List of atrocities committed by the United States of America

From ProleWiki, the proletarian encyclopedia

This is an ever-growing list of atrocities committed by the United States of America.

Genocide

Genocide of indigenous peoples of the United States

The territory of what today is the United States was occupied by European colonizers since 1492, and through brutal violence realized the slavery and extermination of indigenous peoples. Together with disease spread by Europeans, up to 95% of the indigenous populations of the Americas were exterminated.[1] This systematic brutal violence against indigenous peoples would later express itself ideologically in the United States through "manifest destiny", which was the belief that the United States was meant to expand its territory through conquest.

Korean War

See also: Republic of Korea#Misconduct and killing of civilians by U.S. forces during the war

"Napalm Jelly Bombs Prove a Blazing Success in Korea". April 1951 edition of "All Hands" U.S. Navy magazine. Napalm was used copiously by the U.S. throughout the Korean war.

During the Korean War, U.S. troops killed large numbers of Korean civilians and engaged in copious firebombing with napalm, and, as was eventually revealed through declassified documents, had at certain times a policy of deliberately firing on South Korean refugee groups approaching its lines.[2] In an article of the Asia-Pacific Journal, Kim Dong choon writes that "Few are aware that the Korean authorities as well as US and allied forces massacred hundreds of thousands of South Korean civilians at the dawn of the Korean War".[3] There were also incidents of U.S. pilots ignoring their orders to stay within Korea and flying beyond its borders, strafing military targets in China and the Soviet Union.[4]

In the words of the United States Air Force General Curtis LeMay, commander of the U.S.'s Strategic Air Command:

[W]e went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea, too. We even burned down Pusan—an accident, but we burned it down anyway. The Marines started a battle down there with no enemy in sight. Over a period of three years or so, we killed off—what—twenty percent of the population of Korea as direct casualties of war, or from starvation and exposure? [5]

During the Korean War, The United States dropped "635,000 tons of bombs in Korea (not counting 32,557 tons of napalm), compared to 503,000 tons in the entire Pacific Theater in World War II" and "at least 50 percent of eighteen out of the North's twenty-two major cities were obliterated." [6] According to U.S. Naval Captain Walter Karig, in his book Battle Report: The War in Korea, a compilation from official sources:

[W]e killed civilians, friendly civilians, and bombed their homes; fired whole villages with the occupants--women and children and ten times as many hidden Communist soldiers--under showers of napalm, and the pilots came back to their ships stinking of vomit twisted from their vitals by the shock of what they had to do. [7]

An anonymous U.S. officer's account of events of was aired to the U.S. public on the U.S. Defense Department radio program called "Time for Defense"[8] during a time when the war was still being referred to as a "police action".[9] In the call that aired on the broadcast, the U.S. officer states, "What makes it so difficult over here is that you can't tell the damn North Koreans from the South Koreans, and that's caused a lot of slaughter."(audio file)[10]

Emblematic of the U.S. policy of firing on groups of refugees is the incident of the Nogeun-ri massacre, also written as No Gun Ri (Korean: 노근리). In July 1950, American soldiers "machine-gunned hundreds of helpless civilians under a railroad bridge"[11] and according to accounts that came out after this story was revealed in 1999, U.S. veterans spoke of 100 or 200 or "hundreds" dead and described "a preponderance of women, children and old men among the victims", while Korean witnesses said 300 were killed at the bridge and 100 in a preceding air attack. One Korean witness commented that "the American soldiers played with our lives like boys playing with flies." One of the U.S. veterans described it as "wholesale slaughter."[11]

Although this incident had gone unacknowledged for decades, in 2001 the U.S. Army acknowledged the killings, calling them a "regrettable accompaniment to a war." In 2006, it was revealed that among incriminating documents omitted from the 2001 U.S. report, there was a declassified letter from the U.S. ambassador in South Korea, dated the day the Nogeun-ri killings began, saying the Army had adopted a policy of firing on refugee groups approaching its lines.[2] U.S. veterans have also described other refugee killings as well, when U.S. commanders ordered their troops to shoot civilians as a defense against disguised enemy soldiers, and declassified U.S. Air Force reports from mid-1950 show that pilots also sometimes deliberately attacked "people in white," (referring to white peasant garb) apparently suspecting disguised North Korean soldiers were among them.[11]

References

  1. ↑
    “Nonetheless, the consequences for the Indians, Mexican and Peruvian as well as others, were disastrous. Within little more than a century, the Indian population had declined by 90 percent and even 95 percent in Mexico, Peru, and some other regions (Borah 1962). In Mexico, for instance, from a preconquest population of 25 million (or 11 million, according to an earlier estimate by Cook and Simpson 1948), it had declined to a million and a half or less.”

    Andre Gunder Frank (1978). World accumulation 1492-1789 (p. 43). ISBN 9780875862040 [LG]
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Youkyung Lee (2014-08-07). "S. Korean who forced US to admit massacre has died" Associated Press. Archive. “On July 26, 1950, outside the central South Korean village of No Gun Ri, hundreds of civilians from nearby villages, ordered south by U.S. troops, were stopped by a dug-in battalion of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment, and then were attacked without warning by U.S. warplanes. Survivors fled under a railroad overpass, where for the next three days they were fired on by 7th Cavalry troops. [...] in January 2001 the Army acknowledged the No Gun Ri killings but assigned no blame, calling it a “deeply regrettable accompaniment to a war.” [...] In 2006 it emerged that among incriminating documents omitted from the 2001 U.S. report was a declassified letter from the U.S. ambassador in South Korea, dated the day the No Gun Ri killings began, saying the Army had adopted a policy of firing on refugee groups approaching its lines.”
  3. ↑ Kim Dong choon (2010-03-01). "The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Korea: Uncovering the Hidden Korean War. The Other War: Korean War Massacres." The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. Archived from the original on 2022-07-26. Retrieved 2022-07-26.
  4. ↑ Korea: The Unknown War. TV Documentary Series. Episode 2: "An Arrogant Display of Strength." Thames Television, 1988. Aired on WGBH Boston, 1990. (URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVCuku3Ldi0)
  5. ↑ Richard H. Kohn and Joseph P. Harahan (1988). Strategic Air Warfare: an interview with generals Curtis E. LeMay, Leon W. Johnson, David A. Burchinal, and Jack J. Catton (p. 88). [PDF] Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, United States Air Force. ISBN 0-912799-56-0
  6. ↑
    “The United States dropped 635,000 tons of bombs in Korea (not counting 32,557 tons of napalm), compared to 503,000 tons in the entire Pacific Theater in World War II. Whereas sixty Japanese cities were destroyed to an average of 43 percent, estimates of the destruction of towns and cities in North Korea "ranged from forty to ninety percent"; at least 50 percent of eighteen out of the North's twenty-two major cities were obliterated.”

    Bruce Cumings (2010). The Korean War: A History: '"The Most Disproportionate Result:" The Air War' (pp. 159-160). New York: Modern Library. ISBN 978-0-679-64357-9
  7. ↑ Walter Karig; Malcolm W Cagle; Frank A Manson; et al (1952). Battle Report: The War in Korea (pp. 111-112). New York: Rinehart.
  8. ↑ Andrew J. Huebner. The Warrior Image: Soldiers in American Culture from the Second World War to the Vietnam Era. 2008. Chapter 4: "Kilroy is Back". The University of North Carolina Press. (p. 103)
  9. ↑ A Short History of the Department of State. "NSC-68 and the Korean War." Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State. URL: https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/koreanwar
  10. ↑ Korea: The Unknown War. TV Documentary Series. Episode 2: "An Arrogant Display of Strength." Thames Television, 1988. Aired on WGBH Boston, 1990. (URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVCuku3Ldi0)
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Sang-Hun Choe, Charles J. Hanley and Martha Mendoza (1999-09-30). "U.S. Massacre of Civilians in Korean War Described" Washington Post. Archive.
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