Feature: Anti-Human Rights Anti-Humanity Anti-Humanity: The Brutal Nature of the United States from four wars

Beijing, 18 May (Xinhua) -- Feature Article: Anti-Human Rights, Anti-Humanity, Anti-Humanity -- Judging the Brutal Nature of the United States from the Perspective of The Four Wars

Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhu Ruiqing

"How many war crimes has the United States committed? The United States appears to have been at war, arbitrarily depriving it of a large number of lives — the worst human rights violation. Jeffrey Buckman, an expert on human rights at American University, once questioned him.

Since its founding, the United States has been keen on military expansion. After the end of World War II, the United States was even more ambitious, frequently provoking or participating in wars around the world in order to compete for and maintain hegemony, resulting in a large number of innocent civilians killed and injured, and countless people were displaced. It can be said that from the Korean War and the Vietnam War to the Iraq War and the Afghan War, the United States, under the banner of safeguarding "democracy, freedom, and human rights," has created a series of tragic cases that shocked the world and committed a series of crimes against human rights, humanity, and humanity.

As an article on the U.S. Foreign Policy website points out: "Americans criticize the crimes against humanity in other countries at every turn, but refuse to look in the mirror at their own eyes — in fact, this practice has long been seen through by everyone." ”

Korean War

【Tragic case】 In Laogenli, Yongtong County, Chungcheongbuk-do Province, South Korea, there is a railway bridge built across the creek. On July 26, 1950, during a hasty retreat, the U.S. military slaughtered a large number of innocent civilians under the bridge under the pretext that the retreating refugees were mixed with Korean People's Army fighters. The incident was not exposed to the media until September 1999. About 400 people were reportedly killed in the incident. Survivors confirmed that the massacre lasted three days.

Joe Jackman, a veteran of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry Regiment, recalled: "There was a lieutenant who screamed like crazy, opened fire everywhere, and killed everyone... Whoever it was, whether it was eight or eighty years old, they were killed. ”

"Under the bridge, some people dug holes with their bare hands and hid in them." One survivor recalled, "Others piled up the bodies and dodged bullets behind them. ”

According to South Korean media reports, in addition to the "Lao Geun-ri Incident," the U.S. military killed hundreds of fleeing civilians in July and August 1950 at the Uijwan Bridge in Kikoyak-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do Province, and at The Deoksung Bridge in Gorin County. In addition, U.S. troops shelled Yeesan Station in North Jeolla Province, machine-gunned a village in Sacheon City, Chungcheongbuk Province, bombed a village in Danyang County, Chungcheongbuk Province, and shot and killed unarmed civilians in the Masan area of Gyeongsangnam-do Province, killing dozens or even hundreds of civilians.

The Korean War, while shorter than the other three wars, was unusually bloody, killing more than 3 million civilians and turning some 3 million into refugees. During the war, the US military secretly carried out germ warfare in the northern region of Korea and parts of northeast China, and used aircraft to spread a large number of insects, rats, rabbits, and other vectors with germs such as Y. pestis, Vibrio cholerae, and Bacillus typhoid, causing great harm to the Chinese and DPRK military and civilians.

Charles Hanley, a former Associated Press reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for his disclosure of the "Old Roots Incident," said in an article that memorial towers, museums and sad sculpture gardens have risen on the ground in Old Roots, "but in the United States, the homeland of the killers, either intentionally or indifferently, much of the truth is still covered up."

American historian Bruce Cummings said the indiscriminate bombing carried out by the United States during the Korean War was tantamount to genocide, "outrageously dirty" and that "we, the ostensible allies of democracy, are the worst criminals."

Vietnam War

On March 16, 1968, a U.S. military carried out a "clearance" mission in my Rai village in Quang Nghe Province, Vietnam, killing more than 500 unarmed villagers, most of them elderly, women and children. This is the horrific massacre of My Lai Village. In a report to the U.S. military headquarters in Saigon, this evil deed was described as a "major victory." The incident was exposed in 1969 by american journalist Seymour Hersh.

In the 1989 British documentary Four Hours in My Lai Village, soldier Vanado Simpson confessed that he had killed about 25 people in my Lai village and had also been involved in scalping and dismembering bodies. "I shot and killed them — the lady and the little boy, the little boy was about two years old," he recalled. ”

【Data】 The Los Angeles Times of the United States disclosed in 2006 that in addition to the Massacre in My Lai Village, there were at least 320 other massacres of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops during the Vietnam War. The report said that the atrocities committed by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War were not limited to a small number of military personnel who lacked military discipline, and almost all U.S. troops involved in the war were found to have committed similar acts.

The Vietnam War lasted nearly 20 years, killing 2 million civilians and turning more than 3 million into refugees. The U.S. military dropped about 20 million gallons of defoliant (Agent Orange) in Vietnam, killing 400,000 Vietnamese and developing cancer or other diseases. The U.S. military also left behind a large number of unexploded bombs, mines and shells in Vietnam, which are estimated to take 300 years to be completely removed.

The United States habitually dismisses the outbursts of the Vietnam War as "individual cases," but in the eyes of Nick Tess, an American investigative journalist and author of "Kill All Moving Targets: The Real Vietnam War," this is undoubtedly a lie. Through interviews with more than 100 veterans, Tes concluded that the killings "stemmed from the deliberate policies of the U.S. military at the highest levels." He asked: "Why do the perpetrators not prosecute all the evidence of the Atrocities committed by the US military during the war?" ”

A 2018 New York Times article commented that the My Lai Village massacre was not the only time the U.S. military committed war crimes against Vietnamese civilians, but the cover-up of the incident, and the fact that only a handful of people were tried, became synonymous with the U.S. Vietnam War.

Iraq War

【Tragic】 On the morning of November 19, 2005, a U.S. soldier in the western Iraqi town of Hadiza was killed by a roadside bomb attack. Subsequently, a team of U.S. Marines broke into two homes near the site of the blast and killed at least 24 civilians, including women and children, the youngest of whom was only two years old.

Witnesses said U.S. troops went on a killing spree on the streets and in the homes of residents. Time magazine, which first disclosed the incident in March 2006, said it had obtained a videotape of the incident showing the civilians killed still in their pajamas.

However, the U.S. military portrayed the bloody case as a counterattack after the U.S. military was attacked by armed forces, and praised the U.S. Marines for attacking the homes of people in hadtes, saying that the move avoided casualties among U.S. soldiers.

Data: In March 2003, the United States and its Western allies brazenly invaded Iraq on the grounds that "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction" and bypassed the United Nations Security Council in spite of the widespread opposition of the international community. The war has led to continued instability in Iraq, near-paralysis of infrastructure, and the rise of extremist groups, as the United States calls "weapons of mass destruction." The war is estimated to have killed between 200,000 and 250,000 civilians, more than 16,000 of whom were directly killed by U.S. troops.

A report from the Dutch peace organization PAX shows that the US-led coalition used about 10,000 depleted uranium bombs around civilian areas in violation of the law during the Iraq War, seriously endangering the local ecological environment and people's health. The United Nations estimates that there are still about 25 million mines and other explosive remnants in Iraq that need to be cleared. In addition, the US military has also seriously violated international humanitarian principles and created many incidents of prisoner abuse.

Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning) was criminally prosecuted and sentenced for providing confidential information about U.S. military operations in Iraq to WikiLeaks. But Manning said the U.S. military's attitude toward civilians was disturbing and that Manning's move was to expose the U.S. military's "desire to kill" and disregard for life.

The US "Atlantic" website has published an article saying that some investigators have found that the US-led coalition forces often misidentify targets on the Battlefield in Iraq and launch attacks on places where there is no terrorist activity, so the actual civilian casualties are several times higher than official reports. "The Americans never really understand the cost of war, but they continue to fight, and only Iraqi civilians know first-hand how much the cost of war is."

The War in Afghanistan

On August 29, 2021, the day before the United States completely withdrew from Afghanistan, the U.S. military used drones to launch missiles at a white car parked in the courtyard of a family in Kabul, killing ten members of the Ahmadi family, including seven children, on the spot.

At one point, U.S. Central Command claimed that the attack targeted members of the Afghan branch of the terrorist group Islamic State. But U.S. media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post later found that Ahmedi was not only not a terrorist, but also a long-term employee of an aid group in the United States. Ahmadi's brother Hamidi complained bitterly: "The Americans accused my brother of being a member of the Islamic State, which is justifying the crimes committed. ”

The U.S. military did not admit this "tragic mistake" until the media revealed the truth. But Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the military "has no reason to punish any military personnel involved in the attack."

【Data】The United States launched the war in Afghanistan under the banner of "anti-terrorism", which brought pain to the local people for 20 years. According to the "War Plan" program of the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, 47,245 Afghan civilians and 66,000 to 69,000 Afghan soldiers and police unrelated to 9/11 were killed in U.S. military operations and more than 10 million Afghans were displaced.

The U.S. "Interception" website disclosed in August 2021 that between 2015 and 2020 alone, the U.S. military launched more than 13,000 drone strikes in Afghanistan, killing at least 10,000 people. The New York Times published a lengthy report in December 2021, citing more than 1,300 classified documents on the Pentagon obtained by it, pointing out that the US airstrikes were hasty and hasty, the target of missile launches was unclear, and many reports of civilian casualties were discounted.

A November 2021 article on the Newsweek website said that U.S. airstrikes such as the killing of Ahmadi's family were not exceptions, but "routines." "The United States has always ignored and despised the lives of Afghans". The New York Times also said that in the past 20 years, long-range operated drone air raids have become the norm for the US military, resulting in the death of civilians.

In August 2021, at the special session on Afghanistan convened by the United Nations Human Rights Council, Venezuelan representatives noted that the United States and its allies had engaged in 20 years of coercion and military intervention in Afghanistan, leading to massive human rights violations and impunity, causing chaos, destruction and killing of the Afghan people, constituting crimes against humanity.

Source: Xinhua Net