The hypocrisy of the politicians stinks almost as much as the corpses of the dead. Meanwhile, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Yemen to Israel, the US and its allies have either yet to account for or continue to engage in wars and pursue policies that have killed hundreds of thousands of people and ruined the lives of tens of millions more. Truth be told, the Middle East is an intricate wheel of war and oppression whose spokes stretch across the Middle East into Africa and Central Asia, and which rolls roughshod over most every attempt by citizens across these regions to achieve a measure of democracy, accountability, development and dignity.
Why are are western leaders surprised when those crushed under the wheel ride the spokes across the water in the desperate hope of arriving at a better, or at least livable, future.
- How To Make a Homemade Bath Mat?
- La disolución freudiana de las psicosis (Spanish Edition);
- Navigation menu?
- Prey No Longer!
- La performance (French Edition).
- Bringing Your Book to Market: A Writers Guide to Becoming a Published Author.
- .
Last Monday's presidential debate has no doubt revealed the stakes involved in choosing between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, at least in terms of their differences in temperament and treatment of women. But as we rightly condemn Trump's so-called "fat-shaming" and his lack of command of life-or-death issues, the overlap in policies between the two candidates when it comes to supporting massive levels of violence across the Middle East is as troubling as it is depressing.
Sanctioned ignorance in the US.
United States war crimes
Her "sober" hand hardly seems less dangerous than Trump's recklessness from the point of view of those caught under the wheels of US foreign policy, or that of the other major powers, allies and adversaries alike. Yet whatever their past, or allegiances or entanglements, we can assume that both Clinton and Trump would, each in their own way, like to be remembered as having in some fundamental sense significantly improved the United State's standing, and global security with it.
Trump's cowboy imperialism is not that far from the attitudes that his favourite president, Ronald Reagan, brought to office. And yet Reagan produced several of the boldest foreign policy tacks of the post-War era, including calling on Soviet President Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" as well as completely abolish nuclear weapons. Neither Trump nor Clinton has Reagan's rhetorical and ideological genius.
But both Clinton and Trump could call for a major change in the architecture of world politics and diplomacy that would have an equally profound effect on global peace and security: It is hard to overstate the harm the P5 veto has done to the cause of world peace.
Rather than shore up stability and a balance of power between the emerging two global blocs, the Security Council veto ensured a shared a balance of terror and the ability of the great powers and their most favourite allies and clients to get away with literally anything, no matter how gravely their actions violate international law and norms. From the US invasion of Iraq, to Israel's continual violations of international law, and the even more egregious actions of the Syrian government and its Russian patrons, hundreds of millions of people continue to suffer because the world community has almost no leverage to prevent systematic violations of the UN Charter and fundamental international laws by one of the P5 or their allies.
Clinton, Trump, and the ends of great power hypocrisy
While it is true that an end to the veto - or at least increasing the number of permanent members necessary to wield it - would prevent the US and its friends from violating international law at will, as a fundamental rule of the international game it would in fact impact all the major powers more or less equally.
Smith instructed Major Littleton Waller , commanding officer of a battalion of U. Marines assigned to bolster his forces in Samar, regarding the conduct of pacification:. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me.
- The Complete Idiots Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition (Idiots Guides).
- ;
- The hypocrisy of the US-UK extradition act?
- Beautiful Healthy Teeth (Radiant Health Primer Book 5)!
- .
I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States," General Jacob H. Since it was a popular belief among the Americans serving in the Philippines that native males were born with bolos in their hands, Major Littleton "Tony" Waller asked, "I would like to know the limit of age to respect, sir.
Clinton, Trump, and the ends of great power hypocrisy | USA | Al Jazeera
A sustained and widespread massacre of Filipino civilians followed. Food and trade to Samar were cut off, intended to starve the revolutionaries into submission. Smith's strategy on Samar involved widespread destruction to force the inhabitants to stop supporting the guerrillas and turn to the Americans from fear and starvation. American columns marched across the island, destroying homes and shooting people and draft animals. The exact number of Filipino civilians killed by US troops will never be known. Regarding the massacres in Bud Dajo, Major Hugh Scott, the District Governor of Sulu Province , where the incidents occurred, recounted that those who fled to the crater "declared they had no intention of fighting, - ran up there only in fright, [and] had some crops planted and desired to cultivate them.
The description of the engagement as a "battle" is disputed because of both the overwhelming firepower of the attackers and the lopsided casualties. It has no resemblance to a battle We cleaned up our four days' work and made it complete by butchering these helpless people.
For example, the highest estimate of Native Americans killed at the Wounded Knee Massacre is out of a death rate of 85 percent , whereas in Bud Dajo there were only six Moro survivors out of a group estimated at 1, a death rate of over 99 percent. As at Wounded Knee, the Moro group included women and children. Moro men in the crater who had arms possessed melee weapons. While fighting was limited to ground action on Jolo, use of naval gunfire contributed significantly to the overwhelming firepower brought to bear against the Moros.
During the engagement, men and officers, under the command of Colonel J. On March 2, , Wood ordered Colonel J. Duncan of the 6th Infantry Regiment stationed at Zamboanga , the provincial capital to lead an expedition against Bud Dajo. The assault force consisted of " men of the 6th Infantry, [dismounted] men of the 4th Cavalry , 68 men of the 28th Artillery Battery, 51 Philippine Constabulary , men of the 19th Infantry and 6 sailors from the gunboat Pampanga. At daybreak, the American guns both the mountain guns and the guns of the Pampanga opened up on the Moros' fortifications in the crater.
American forces then placed a "Machine Gun Some of the defenders rushed the Americans and were cut down. The Americans charged the surviving Moros with fixed bayonets, and the Moros fought back with their kalis , barung , improvised grenades made with black powder and seashells. In response to criticism, Wood's explanation of the high number of women and children killed stated that the women of Bud Dajo dressed as men and joined in the combat, and that the men used children as living shields. Gordon Johnston , who was severely wounded by a woman warrior. Duncan's March 12, post-action report describing the placement of a machine-gun at the edge of the crater to fire upon the occupants.
Territory, American treatment of Philippine soldiers and civilians was far from benevolent. General Elwell Stephen Otis controlled the flow of information by journalists, often through violent methods, in order to maintain American support for the war. Following the Battle of Manila , Aguinaldo switched his tactics from conventional warfare to guerrilla warfare, causing American generals to establish harsher methods of warfare as well.
Despite Otis' restriction on journalism, many reports by both American and Filipino journalists indicate that American treatment of Filipino prisoners was very harsh, as many were starved and tortured, and many others were executed. A report written by General J. Bell in states: I take so large a command for the purpose of thoroughly searching each ravine, valley and mountain peak for insurgents and for food, expecting to destroy everything I find outside of towns.
All able bodied men will be killed or captured. These people need a thrashing to teach them some good common sense; and they should have it for the good of all concerned. Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood asserted that the survivors were Japanese soldiers who had turned machine-gun and rifle fire on the Wahoo after she surfaced, and that such resistance was common in submarine warfare. PT boats and Allied aircraft attacked Japanese rescue vessels as well as approximately 1, survivors from eight sunken Japanese troop transport ships.
American servicemen in the Pacific War sometimes 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. Japanese who did become prisoners were killed on the spot or en route to prison compounds. Ferguson states that such practices played a role in the ratio of Japanese prisoners to dead being 1: That same year, efforts were taken by Allied high commanders to suppress "take no prisoners" attitudes [36] 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: Nevertheless, "taking no prisoners" was still "standard practice" among U.
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. Ulrich Straus, a U. Japanologist , suggests that Allied troops on the front line intensely hated Japanese military personnel and were "not easily persuaded" to take or protect prisoners, because they believed, not entirely incorrectly, that Allied personnel who surrendered got "no mercy" from the Japanese.
Weingartner attributes the very low number of Japanese in U. It has been claimed that some U.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Based on several years of research, Okinawan historian Oshiro Masayasu former director of the Okinawa Prefectural Historical Archives writes:. Soon after the U. 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.
According to interviews carried out by the New York Times and published by them in , 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": It has been claimed that the rape was so prevalent that most Okinawans over age 65 around the year either knew or had heard of a woman who was raped in the aftermath of the war.
An explanation given for why the US military has no record of any rapes is that few Okinawan women reported abuse, mostly out of fear and embarrassment. According to an Okinawan police spokesman: Many people wondered why it never came to light after the inevitable American-Japanese babies the many women must have given birth to. In interviews, historians and Okinawan elders said that some of those Okinawan women who were raped and did not commit suicide did give birth to biracial children, but that many of them were immediately killed or left behind out of shame, disgust or fearful trauma.
More often, however, rape victims underwent crude abortions with the help of village midwives. A large scale effort to determine the possible extent of these crimes has never been conducted. Over five decades after the war had ended, in the lates, the women who were believed to have been raped still overwhelmingly refused to give public statements, instead speaking through relatives and a number of historians and scholars.
There is substantial evidence that the U. Samuel Saxton, a retired captain, explained that the American veterans and witnesses may have intentionally kept the rape a secret, largely out of shame: Masaie Ishihara, a sociology professor, supports this: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb , that by 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.
Some other authors have noted that Japanese civilians "were often surprised at the comparatively humane treatment they received from the American enemy. 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. There were also 1, reported rapes during the first 10 days of the occupation of Kanagawa prefecture after the Japanese surrender. In the Laconia massacre , U.
Pilots of a United States Army Air Forces USAAF B Liberator bomber, despite knowing the U-boat's location, intentions, and the presence of British seamen, killed dozens of Laconia 's survivors with bombs and strafing attacks, forcing U to cast its remaining survivors into the sea and crash dive to avoid being destroyed.
A confidential inquiry was made, but McCaffrey was never charged with any offense relating to the massacre. He died in This fact remained virtually unknown in the U. Salemi of New York University, whose father witnessed it, reported it. In the " Biscari massacre ", which consisted of two instances of mass murder, U. According to an article in Der Spiegel by Klaus Wiegrefe, many personal memoirs of Allied soldiers have been wilfully ignored by historians until now because they were at odds with the " greatest generation " mythology surrounding World War II. The Battle for Normandy , by Antony Beevor.
Historian Peter Lieb has found that many U. If this view is correct, it may explain the fate of 64 German prisoners out of the captured who did not make it to the POW collecting point on Omaha Beach on the day of the landings. In the aftermath of the Malmedy massacre , in which 80 American POWs were murdered by their German captors, a written order from the headquarters of the th U. Army Infantry Regiment, dated 21 December , stated: Army gave instructions to his troops not to take prisoners when they crossed the Rhine in Only one of them said he shot a prisoner Perhaps as many as one-third of the veterans Lundeberg has written that the beating and torture of U's survivors was a singular atrocity motivated by the interrogators' need to quickly get information on what the U.
The " Dachau massacre " involved the killing of German prisoners of war and surrendering SS soldiers at the Dachau concentration camp. In interviews with his biographer Charles Brandt, Sheeran recalled his war service with the Thunderbird Division as the time when he first developed a callousness to the taking of human life. In his interviews with Brandt, Sheeran divided such massacres into four different categories. Secret wartime files made public only in reveal that American GIs committed sexual offenses in Europe, including rapes in England, between and In , the South Korean government certified the names of dead or missing mostly women, children, and old men and 55 wounded.
It said that many other victims' names were not reported. This episode early in the Korean War gained widespread attention when the Associated Press AP published a series of articles in that subsequently won a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. The Vietnam War Crimes Working Group Files is a collection of formerly secret documents compiled by Pentagon investigators in the early s, confirming that atrocities by U. See also Winter Soldier Investigation. The My Lai Massacre was the mass murder of to unarmed citizens in South Vietnam, almost entirely civilians , most of them women and children, conducted by U.
Some of the victims were raped, beaten, tortured, or maimed, and some of the bodies were found mutilated. Initially sentenced to life in prison, Calley had his sentence reduced to ten years, then was released after only three and a half years under house arrest. The incident prompted widespread outrage around the world, and reduced U. Congressmen, and received hate mail, death threats, and mutilated animals on their doorsteps. In the aftermath of the September 11, attacks , the U. Government adopted several new measures in the classification and treatment of prisoners captured in the War on Terror, including applying the status of unlawful combatant to some prisoners, conducting extraordinary renditions , and using torture " enhanced interrogation techniques ".
Human Rights Watch and others described the measures as being illegal under the Geneva Conventions.