MovieChat Forums > Nanking (2007) Discussion > War crimes committed by the USA in the p...

War crimes committed by the USA in the past 8 years

posted 15 years ago by flanerie
37 replies | jump to latest

In the past eight years some 30,000 civilians in Afghanistan have lost their lives. In Iraq over 7,000 civilians were murdered in the first month of the invasion alone and hundreds of thousands more up until today (estimates differ greatly). Is there ever a good cause for such massacres?

I urge all sensible intelligent people to watch "Taxi to the Dark Side" , which depicts and explores the cases of American armed forces torturing innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq (incl. Abu Ghraib). The soldiers themselves are interviewed in this film, as well as other important military and government figures. This film really helps one understand the system of war and all its "logic".

We cannot simply single out the Japanese, or the Germans as barbarians. It is pointless and inaccurate to say that some nations and their people are blood hungry while others are freedom-loving and righteous. All humans, from all nations, and of all races are unfortunately capable of horrid and despicable acts given the right or "wrong" circumstances and situation.

My point: All wars bring out the darkest most depraved qualities of human nature.

Another great documentary to watch "No End in Sight"

Facts exposed in these two films should not be ignored or forgotten. War criminals should not be rewarded with monuments and praise. Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rove, Gonzales and many others must be held accountable. Americans must open their eyes and demand justice.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0854678/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0912593/

Please, try to watch these two documentaries before responding with an angry defensive pseudo-patriotic rant.

[–] luckyshort13 15 years ago

I will not say that America did not commit any war crimes, but what the Japanese did was beyond anything i've ever heard. One woman would get raped about 10 times each day, the Japanese had no mercy toward anybody including babies. They killed any Chinese that they could. I've read that the Japanese cut open pregnant womens bellies and ripped out the fetus while the woman was still alive. What the Japanese did was not war it was beyond murder and they did it out of cold blood just to prove their "honor".

My Xbox 360 gamertag is luckyshort13 add me

[–] gjordan77 11 years ago

just because the matter in which these civilians in Nanking were murdered is especially horrific does not in anyway make the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani civilians any better.

[–] murad23 9 years ago

Your statement is a strawman.

The US did not intentionally target millions of civilians The Germans and Japanese killed 50 million civilians in total and the Russians killed 40 million. Many of those completely intentional.

[–] !!!deleted!!! (8778465) 8 years ago

You make a point, but it isn't a very good one. American armed forces did not occupy Irag and then proceed to brutally rape and kill men women and babies. If American armed forces began raping Iraqi babies before and after killing them you're point might be worth something.

This documentary serves to present something beyond what you're talking about. Militants have been inflicting civilian casualties since war was ever waged. In WW2 carpet bombing civilians and inflicting mass casualties was a strategy employed by every armed forces which had the resources to do.

And it almost does kind of make it better. American armed forces are more than capable of killing and raping dead babies, but they don't.

[–] rlackmeyer 15 years ago

GIVE ME A BREAK! How naive can you be to compare our American soldiers with the inhumane Japs and SS. Are there some bad eggs in our military? Of course, but they get punished and weeded out. It is not part of our culture as it was with the Japs and the nazis!

[–] flanerie 15 years ago

an innocent life is equally tragic however it is lost or taken. All war is inhumane, I never suggested that American soldiers, in particular, are inhumane. All I'm asking is for people to educate themselves about war. Current war, that is taking place right now, the culprit of which is the rulers of America. It is easy to look 40, 50, 60 years back and judge the actions of those who lived then, but what about what's happening now? We cannot live in ignorant bliss.

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] nightinfinity 15 years ago

Look up the list of war crimes that Saddam Hussein has committed. These are willful acts, not accidents or collateral damage. The war in Iraq has been handled poorly, but the fact is, Saddam Hussein needed to be taken out of power.

[–] jnagarya-1 15 years ago

Saddam Hussein was long a US ally. Especially when Reagan took him off the "terrorist state" list in order to "legally" sell him weapons to use against Iran.* That included the gas he used to "gas his own people". (He was a Sunni; those allegedly gassed were Kurds; Sunnis and Kurds are not the same people.)
_____

*My favorite TV moment of all time was when Reagan -- wearing his suit jacket -- went on live TV, wagged his finger at the camera, and declared:

"I never had sex with the TERRORISTS to whom I gave the missiles in violation of the Trading with the Enemy Act."

So he gave weapons to BOTH sides. Why might that be? Because the US's allies -- including at that time Saddam Hussein -- should trust the US?
_____

And note that that "gasssing" occurred while Daddy Bush was president. What did he do AT THe TIME? NOTHING -- it was done with weapons sold to Saddam BY THE US. He couldn't have cared less.

And those alleged "mass graves"? Daddy Bush told the Shia that if they rose up to overthrow Saddam, Daddy Bush and the US would back them up. They rose up to overthrow Saddam -- and Daddy Bush and the US were NO-SHOWS. So Saddam freely slaughtered those who rose up against him.

Daddy Bush had no problem with it at the time.

[–] murad23 9 years ago

Nonsense. Saddam was a soviet ally. And what missiles?

Make it up why don't you

[–] jnagarya-1 9 years ago

In fact, Saddam Hussein was an on-again and off-again ally of the West, including the US. It was President Carter who put Iraq on the "Rogue Nation" list, and Reagan who took Iraq off that list.

And he took Iraq off the list so it would be legal to provide him weapons to use in his war against the US's "enemy" Iran. There is a photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam as part of that deal.

What missiles? What was Iran-Contra about? It included the provision of missiles to IRAN -- at the very same time the US was calling Iran "terrorist". When caught, Reagan didn't deny it; instead, he lied that he "didn't remember".

I leave the makings-up to those who can't face the reality that the US, not being perfect, is therefore realistically subject to criticism. The US was founded on genocide against the original inhabitants of the continent. Don't like that fact being stated? Then cover your ears and hide under your bed.

Or continue to suck down the jingoistic falsifications and hate-propaganda spewed by FOX Fiction.

[–] notting_hill_gate 14 years ago

sadam husein was put into power by america

[–] murad23 9 years ago

Nonsense.

[–] jnagarya-1 9 years ago

Everyone knows that Saddam Hussein was put into power, and kept in power, by the West -- and the US.

Everyone but morons and congenital liars knows and admits those facts.

It's also no secret that the US illegally invaded and occupied Iraq -- the skids greased by such as Colin Powell. They already knew there were no WMDs, because the UN inspectors, at the behest of the US, had already been on the ground in Iraq for EIGHT YEARS.

[–] nickm2 9 years ago

Unlikely given the Ba'ath Party liked to boast they got weapons systems from the Soviets before even some members of the Warsaw Pact.

Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?

[–] gjordan77 11 years ago

The only reason America went into Iraq was because Iraq had ceased trading oil in U.S. Dollars. Maybe you should take your own advice and look into the motivation of your governments political ambitions. I promise you, there is not one shred of truth to their wanting to spread democracy and stop tyranny. Hussein wasn't killed for human rights abuse, he wasn't killed because he was a tyrant, he was killed because he dare challenge the american monopoly on the oil trade.

Believing anything else is naive.

[–] jnagarya-1 15 years ago

Not part of our culture? You know nothing of the "founding" of the British colonies, and the "founding" of the US and its expansion. The genocide by means of which those were accomplished do not "pale" against those of others simply because committed by whites.

In short: the US was founded on genocide. And there is no denying -- though you will -- that the US has all along been overly militaristic.

And yes: waterboarding has been recognized, both historically and in law, for hundreds of years, as being TORTURE. The US can now boast that it has done exactly that which wasdone by WW II Japanese and Nazis: waterboarding.

And that in't the whole of it.

If the truth shall set you free, and the US is about freedom, then the US is about telling the truth -- first about itself. It's the lying that is the voluntary relinquishing of freedom.

As for "bad eggs in our military": Cheney NEVER served in the military -- and yet HE DIRECTED torture FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.

Same goes for the committee chaired by never-been-in-the-military Condi Rice. Even Powell, who should have known better, participated in prescribing the specific methods of torture to be imposed on named individuals.

NONE of which individuals had been found guilty of ANYTHING -- beyond simply labeling them "terrorists" and using that as excuse to torture them.

WHEN will we be "weeding out" those at the TOP who authorized, designed, and implemented the torture regime -- requiring those "bad eggs" to OBEY the ORDERS to torture?

Ask yourself: how did it happen that the exact same forms of torture -- many of them singularly bizarre -- were used in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo, even though Graner and Lyndie English never spent time in Afghanistan or Guantanamo so didn't learn those techniques there?

[–] rick-deckard45 15 years ago

while you are correct that any war brings the darkest corner of human nature into plain view, i have to argue:

the civilian death tolls you count are not massacres. to my knowledge, while the US military has not been perfect in either iraq or afghanistan, there have been no large-scale massacres of civilians.

the overwhelming majority of the casualties you cite were civilians caught in the crossfire during the wars, not deliberately massacred like the victims of the japanese portrayed in this film (although such massive loss of life is very tragic either way, of course) while it is definite that some despicable war crimes have taken place in iraq (mostly acts of torture by interrogators and prison guards), nothing on the scale of anything that the japanese or germans did has taken place.

now, whether the wars the civilians lost their lives in were worth fighting is another point entirely, one that should be argued elsewhere.

a new life awaits you in the off-world colonies!

[–] bradshawhhs 15 years ago

Yeah, I've got to say that the OP is the most intellectually lazy bit of drivel I've ever read. Yes, civilian deaths are equally tragic no matter how they happen, but to equate collateral deaths, entirely unnavoidable, to deliberate massacre is above any thinking person. Unfortunately, too many take this route with a political axe to grind.

I assume you do not have one and so am giving you the benefit of the doubt. Grow up; it's a harsh world and sometimes you have to get your hands dirty if you want to survive. Don't want to participate in that? Fine, that's your right, but you have no right to prevent others from doing so and are way off base in judging the morality of those who do. You owe your existence and the rest of your life, to those who do whether you like it or not.

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] flanerie 15 years ago

Dear Bradshawhhs,

Fortunately I don't feel like I owe my existence to the most righteous American armed forces (being Canadian and all).

And I'd like to ask you which part of the invasions on Afghanistan and Iraq was about "survival"? First they claimed it was about capturing Osama (great work there), then it became about bringing democracy to the illiterate and pathetic people of Afghanistan (nothing about survival of Americans and again great work!). Then we have Iraq and of course that was all about WMDs. I guess we all know how much BS that turned out to be. So I'm not quite sure what you mean about "getting hands dirty in order to survive". These wars were started for reasons different to those conveyed to the public, the gullible, terrified, trigger-happy public.

I'm sorry you feel the need to tell me to grow-up, considering how narrow and uneducated your bewildered view of the world is. Growing up is about expanding your horizons, broadening your understanding of the world and not about accepting the harsh reality of unjustified "collateral deaths" of innocent human beings. They are human beings, however foreign and uncivilized they may seem to people like you.

The reason why I posted is to implore people to see "No End in Sight" and "Taxi to the Dark Side", not bring on a political debate, which is inconsequential and utterly useless. Best thing you can do for your ever expanding mind is educate yourself. Give truth a chance, before you patriot yourself into a life of blind ignorance.

[–] MoovieLuvver 15 years ago

I find it very curious that Americans can easily demonize someone like Saddam Hussein but when people want George Bush held responsible for the needless deaths of 1/2 million(who knows exactly how many) Iraqis then the same rules don't apply. Are the Iraqis who died for lies less important than Americans?

I have a copy of a video showing Rumsfeld in Iraq, shaking Saddam's hand and smiling...this was in the early 80s after Saddam had gassed his own people. The Americans were well aware at the time that Saddam had gassed the Kurds in northern Iraq but didn't have a problem then(I saw the videos of the dead Kurds in the early 80s when I was in the Canadian military). It was only 20 years later that they brought it up when they were digging deep for reasons to invade Iraq.

In some respects, George Bush is worse than Saddam Hussein because George pretends to be trying to liberate the Iraqi people and trying to bring them democracy. That is a special kind of evil and he should be held responsible.

Americans, don't let your blind patriotism get in the way of educating yourself about the facts.

[–] redpuzzlepiece 15 years ago

i think the OP's claim that he doesn't want to accuse america specifically is silly since he puts his accusation of america in the title of his post. i think it's a poor way of making a fairly obvious point.

however i also think americans don't realize the scale of the massacres carried out against Native Americans in this country. Hitler actually studied American methods of extermination of the Native Americans when he was conducting his campaign against the Jews.

Of course the extermination of Native Americans was something Canadians participate(d) in as well so...here we are again. war = bad. duh.

[–] gjordan77 11 years ago

The Canadian government was never responsible for the genocide of anyone. The events which you are referencing - which by the way, do not even BEGIN to compare to the slaughter that took place in the U.S. calling it a 'genocide' is a big disingenuous stretch - was committed many years before confederation. THsoe responsible for the murder of the native peoples in Canada were the British and French colonial armies.

Which isn't to say that Canada has treated its native population well at any point in history, point being, there was never an active attempt by any Canadian government to exterminate a race of people.

This is also irrelevant as that would have happened a century ago whereas Afghanistan and Iraq are happening now.

[–] nickm2 9 years ago

however i also think americans don't realize the scale of the massacres carried out against Native Americans in this country.

Wouldn't that be the Spanish?

Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?

[–] gjordan77 11 years ago

ROFL. Wow.

You're right nobody should ever try to change anything and should just shut up and accept it because you're told its the only way it could possibly work. *beep* advancement of the species, maintaining the status quo is much more important.

For the sake of humanity, have a vasectomy immediately.

[–] jnagarya-1 15 years ago

"the civilian death tolls you count are not massacres. to my knowledge, while the US military has not been perfect in either iraq or afghanistan, there have been no large-scale massacres of civilians."

Okay, so you want to indulge in fantasy and wishful thinking in order to avoid the facts. So let's make it easyt for you: avoid it by going into the past, in order to ignore the present, and look at the US military massacre of Amerindian civilians -- elderly, women, children, and infants included.

And don't use the excuse that they, unlike us, were "unenlightened": the Bush criminal enterprise would be, by those terms, enlightened. And yet they authorized, planned, and imposed TORTURE -- as defined for centuries IN LAW -- on CIVILIANS in such as Iraq.

[–] chris-2512 15 years ago

There's a big difference between fighting a just war and being complete WAR CRIMINALS.

Unfortunately the Bush Administration lost sight of that distinction immediately after 9/11.

[–] jnagarya-1 15 years ago

From the available evidence they were avidly seeking an opportunity to lose sight of that distinction.

While Bush I was still in office, the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal was urging poppy Bush to "take out" Saddam Hussein. They were furious when he -- knowing something of foreign policy and historical realities as concerns the Middle East and Iraq -- refused to "go all the way to Baghdad. So they and others form "PNAC" to lobby for that action.

During the Clinton administration, they sent him a letter -- in 1998 -- urging HIM to "take out" Saddam Hussein. He, knowing something of foreign policy and historical realities as concerns the Middle East and Iraq -- refused.

So they bullied and stole their way into office in 2000, with the assist of a constitutionally-subversive SC 5, with "taking out" Saddam as one of their top priorities. They only needed a pretext, and excuse.

Whether the warnings of the impending 9/11 attacks were ignored in order to allow them, so as to exploit them as that pretext, is not know. What is known is that immediately after the attacks, the *beep* criminal enterprise began lying that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks, and at least some of the crime against humanity of torture they imposed was intended to generate FALSE confessions "proving" that lie "true".

That didn't work, so they made up any number of other lies, the ultimate result being that they managed to lie the country into illegally invading and occupying a non-threatening sovereign nation -- not because it was actually behind or otherwise connected with the attacks, but because they had wanted to "take out" Saddam Hussein for over a decade.

[–] tramky 14 years ago

Flanerie is a twit. War crimes? He/she hasn't a clue.

It is always interesting that only certain specific names are brought forth by arrogant know-nothings like Flanerie--Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales. These men successfully defended us against direct assaults on the American people by Islamic scum thugs.

Questions for Flanerie: Is Osama bin Laden a war criminal? Are those in Islamic countries who recruit, train & direct suicide terrorist bombers war criminals?

Loons like Flaneria never mention these things, never seem to ask such questions, never address the REAL horrors in the world.

Since Barack Hussein Obama is pretty much following the policies of the Bush admnistration, seems to be recognizing that no one really cares whether Guantanamo is closed or not and that it is, in fact, a wonderful gift given to a President in dealing with Islamic terrorism, we can suppose that Obama is, according to idiot Flanerie, a war criminal as well.

[–] poisonpill98 14 years ago

Ooohhhhh! Rubs hands in glee! I'm bumping this thread because I can't wait to see the responses.

But don't worry, if those comments come back scathing, I still firmly believe that, deep down inside, you're not as ignorant as you sound.

[–] sawyertom 14 years ago

Flanerie's Canuck, so he has a major inferiority comples living next to us. His once great military and society have become wussified nanny state. Nobody ever said we were faultless, but to act like we are the worse is flat wrong. as for the documentaries I need to see who made them to see if they are a credible source or someone with an axe to grind like the OP here. I just wish you had the same compassion for all the lives that these terrorist barbarians have taken the last eight years as well, instead of blaming us for it all. What happens by accident with us, is done deliberately by them.

[–] gjordan77 11 years ago

Yes, that's totally it. It's totally an inferiority complex and not because your country is run an insane, self destructive military industrial complex that regularly abuses human rights, both inside and outside of its own borders.

Totally. We're just jealous.

And those terrorists that attacked America? Yeah, they were just jealous too. There was no other reason that could possibly have driven them to the point where they felt they had to lash out against innocent people just to try and make them see the crimes that are propagated on a daily basis by a corrupt government that has little to no regard for the lives of poor brown people in third world countries it invades for seemingly no reason. Nope, they were just jealous that they never received the "amazing" american cultural experience! (whatever that is)

[–] disquieter6 12 years ago

I have to side with the OP on this one. It's not fair to single out other cultures as barbarians when the Americans were capable of taking an entire state of Native Americans and force them to walk with no belongings in the wilderness. This occurred despite the fact that these people were cooperating with Americans, going to schools and starting to learn english. As if it wasn't enough that these people were willing to adopt our culture, they just weren't white enough so we forced them into a death march. There are entire settlements that were murdered, women and children included. We used germ warfare.

We cannot forget that Americans as a people strongly supported reelection of President Jackson based on his "Expansionist" policies against the Native Americans and his lack of consideration of the rights of Slaves. We also can't forget that in Vietnam, "Charlie" company was overwhelmingly accepting to participate in the massacre of a town of unarmed women, children, and elderly.

I don't agree with the idea that these murders are somehow more moral just because we didn't murder them in the same fashion as Nazi, or the Japanese. Yes there were cultural attributes that contributed to the manner of murders that they committed. It's in my opinion that it was their Nationalism that allowed them to do it. In my lifetime America was never more Nationalistic than we were the years following 9/11 and I saw a country very eager to kill people at the very suspicion that they don't like what we stand for. A lot of people knew we weren't going to find WMD's in Iraq and I was one of them. I would have been shocked if not suspicious of our government if we did find any.

Lastly, if you want some evidence that any culture is capable of murder via "following orders". Look no farther than the Stanley Milgram Experiment. The results of the test showed that 65% of Americans were willing to shock innocent volunteers to death when told that they had to. Which proved that all you have to do to convince anyone to carry out the murder of innocent people is to dress it up like they are doing something moral and noble and it will be carried out.

[–] buddytesla-1 12 years ago

Questions for some idiots posting here.
1. If water boarding is torture why wasn't anyone complaining when we were doing to some of our own troops as part of their
training?
2. Before Europeans arrived in America, weren't Native Americans divided into tribes that basically made wars of conquest for resources against each other took slaves etc. etc. So why do people here talk as if they're morally superior to whites?
3. Why do people take seriously Japanese whining about Nagasaki and Hiroshima when in fact more people were killed in the fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo?And even those numbers don't even come close to the million civilians estimated killed in Nanking. One of the men who flew on the Enola Gay chose to be buried in an unmarked grave so it wouldn't be vandalized, meanwhile the Japanese inter their war criminals in shrines.

[–] jlird808 11 years ago

I haven't read all the replies, but I'm glad that the first few were at least pointing the finger back at u for trying to drag the US thru the mud in regards to this movie and topic.

Of course there are "civilian dead" in our Middle East campaigns, many of which are totally tragic and perhaps inexcusable.

As someone pointed out, committing horrific acts at the level and scale that the Japanese did DOES NOT EXIST in our military's history, no matter how u try to paint us. If there were isolated incidents, they probably got caught and busted for it.

Please point out any outright massacres of civilians, rapes, incidents of torture, demonic human experimentations, etc. Did we force any Iraqi civilians to have sex with corpses, or fathers with their daughters? Did we rape and then disembowel 12 year old Afghan girls? If so, go ahead and do what Iris Chang did and conduct ur own investigation and write a book about it. Perhaps ur right.....

[–] wartengu 8 years ago

When American soldiers rape and pillage, it's American Patriotism and Heroic, but when Japan does it to an enemy, it's evil, UH?