Excepted from punishment for war crimes?
With American power in the world shifting into
a decidedly lower gear economically, it might also be time for the United
States to reconsider the rules of the road it attempts to impose on others. The
time should be ending when the US could simply ignore world opinion, supposedly
built on what US politicians call “American exceptionalism” and go its own way
when it came to international behavior.
Supposedly the term can be traced to the
writer Alexis de Tocqueville, who referred to the country as exceptional
because of its unique ideology based on liberty, individualism, laissez-faire
capitalism and egalitarianism. That supposedly anoints the United States with a
special destiny to lead the world towards liberty and democracy. The phrase has
been used in particular by presidential candidate Newt Gingrich in excoriating
President Barack Obama, supposedly because Obama doesn’t believe in it, or
doesn’t believe in it fervently enough.
But there may be another definition of
American exceptionalism that is far darker than anything de Tocqueville or
Gingrich for that matter ever thought of, and that is an apparent belief in the
right of exception from punishment when its citizens and soldiers break the
laws of other countries and of human nature itself. It is a message that does
not seem to have reached the ears of much of the United States, and
particularly a military tribunal in the marathon trial of US Marine Staff Sgt.
Frank Wuterich, who was busted last week to Private E1, more than six years
after he ordered the men under his command to “shoot first and think later”
after his unit was hit by a roadside bombing in the western Iraqi city of
Haditha. The Marines killed 24 unarmed men, women and children before the day
was out.
Subsequent evidence, much of it discovered by
reporters for Time Magazine and the New York Times, thoroughly discredited the
initial claim that 15 of the civilians had been killed by the IUD that hit the
convoy and that eight “insurgents” were killed when the Marines returned fire
against the attackers. Officers well above Wuterich’s rank were found to have
participated in a cover-up of the incident.
In fact, an investigation by the US military
alleged it had found evidence that the Marines had deliberately shot civilians
including unarmed elderly men, women and children. Ultimately, eight Marines
were charged in 2006. Seven of the eight were exonerated by the military or
charges were dropped, leaving only Wuterich, who pleaded guilty to dereliction
of duty and received a suspended sentence of a mere 90 days in jail after
expressing remorse for the Iraqi deaths.
Three officers have been officially
reprimanded for failing to properly initially report and investigate the
killings. In 2011, the New York Times reported it had found secret transcripts
of military interviews from the investigation into the killings in which
Marines described killing civilians on a regular basis. One sergeant testified
that he would order his men to shoot children in vehicles that failed to stop
at military checkpoints.
Nor are Wuterich and his squad alone. Men,
women and children were routinely murdered by US servicemen in both Iraq and
Afghanistan, supposedly in the heat of battle but far too often in cold blood.
The most recent ugly incident occurred in Afghanistan when a YouTube video was
made public showing US servicemen urinating on dead Afghan insurgents. Texas
Gov. Rick Perry, then a candidate for the presidency of the United States and
fervent believer in American exceptionalism, said the Marines who did it were
just kids and didn’t need to be punished.
These incidents in Iraq stem from a war that
should never have been started, sold on a series of lies on the part of the
administration of President George W. Bush and his hawkish henchmen, Vice
President Dick Cheney (“I had other priorities,” he said, when asked why he
hadn’t served during the Vietnam War), Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
(“stuff happens,” he said when Iraq turned into chaos) and a flock of other
neocons who sullied the country’s honor and caused the deaths of perhaps
100,000 Iraqis and more than 4,000 American servicemen. An estimated 2.25
million Iraqis were displaced in the country and another 2.1 to 2.25 million
were driven out of the country to Syria and Jordan.
Is this American exceptionalism? The same week
Sgt. Wuterich was being slapped on the wrist by the military tribunal for his
orders, the Chinese government came under international criticism and
particularly harsh condemnation in the United States for their actions in
suppressing Tibetan protesters, most recently on Jan. 24, when the London-based
advocacy group Free Tibet said Chinese forces had killed at least one person
and wounded at least 34 in a monastery town west of Chengdu. That crackdown
generated 782 news stories, most of them critical, according to an account by
Google.
This is not to defend the Chinese for their
brutal crackdown on both Tibetan and Uighur minorities. But why do Americans,
and especially right-wing politicians, think American servicemen should be
allowed to get away with atrocities? The infamous Lt William Calley, who was
held responsible for triggering the massacre in the Vietnamese village of My
Lai in March of 1968, was convicted of murdering at least 22 civilians himself.
In all, as many as 500 women, children, infants and the elderly were killed in
what may have been the worst massacre perpetrated by American soldiers
anywhere. Calley’s life sentence triggered a massive outcry on the part of the
American people, who besieged the White House with telegrams running 100 to 1
against the decision. Eventually President Richard Nixon reduced Calley’s
sentence to house arrest, in which he served three and a half years. Nixon
eventually granted him a limited Presidential pardon.
Status-of-forces agreements, between host
countries and foreign nations stationing troops on their territory, have been
lightning rods for criticism particularly in South Korea and Japan. These
agreements all too often allow for US military personnel to be tried within the
US military or legal system instead of the judicial system of the host country.
As with Sgt. Wuterich, the American legal system appears to view offenses
against the people of the country in which they serve with a good deal less
outrage than the host countries do.
The sum and substance of these episodes is to
generate a view on the part of much of the world that Americans believe that
their own brand of exceptionalism allows them to kill people of the lesser
races – particularly Muslims lately – with impunity. Well, you have to break a
few eggs to make an omelet. Leaders of the free world can’t always stop to
observe the niceties. But the Chinese damned well better had.
John Berthelsen
Asia Sentinel
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