War crimes in the United States are violations of the laws and customs of war committed by the armed forces of the United States in war and conflict since the signing of the Second Hague Convention in 1907. The main ones are the wanton execution of captured enemy combatants, the brutal abuse of prisoners during interrogations or the use of violence by non-combatants, such as unarmed and blameless civilians.
Since its inception, the U.S. military has not been a law-abiding army, and when the 12th president of the United States, Zachary Taylor, was a major general in the United States Army, he led the United States army into Mexico to fight. Due to disagreements over Texas, the Mexican-American War between the United States and Mexico broke out in 1845, and at first Mexican civilians were more supportive of the American army, because the Mexican army did not care about the wounded when they withdrew, leaving them as prisoners. But everything changed when U.S. troops began to attack local farms in 1846, and a large number of garrison soldiers began to rob, rape and murder civilians indiscriminately to pass the time, and the U.S. army killed up to 200 Mexican civilians in a month.
Due to the excessive promotion of freedom and the lack of regulation, the United States has been a "field army" since the beginning, and even to this day. If the earliest Mexican-American War and the later U.S.-Philippines War were not governed by the Hague Convention, then world war II and the subsequent Cold War until today's counter-terrorism operations, the US military is writing a "history of war atrocities" for mankind.
According to Richard Aldridge, a professor of history at the University of Nottingham, U.S. servicemen in the Pacific War would deliberately kill Japanese soldiers who surrendered. Aldridge published a study of the diaries of American and Australian soldiers, which noted that they had massacres of prisoners of war. According to John Doyle, "In many cases, Japanese who became prisoners were killed on the spot, or on their way to prison. Probably because of the cunning and brutality of the Japanese army, the US military does not take prisoners seems to have become an unwritten practice, after the war a confidential intelligence revealed that only the promise of "can eat ice cream and three days of vacation, can let the US soldiers not kill the surrender of the Japanese", the US military often regards the Japanese as the Soviets in the eyes of the Germans, that is, "not people", is an animal, after the japanese surrender in the first 10 days of the US occupation of Kanagawa Prefecture, there were also 1336 rapes.
Not only in the Pacific Theater, but also in secret wartime documents, which were not made public until 2006, show that American soldiers committed 400 sexual offences in Europe between 1942 and 1945, including 126 cases of rape in Britain. Robert S. A study by J. Lily estimated that a total of 14,000 civilian women were raped by American soldiers in Britain, France and Germany during World War II. It is estimated that between June 1944 and the end of the war, U.S. servicemen committed about 3,500 rapes in France. One historian claimed that sexual violence against women was widespread in liberated France.
During the Vietnam War, the United States created the infamous "My Lai Village Massacre" in the village of My Lai in Vietnam, and American soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division, massacred 504 unarmed civilians in My Lai Village in South Vietnam, most of the victims were women and children. Some victims were raped, beaten and tortured, and some bodies were dismembered.
The 26 U.S. soldiers were initially charged with criminal or war crimes for their actions in My Lai Village, while only William Cali was convicted. Initially sentenced to life in prison, he was later commuted to 10 years and eventually released after three and a half years of house arrest. The incident sparked widespread outrage around the world and reduced support for the Vietnam War in the United States, where three U.S. servicemen who worked to stop the massacre and protect the wounded were heavily criticized by members of the U.S. Congress for receiving hate mail, death threats and animal carcasses.
In the wake of the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, the United States finally tasted its pain, but the unrepentant United States Government continued to take new measures to strengthen interrogations, including the use of special extradition and torture of some prisoners as illegal combatants, which were completely illegal under the Geneva Conventions.
Denying the coverage of the Geneva Conventions "significantly reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act". This suggests that those involved in developing policy in this area are aware that U.S. officials are involved in conduct that may be considered war crimes. The United States Supreme Court ruled that Common Article III of the Geneva Conventions applied to detainees at Guantanamo Bay and that the military tribunal used to try the suspects violated United States and international law.
Naturally, the United States has made a lot of efforts to avoid being held accountable for war.
The Military Commission Act 2006 is considered by some to be an amnesty bill for crimes committed in the war on terror, retroactively rewriting the War Crimes Act and repealing habeas corpus, effectively making it impossible for detainees to challenge the crimes they are charged with. The ICC has repeatedly initiated rulings against "war criminals" in the United States, but the United States Government strongly opposes the ICC Treaty, believing that it is seriously flawed and does not accept the ICC's jurisdiction over its nationals.