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Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2002 19:23:54 -0800
From: radtimes <resist@best.com>
Subject: United States War Crimes
United States War Crimes
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/FOE201A.html>
by Lenora Foerstel and Brian Willson
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG)
26 January 2002
The issue of War Crimes emerged after World War I at the Versailles
Conference, but it was not until the end of World War II that a more
comprehensive definition of what constitutes war crimes was developed.
First among new international conventions addressing war crimes was the
1950 Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal. Its fundamental premise was that
the conduct of war in violation of international treaties was a crime
against peace. Ill treatment of prisoners of war, killing hostages, plunder
of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or
villages was a war crime. Crimes against humanity include murder,
extermination, deportation, and prosecution based on political, racial or
religious grounds.
The 1949 Geneva Convention gave recognition to the development of new
technologies which exposed civilian life to greater threats of destruction.
A 1977 addendum further emphasized the right of civilians to be protected
against military operations. This included the protection of civilians
against starvation as a method of warfare. Article II of the Geneva
Convention addressed the issue of genocide, defined as killing or causing
serious bodily harm to individuals based on their nationality, ethnic,
racial or religious group and with the intent to destroy that group.
Since the Geneva Convention, a number of other significant international
treaties addressing war and human rights have been drafted, but the United
States has rejected almost all of them. Among the treaties that the United
States has refused to sign are the International Convention on Civil and
Political Rights (1966); the Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights (1966); the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial
Discrimination (1966), and the American Convention on Human Rights (1965).
The United States has been particularly reluctant to sign treaties
addressing the "laws of war". It has refused to sign The Declaration on the
Prohibition of the Use of Thermo-Nuclear Weapons (1961); The Resolution on
the Non-Use of Force in International Relations and Permanent Ban on the
Use of Nuclear Weapons (1972); The Resolution on the Definition of
Aggression (1974); Protocols Additional to the 1949 Geneva Convention
(1977); and the Declaration on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons(1989).1
Equally disturbing was the U.S. refusal to sign the Convention on Rights of
the Child, introduced into the United Nations General assembly on November
20, 1989 and subsequently ratified by 191 countries.
The first use of atomic weapons against human beings occurred on August 6-9
1945, when the United States incinerated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki during World War II, killing an estimated 110,000 Japanese
citizens and injuring another 130,000. By 1950 another 230,000 died from
injuries and radiation. Earlier in 1945 two fire bombing raids on Tokyo
killed 140,000 citizens and injured a million more.
Since World War II the US has bombed twenty-three nations. Author William
Blum notes:
"It is sobering to reflect that in our era of instant world wide
communications, the United States has, on many occasions, been able to
mount a large or small scale military operation or undertake other equally
blatant forms of intervention without the American public being aware of it
until years later if ever."2
The growing primacy or aerial bombardment in the conduct of war has
inevitably defined non-combatants as the preferred target of war. Indeed,
the combination of American air power and occupation ground forces has
resulted in massive civilian casualties around the world.
Korea:1943-1953
On August 15,1945, the Korean people, devastated and impoverished by years
of brutality from Japanese occupation forces, openly celebrated their
liberation and immediately formed the Committee for the Preparation of
Korean Independence (CKPI). By August 28, 1945, all Korean provinces on the
entire Peninsula had established local people's democratic committees, and
on September 6, delegates from throughout Korea, north and south, created
the Korean People's Republic (KPR). On September 7, the day after the
creation of the KPR, General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the victorious
Allied powers in the Pacific, formally issued a proclamation addressed "To
the People of Korea." The proclamation announced that forces under his
command "will today occupy the Territory of Korea south of 38 degrees north
latitude."
The first advance party of U.S. units, the 17th Regiment of the 7th
Infantry Division, actually began arriving at Inchon on September 5th, two
days before MacArthur's occupation declaration. The bulk of the US
occupation forces began unloading from twenty-one Navy ships (including
five destroyers) on September 8 through the port at Inchon under the
command of Lieutenant General John Reed Hodge. Hundreds of black-coated
armed Japanese police on horseback, still under the direction of Japanese
Governor-General Abe Noabuyki, kept angry Korean crowds away from the
disembarking US soldiers.
On the morning of September 9, General Hodge announced that
Governor-General Abe would continue to function with all his Japanese and
Korean personnel. Within a few weeks there were 25,000 American troops and
members of "civil service teams" in the country. Ultimately the number of
US troops in southern Korea reached 72,000. Though the Koreans were
officially characterized as a "semi-friendly, liberated" people, General
Hodge regrettably instructed his own officers that Korea "was an enemy of
the United States...subject to the provisions and the terms of the surrender."
Tragically and ironically, the Korean people, citizens of the
victim-nation, had become enemies, while the defeated Japanese, who had
been the illegal aggressors, served as occupiers in alliance with the
United States. Indeed, Korea was burdened with the very occupation
originally intended for Japan, which became the recipient of massive U.S.
aid and reconstruction in the post-war period. Japan remains, to this day,
America's forward military base affording protection and intelligence for
its "interests" in the Asia-Pacific region.
Seventy-three-year-old Syngman Rhee was elected President of South Korea on
May 10,1948 in an election boycotted by virtually all Koreans except the
elite KDP and Rhee's own right -wing political groups. This event,
historically sealing a politically divided Korea, provoked what became
known at the Cheju massacre, in which as many as 70,000 residents of the
southern island of Cheju were ruthlessly murdered during a single year by
Rhee's paramilitary forces under the oversight of U.S. officers. Rhee took
office as President on August 15 and the Republic of Korea (ROK) was
formally declared. In response, three-and -a-half weeks later (on September
9, 1948), the people of northern Korea grudgingly created their own
separate government, the Democratic People's's Republic of Korea (DPRK),
with Kim II Sung as its premier.
Korea was now clearly and tragically split in two. Kim Il Sung had survived
as a guerrilla fighter against the Japanese occupation in both China and
Korea since 1932 when he was twenty years old. He was thirty-three when he
returned to Pyongyang in October 1945 to begin the hoped-for era of
rebuilding a united Korea free of foreign domination, and three years
later, on September 9, 1948, he became North Korea's first premier. The
Rhee/U.S. forces escalated their ruthless campaign of cleansing the south
of dissidents, identifying as a suspected "communist" anyone who opposed
the Rhee regime, publicly or privately. In reality, most participants or
believers in the popular movement in the south were socialists unaffiliated
with outside "communist" organizations.
As the repression intensified, however, alliances with popular movements in
the north, including communist organizations, increased. The Cheju
insurgency was crushed by August 1949, but on the mainland, guerrilla
warfare continued in most provinces until 1959-51. In the eyes of the
commander of US military forces in Korea, General Hodge, and new
"President" Syngman Rhee, virtually any Korean who had not publicly
professed his allegiance to Rhee was considered a "communist" traitor. As a
result, massive numbers of farmers, villagers and urban residents were
systematically rounded up in rural areas, villages and cities throughout
South Korea. Captives were regularly tortured to extract names of others.
Thousands were imprisoned and even more thousands forced to dig mass graves
before being ordered into them and shot by fellow Koreans, often under the
watch of U.S. troops.
The introduction of U.S./UN military forces on June 26,1950 occurred with
no American understanding (except by a few astute observers such as
journalist I.F Stone) that in fact they were entering an ongoing
revolutionary civil war waged by indigenous Koreans seeking genuine
independence after five years of U.S. interference. The American occupation
simply fueled Korean passions even more while creating further divisions
among them.
In the Autumn of 1950, when U.S. forces were in retreat in North Korea,
General Douglas MacArthur offered all air forces under his command to
destroy "every means of communication, every installation, factory, city
and village " from the Yalu River, forming the border between North Korea
and China, south to the battle line. The massive saturation bombing
conducted throughout the war, including napalm, incendiary, and
fragmentation bombs, left scorched cities and villages in total ruins. As
in World War II, the U.S. strategic bombing campaign brought mass
destruction and shockingly heavy civilian casualties. Such tactics were in
clear violation of the Nuremburg Charter, which had, ironically, been
created after World War II, largely due to pressure from the U.S. The
Nuremburg Tribunal defined "the wanton destruction of cities, towns or
villages" to be a war crime and declared that Ainhumane acts against any
civilian population" were a crime against humanity.
From that fateful day on September 8, 1945 to the present, a period of 56
years, U.S. military forces (currently numbering 37,000 positioned at 100
installations) have maintained a continuous occupation in the south
supporting de facto U.S. rule over the political, economic and military
life of a needlessly divided Korea. This often brutal occupation and the
persistent U.S. support for the repressive policies of dictatorial puppets
continues to be the single greatest obstacle to peace in Korea, preventing
the inevitable reunification of the Korean Peninsula.
Until 1994, all of the hundreds of thousands of South Korean defense forces
operated under direct U.S. command. Even today, although integrated into
the Combined Forces Command (CFC), these forces automatically revert to
direct US control when the US military commander in Korea determines that
there is a state of war.
Indonesia: (1958-1965)
After 350 years of colonialism, President Sukarno, with the cooperation of
the communist party (PKI), sought to make Indonesia an independent
socialist democracy. Sukarno's working relationship with the PKI would not
be tolerated by Washington. Under the direction of the CIA, rebels in the
Indonesian army were armed, trained and equipped in preparation for a
military coup. The Indonesian army's campaign against the PKI in 1965-66
brought the dictator Suharto to power. Under his rule, teachers, students,
civil servants and peasants were systematically executed. In Central and
East Java alone, 60,000 were killed. In Bali, some 50,000 people were
executed, and thousands more died in remote Indonesian villages. In some
areas citizens were confined in Navy vessels which were then sunk to the
bottom of the sea.
The most extensive killing were committed against suspected PKI supporters
identified by U.S. intelligence. Historian Gabriel Kollo states that the
slaughter in Indonesia "ranks as a crime of the same type as the Nazi
perpetrated."3
Recent revealed documents at George Washington University's National
Security Archive confirmed how effectively the Indonesian army used the
U.S.-prepared hit list against the Indonesian communist party in 1965-66.
Among the documents cited is a 1966 airgram to Washington sent by U.S.
ambassador Marshall Green stating that a list from the Embassy identifying
top communist leaders was being used by the Indonesian security authorities
in their extermination campaign.
For example, the US Embassy reported on November 13,1965 that information
sent to Suharto resulted in the killing of between 50 to 100 PKI members
every night in East and Central Java. The Embassy admitted in an April 15,
1966 airgram to Washington: "We frankly do not know whether the real figure
for the PKI killed is closer to 100,000 or 1,000,000."4
The Indonesian military became the instrument of another counter
revolutionary offensive in 1975 when it invaded East Timor. On September
7,1975, just 24 hours after the highest officials of the United States
government, President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger,
had been in Djakarta on a state visit, 30,000 Indonesian troops landed in
East Timor. Napalm, phosphorus bombs and chemical defoliants were delivered
from US supplied planes and helicopters, resulting in the killing of tens
of thousands of people, and the conflict continues to simmer.5
Vietnam: (1954-1965)
President Harry Truman began granting material aid to the French colonial
forces in Indochina as early as 1946, and the aid was dramatically
increased after the successful Chinese revolution in 1949 and the start of
the "hot" Korean War in June 1950. By the time of the French army was
defeated in 1954, the U.S. was paying nearly 80 percent of the French
military expenditures and providing extensive air and logistical support.
The unilateral U.S. military intervention in Vietnam began in 1954,
immediately following the humiliating French defeat in early May 1954. The
July 21, 1954 Geneva Agreement concluded the French war against the
Vietnamese and promised them a unifying election, mandated for July 1956.
The U.S. government knew that fair elections would, in effect, ensure a
genuine democratic victory for revered Communist leader Ho Chi Minh. This
was unacceptable. In June 1954, prior to the signing of the historic Geneva
agreement, the U.S. began CIA-directed internal sabotage operations
against the Vietnamese while setting up the puppet Ngo Dinh Diem (brought
to Vietnam from the U.S.) as "our" political leader. No electrons were ever
held. This set the stage for yet another war for Vietnamese independence,
this time against U.S. forces and their South Vietnamese puppets.
The significance of U.S. intentions to interfere with independence
movements in Asia cannot be underestimated. U.S. National Security Council
documents from 1956 declared that our national security would be endangered
by communist domination of mainland Southeast Asia. Secret military plans
stated that nuclear weapons will be used in general war and even in
military operations short of general war. By March 1961, the Pentagon brass
had recommended sending 60,000 soldiers to western Laos supported by air
power that would include, if necessary, nuclear weapons, to assure that the
Royal Laotian government would prevail against the popular insurgency being
waged against it. For the next ten years the U.S. unleashed forces that
caused (and continue to cause ) an incomprehensible amount of devastation
in Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia.
Eight million tons of bombs (four times the amount used by the U.S. in all
of World War II) were dropped indiscriminately, leaving destruction which,
if laid crater to crater, would cover an area the size of the state of
Maine. Eighty percent of the bombs fell on rural areas rather than military
targets, leaving ten million craters. Nearly 400,000 tons of napalm was
dropped on Vietnamese villages. There was no pretense of distinguishing
between combatants and civilians.
The callous designation of as much as three-fourths of South Vietnam as a
"free fire zone" justified the murder of virtually anyone in thousands of
villages in those vast areas. At the time, Defense Secretary Robert S.
McNamara cited a 1967 memo in which he estimated the number of Vietnamese
civilians killed or seriously injured by U.S. forces at 1000 per week. The
CIA=s Phoenix program alone killed as many as 70,000 civilians who were
suspected of being part of the political leadership of the Viet Cong in the
south.
There was a historically unprecedented level of chemical warfare in
Vietnam, including the indiscriminate spraying of nearly 20 million gallons
of defoliants on one-seventh the area of South Vietnam. The vestigial
effects of chemical warfare poisoning continue to plague the health of
adult Vietnamese (and ex-GIs) while causing escalated birth defects.
Samples of soil, water, food and body fat of Vietnamese citizens continue
to reveal dangerously elevated levels of dioxin to the present day.
Today, Vietnamese officials estimate the continued dangerous presence of
3.5 million landmines left from the war as well as 300,000 tons of
unexploded ordnance. Tragically, these hidden remnants of war continue to
explode when farmers plow their fields or children play in their
neighborhoods, killing thousands each year. The Vietnamese report 40,000
people killed since 1975 by landmines and buried bombs. That means that
each day, 4 or 5 Vietnamese civilians are killed day by U.S. ordnance.
The U.S. and its allies killed as many as 5 million Southeast Asian
citizens during the active war years. The numbers of dead in Laos and
Cambodia remain uncounted, but as of 1971, a congressional Research Service
report prepared for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee indicated
that over one million Laotians had been killed, wounded, or turned into
refugees, with the figure for Cambodia estimated two million. More than a
half million "secret" US bombing missions over Laos, begun in late 1964,
devastated populations of ancient cultures there. Estimates indicate that
around 230,000 tons of bombs were dropped over northern Laos in 1968 and
1969 alone. Increasing numbers of U.S. military personnel were added to the
ground forces in Laos during 1961, preparing for major military operations
to come.
The "secret" bombing of Cambodia began in March 1969, and an outright land
invasion of Cambodia was conducted from late April 1970 through the end of
June, causing thousand of casualties. These raging U.S. covert wars did not
cease until August 14, 1973, by which time countless additional casualties
were inflicted. When the bombing in Cambodia finally ceased, the U.S. Air
Force had officially recorded the use of nearly 260,000 tons of bombs
there. The total tonnage of bombs dropped in Laos over eight and a half
years exceeded two million.
The consensus today is that more than 3 million Vietnamese were killed,
with 300,000 additional missing in action and presumed dead. In the process
the U.S. lost nearly 59,000 of her own men and women, with about 2,000
additional missing, while combatants from four U.S. allies lost over 6,000
more. The South Vietnamese military accounted for nearly 225,000 dead. All
of this carnage was justified in order to destroy the basic rights and
capacity of the Vietnamese to construct their own independent, sovereign
society. None of the victims deserved to die in such a war. Vietnamese,
Laotians, Cambodians, and U.S. military "grunts" were all victims.
All of these corpses were created to perpetuate an incredible lie and to
serve a "cause" that had been concocted by white male plutocrats in
Washington, many of whom possessed Ph.Ds from prestigious universities.
Like most of their predecessors throughout U.S. history, these politicians
and their appointees, along with their profit-hungry arms makers/dealers,
desired to assure the destruction of people's democratic movements in East
Asia that threatened the virtually unlimited American hegemony over
markets, resources, and the profits to be derived therefrom. But never did
a small country suffer so much from an imperial nation as the Vietnamese
did from the United States.
Iraq:1991-2001
The royal family in Kuwait was used by the United States government to
justify a massive assault on Iraq in order to establish permanent dominion
over the Gulf. The Gulf War was begun not to protect Kuwait but to
establish US power over the region and its oil.6 In 1990, General
Schwarzkopf had testified before the Senate that it was essential for the
U.S. to increase its military presence in the Gulf in order to protect
Saudi Arabia. However, satellite photos showed no Iraqi troops near the
Saudi Border.
After Iraq announced that it was going to annex Kuwait, the United States
began its air attacks on Iraq. For 42 days the US sent in 2000 sorties a
day. By February 13,1991, 1,500 Iraqi citizens had been killed. President
George Bush ordered the destruction of facilities essential to civilian
life and economic production.
The Red Crescent Society of Jordan announced at the end of the war that
113,00 civilians were dead and sixty percent were women and children. Some
of the worst devastation was wrought by the US military's use of Depleted
Uranium (DU) on battlefields and in towns and cities across Iraq. It left a
legacy of radioactive debris which has resulted in serious environmental
contamination and health problems, particularly among Iraqi children. Child
mortality rates have risen by 380 percent. Between August 1990 and August
1997 some 1.2 million children in Iraq died due to environmental
devastation and the harsh economic sanctions imposed in 1991. Not satisfied
with such havoc, the U.S. and Britain have recently sought to tighten the
blockade against Iraq by imposing so-called :"smart sanctions." This would
continue the aggression against northern and southern Iraq and lead to the
deaths of more women, children and elderly.
Yugoslavia: (1991-1999)
The United States and Germany prepared plans for the dismemberment of
Yugoslavia in the late 1980's and have since reconfigured Yugoslavia into
mini-states, with only Serbia and Montenegro remaining in the Yugoslav
federation, a situation which has opened the way to the re-colonization of
the Balkans.
In 1991, the European Community, with US involvement, organized a
conference on Yugoslavia that called for the separation, sovereignty and
independence of the republics of Yugoslavia. President George Bush's
administration passed the 1991 Foreign Operations Act, which provided aid
to the individual republics, but cut off all aid to Belgrade, the capitol
of Yugoslavia. This stimulated the eventual secession of Slovenia, Croatia,
Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. With secession came civil wars. Ethnic
Serbs living in Croatia had been loyal to that Yugoslav republic, but great
power meddling now forced them to defend
their region in Croatia known as Krajina. The U.S. covertly provided arms,
training, advisors, satellite intelligence and air power to the Croats in
"Operation Storm" directed against the helpless Serbs in Krajina. When the
bombing began, the Krajina Serbs fled to Belgrade and Bosnia. Approximately
250,000 Serbs were thus ethnically cleansed from the Krajina and all
evidence of Serb habitation was systematically destroyed. Civilians were
executed, livestock slaughtered and houses were burnt to the ground.7
To avoid a similar human catastrophe in Bosnia/Herzegovina, Bosnian Serbs
consolidated Serb-owned lands, an area constituting about two thirds of
Bosnia/Herzegovina. Germany and the U.S. quickly aided the military
alliance of Bosnian Muslims and Croats against the Serbs, and , supported
by American bombing and regular army forces from Croatia, the Muslim/Croat
alliance soon swept the Serbs from the majority of Bosnia/Herzegovina. As
in the Krajina, the conflict forced ethnic Serbs off of their lands,
creating one hundred thousand Serb refugees.
Under the U.S.-brokered Dayton Agreement, Bosnia/Herzegovina was divided
into two parts, a Muslim-Croat Federation and Republica Srpska. The central
government today is controlled by US/NATO forces, the IMF, and
international NGOs. With no history of independence, Bosnia/Herzegovina's
economic assets have been taken over by foreign investors who now own their
energy facilities, water, telecommunication, media and transportation.
The effects of the Bosnian civil war on the city of Srebrenica were
reported extensively in the western media. Reports claimed that 7,414
Bosnian Muslims were executed by the Serbian army. After years of
searching, digging and extensive investigations, only seventy bodies were
found, but the original charges of genocide are still circulated in the media.
Kosovo, an autonomous region of Serbia, is the site of the most recent, and
perhaps most disastrous, U.S. military intervention. Kosovo's problems
began after World War II when immigrants from Albania flooded into the
region, sparking political confrontation between Albanians and Serbs.
escalated into military conflict. The "Kosovo Liberation Army, an Albanian
terrorist/separatist group, escalated tensions by directing their violence
against not only Serbian civilians, but Albanian who refused to join their
cause. As the war intensified, a United Nations team of observers in the
Kosovo village of Racak found 44 Albanian bodies.
The Serbs identified them as KLA fighters killed during one of the now
frequent gun battles with police. William Walker, a US diplomat, who had
earlier acted as an apologist for the death squads in El Salvador, led a
group of journalists to view the bodies, and their subsequent claims of
Serb war crimes made world-wide headlines.8
President Clinton used this event to bring delegates form the contending
forces in Bosnia to Rambouillet, and the proposed Ramboullet Accords served
as a prelude to U.S. intervention in Kosovo. The accords, if accepted,
would have allowed NATO forces complete access to all of Yugoslavia, a
virtual foreign occupation, with all associated costs to be borne by the
Yugoslav government. As the Ramboullet negotiations began to stall, U.S.
Secretary of State Madeline Albright ordered the bombing of Yugoslavia to
begin.
On March 16, 1999, twenty three thousand missiles and bombs were dropped on
a country of eleven million people. Thirty five thousand cluster bombs,
graphite bombs and 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium weapons were used, the
latter scattering radioactive waste throughout the Yugoslav countryside.
The 78 day bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia targeted schools,
hospitals, farms, bridges, roads communication centers, and waterways.
Because a large number of chemical plants and oil refineries bombed by
US/NATO planes were located on the banks of the Danube river, the bombing
of these industrial sites polluted the Danube, a source of drinking water
for ten million people in the region. The environmental damage done to the
soil, water and air of Yugoslavia soon spread to Hungary, Bulgaria,
Romania, Macedonia, Greece and Italy. Countries like Russia, Ukraine and
Georgia, which border on the Black Sea, into which the Danube empties, also
continue to face health hazards.
Afghanistan:(1979-2001)
"The Bush-Afghan war calls up memories of the Vietnam War in both actions
and rhetoric, the massive use of superior arms heavily impacting civilians,
deliberate food deprivation, wholesale terror allegedly combating
'terrorism', but always sincere regrets for collateral damages."9
Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in
New York City, the U.S. has waged a merciless war against the Afghan
people, using chemical, biological and depleted uranium (DU) weapons. The
use of DU continues to spread radiation throughout large parts of
Afghanistan and will affect tens of thousands of people in generations to
come, causing lung cancer, leukemia and birth defects. DU was also used
against Iraq and Yugoslavia, where the frequency of cancer has tripled.
The bombing of the Afghan population has forced thousands of civilians to
flee to Pakistan and Iran, and seven to eight million civilians are facing
starvation. UNICEF spokesman Eric Larlcke has stated, "As many as 100,000
more children will die in Afghanistan this winter unless food reaches them
in sufficient quantities in the next six weeks."10
The racist underpinnings of the American world-view allows the American
press and its political leaders to be silent on the mass killing of Third
World children. Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, has stated
that the U.S. is not looking to negotiate peace with the Taliban and
Al-Quida in Afghanistan. There is a clear indifference to the daily carnage
in Afghanistan, where sixty percent of the casualties are women and
children. Human rights organizations have expressed concern over reports
of large-scale executions of would-be Taliban defectors in the city of
Kunduz, and the United Nations has echoed human rights groups in demanding
an investigation into the slaughter of prisoners at the Qala-i-Jhangi fort
near Mazar-i-Sharif. With more than 500 people dead and the fort littered
with bodies, allegations of war crimes against the U.S. and UK for ignoring
the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war have led the
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, to call
for an urgent inquiry.
"Once we recognize the pattern of activity designed to simultaneously
consolidate control over Middle Eastern and South Asian oil and contain and
colonize the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan is exactly where they need to
go to pursue that agenda."11
In his book The Grand Chessboard, Zbigniew Brezezinski writes that the
Eurasian Balkans are a potential economic prize which hold an enormous
concentration of natural gas and oil and important minerals as well as
gold. Brezezinski declares that the Central Asian region and the Caspian
Sea basin are "known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf
those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea."12 Afghanistan will
serve as a base of operations to begin the control over the South Asian
Republic in order to build a pipeline through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and
Pakistan to deliver petroleum to the Asian market. This pipeline will
serve as a bonanza of wealth for the US oil companies.
Conclusion:
An examination of the American conduct of its wars since World War II shows
the US to be in violation of the Nuremberg Principles, the 1949 Geneva
Convention relating to protection of civilian prisoners of war, the wounded
and sick, and the amended Nuremberg Principles as formulated by the
International Law Commission in 1950 proscribing war crimes and crimes
against humanity. The massive murder and destruction of civilian
infrastructure through the use of biological, chemical and depleted uranium
weapons violates not only international laws but the moral and humanitarian
standards expected in modern civilization.
-----------------------
Notes
1. Ward Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial
in the Americas, 1942 to the Present. San Francisco: City Lights Books,
1977, p. 371.
2. William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Intervention Since
World War II, Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995, p. 17.
3. Gabriel Kollo, AWar Crimes and the Nature of the Vietnam War,
Bertrand Russell Foundation,
http:www.homeusers.prestel.co.uk/littleton/br7006gk.htm
4. George Washington University's National Security Archive, July 27,
2001, www.Narchives.org
5. Deirdre Griswold, Indonesia: the Second Greatest Crime of the
Century, 2d edition.
New York: World View Publishers, 1979, p. vii.
6. Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf. New
York:
Thunder's Mouth Press, 1992, p. 3.
7. Scott Taylor, INAT: Images of Serbia and the Kosovo Conflict.
OttAwa, Canada:
Espirit de Corps Books, 2000, p. 15.
8. Michael Parenti, To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia. New
York: Verso, 2000, p. 106.
9. Edward Herman, A Genocide as Collateral Damage, but with Sincere
Regrets, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG) at
http://globalresearch.ca , 2001
10. 100,000 Afghan Children Could Die This Winter, The Times of India,
October 16, 2001.
11. Stan Goff, A September 11th Analysis, October 27, 2001,
www.maisonneuvepress.com
12. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its
Geostrategic Imperative, New York: Harper
----------
Lenora Foerstel is author of War, Lies & Videotape: How media monopoly
stifles truth.
<http://www.leftbooks.com/cgi-local/SoftCart.100.exe/online-store/scstore/p-bmed20001659.html?E+scstore>
Brian Willson is a Vietnam war veteran, peace activist and author. Brian
Willson has
carefully documented the balance sheet of US government war crimes in
Vietnam and
Korea. <http://brianwillson.com/>
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