation, noting that Ukrainian artillery had previously bombarded the town and that Ukrainian police conducted an operation in Bucha to “clear the area of saboteurs and accomplices of Russian troops” prior to news emerging of the alleged massacre, both of which could also be responsible for the deaths.

Regardless, the claim that the Bucha incident represents the worst war crime since the total war that ended in 1945 is clear hyperbole, especially considering the incessant war-making of Ukraine’s patron, the United States.

To help jog the memory of the Ukrainian president, we have compiled a few examples of US war crimes since 1945 that have not been investigated as crimes.

No Gun Ri Massacre, July 1950

Early in the Korean War, US soldiers from the 7th Cavalry Regiment attacked a large group of South Korean refugees at a railroad bridge near the village of No Gun Ri. According to the No Gun Ri Peace Foundation, between 250 and 300 people were killed, mostly women and children.

The massacre was covered up until 1999, when an Associated Press report revealed it to the world, citing US and North Korean documentation of the killings that showed US troops had orders to fire on all refugees, as they believed North Korean infiltrators might be among them.

The group massacred at No Gun Ri were by no means the only ones killed by US troops, either, as accusations of more than 200 separate incidents emerged when an investigative committee was launched in South Korea in 2008.

The US investigation led to then-US President Bill Clinton issuing a statement of regret, but Washington rejected an outright apology or the possibility of compensation for the survivors. South Korean investigators called the US probe a “whitewash.”

Operation Speedy Express, December 1968 – May 1969

The US Army’s 9th Infantry Division was responsible for “pacifying” a large part of the Mekong River Delta in order to reduce Vietnamese National Liberation Front operations near the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon (today Ho Chi Minh City).

During the six-month operation, the US troops carried out indiscriminate massacres of Vietnamese villages, using air assaults and nighttime riverine attacks to kill as many people as possible. Commanders in the field were reportedly given orders not to return until killing an acceptable number of people, and so-called “free-fire zones” resulted in massive civilian deaths.

An internal probe by the US Army Inspector General found the operation created between 5,000 and 7,000 civilian casualties, and that another 10,899 fighters had been killed. However, the distinction between fighters and civilians was often inflated in the fighters’ favor during the Vietnam War, in order to make US commanders look more effective.

Highway of Death, February 1991

In the final days of Operation Desert Storm, US aircraft annihilated as many as 2,000 vehicles on Highway 80, which runs north out of Kuwait City toward Basra, Iraq. A mix of civilians fleeing the war and Iraqi military units withdrawing from military operations were bombed during two days of airstrikes from February 25 to 27. As the fleeing soldiers were outside of combat, they were not legitimate military targets, according to former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark.

Estimates of the deaths vary wildly, from 200 to more than 1,000. In addition, American eyewitnesses reported that a US armored unit had opened fire on a group of 350 disarmed Iraqi soldiers who had surrendered after fleeing the carnage, killing an unknown number of them.

Bombing of Albanian Refugees at Koriša, May 1999

On May 14, 1999, US aircraft bombed a group of several hundred Albanian refugees near Koriša, Kosovo, who had been hiding in the hills for weeks. According to Yugoslav authorities, 87 refugees were killed in the strike. The US claimed they were being used as human shields by the Yugoslavs, but provided no evidence to back up its claim.

Second Battle of Fallujah, November 2004

The US Marine Corps, in conjunction with Special Operations forces, US air forces, and the British “Black Watch” battalion, launched a massive assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in November 2004 that destroyed almost the entire city. The stated objective was to weaken the Iraqi insurgency against the US-UK occupation, but the heavy use of artillery, airstrikes, and chemical weapons such as white phosphorus and incendiary bombs, and depleted uranium, resulted in massive civilian deaths.

The Red Cross estimated that 800 civilians were killed in the battle, while Iraqi NGOs and medical workers estimated between 4,000 and 6,000 people were killed, mostly civilians, which the Guardian noted was a higher death rate than the British cities of Coventry and London faced during The Blitz bombing campaign by Germany in 1940.

Bombing of Kunduz Hospital, October 2015

On October 3, 2015, a US Air Force AC-130U gunship circled the Kunduz Trauma Center in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, bombarding it with artillery and machine-gun fire for 30 minutes. The hospital was operated by Medecins Sans Frontieres, who denied US claims that Taliban fighters were hiding in the facility. Forty-two people were killed in the assault and another 33 went missing, including both MSF staff and patients.

The Pentagon initially tried to cover up the strike, claiming there might have been some incidental collateral damage due to nearby fighting. However, after it emerged that the strike had been directly ordered by US commanders, then-US President Barack Obama apologized for the strike and paid the families of victims $6,000 each. MSF accused the US of admitting to a war crime by attempting to justify the attack by claiming Taliban fighters were inside.

Bombing of al-Aghawat al-Jadidah, March 2017

It’s estimated that 40,000 civilians were killed during the nine-month siege of Mosul, Iraq, by Iraqi forces and the US-led anti-Daesh coalition, in large part due to the unrelenting artillery bombardment of the city. However, one particular incident stands out: a US airstrike on March 17, 2017, in the al-Aghawat al-Jadidah neighborhood in western Mosul.

The US admitted a week after the attack that it had targeted “the location corresponding to allegations of civilian casualties.” Amnesty International reported that as many as 150 civilians were killed in the attack after having been told not to flee the city by US officials, although Iraqi reports say more than 300 were killed.

Siege of Raqqa, June – October 2017

As the battle for Mosul was drawing to a close, the siege of Daesh’s de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, began. US Marine Corps artillery pounded the city nonstop, firing 35,000 rounds in five months – more than were used in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Twice during the bombardment, US M777 155 mm howitzers burned through their cannon barrels – an extremely rare feat, notes the Marine Corps Times.

At the same time, US air forces dropped some 20,000 munitions across Iraq and Syria, most of which also fell on Raqqa. Investigations by Amnesty International and Airwars found that the total number of civilians killed in Raqqa was more than 1,600.

April 7, 2022 - Posted by aletho | Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | United States