US Εxceptionalism in War Crimes and human rights abuses

There was a "documentary" about this incident back in the 90´s. A lot of young pilots smirking and laughing about it and remembering how they bagged the guys in the AWACS planes to give them a spot in the line of waiting planes so that they could drop bombs on the iraqi soldiers.

A mistake happens once or twice. If the same shit happens 1000x then it´s deliberate.

GarryB wrote:

The US attacking columns of retreating Iraqi soldiers was also a war crime even if I hear sophistry about how they were
not under any ceasefire.

Modern military training is about making new recruits shoot like psychopaths... to kill... and police now get that same training in some places too...

Sadly the development and advancement in training people to kill has not been matched with development and progress in helping them deal with what they have done afterwards... leading to problems with soldiers after wars have ended.

Most WWII veterans just didn't talk about it, because it wasn't a hollywood movie where we were the heros and they were the bad guys and the good guys won without a scratch and all the bad guys clutched their chests when hit and fell to the ground dead.

There was screaming and body parts... most people don't just quietly die at the first hit and most hits are never to the heart... and of course the guilt... they came home and so many of their friends... their best buddies didn't... and it wasn't that they were bad soldiers... sometimes it was just luck... you took cover in the wrong foxhole, or a stray bullet got you, and of course you are all scared to death most of the time.

Modern media plays a large part in this mindset to garner new recruits and prime them for a certain mindset.
Call of Duty is an prime example of that.
Where commiting attrocities are normalised ,because "we" did it.
Or in other cases just twist historical facts so they suit their narrative.
White helmets are not radical islamists that decapitate their enemy's. Russians are all evil, Highway of Death was instead done by Russia...etc.

Kids indeed sign up with this twisted world-view at the recruitment centers.
The more experienced guys like myself at the time expressed our discontent of enlisting these kind of recruits.
next to the government program of enlisting the "unemployed and those that are uneducated".
That it would severely undermine our level of proffesionalism in the millitary.

The Government does not care,...they want body's to fill those positions. And prefferably, by soldiers that do a lot less backtalking.
So you end up with yes-men, amateurs, and psychopaths.

In contrary to what the government believes, this seriously undermines the effectiveness of your army.
You can not have an millitary that is blind to the reality on the battlefield, has no self-restraint and experience an existential crisis as soon things go horribly wrong for them. Not have the mental resillience and intelligence to deal with on-the-spot changing battlefield conditions, etcetera.

for these kinds of people, its all fun when the enemy can not really do much to hurt you.
Self-reflection with these kinds of people barely excists nowadays.
they shrivel up to pathethic excuses for the Y-chromosome in an corner when things go bad.

I had one of these assholes in my unit once,

during this meeting about the going-ons in our platoon we could vent our personal frustrations about work.
I bitch about sub-standard weaponry and equipment at the time.
And there is this Soy-boy,Call of duty idiot that managed to go along on one of the very last tours of deployment to Afghanistan.

Guy was an driver,,,of an armoured-up semi truck. And he felth the luitenant and the "hard-core" of us where not respectfull to his "PTSD".
In Tears, he told this jerk-off story about how he experienced an IED strike. And how nobody of us even acknowledged that.

Well, we asked around.
turned out Rambo here was in this massive armoured semi truck in this convoy. He was present...but the IED occured like 7 vehicles in front of him.
If he saw a puff of smoke....we would be impressed.

What we should not have done...is venting our toughts about him in front of the luitenant and the "spiritual councillor".
We openly called him only real men get recognition, How he was just an attention-seeking ***** and an disgrace for the uniform.
You get put by your commander to this class to talk about "sensitivity".

not that it worked tough....
"what if he hangs himself because of your comments?".
we: ....."i will lend him the rope and the army would be better off?".
"he can even use the winch of the trucks,...he can hang himself by remote".
"idiot is too much of an coward to go trough with it".

But sure..we all got signed up as "toxic" in our personell file.
We all had combat decorations and commendations, but the army does not care.

Wimps and psychopaths are the future .
or you know?....like the U.S recruitment video. Emma and her two moms are the current focus group.

About the actual war part, it really is like that. People get injured, maimed for life, or killed.
i seen young guys go blind because they tought the ballistic glasses where not neccesary.  Take shrapnell that partially paralysed them, guys burned, pieces of flesh blown off from them by heavy weapon impacts or IED's.
guys getting their legs shattered because they where gunner's in an vehicle hit by an IED. and are barely in their 20's and lose their legs and limbs. as there is nothing left to save.
Not to mention the direct combat injuries. Body armour for example might stop the penetration of an bullet, but the kenetic impact might still shatter/rupture your internal organs. You will always carry that with you too.

War is an meatgrinder for everyone involved.

GarryB wrote:

Call of Duty is an prime example of that.
Where commiting attrocities are normalised ,because "we" did it.

Or indeed where history is reversed.... isn't there a call of duty game where the Russians massacre an enemy in retreat the way the US did in Kuwaite during Desert Storm?

Essentially portraying the Russians as the war criminals... which is ironic considering who actually did it...

But you could also argue that this event was clearly what it was and would be recognised by fans that have an understanding of history... are they highlighting the US as war criminals in a deniable way... the only way they could get away with it without repercussions?

There was a game with a Russian air port scene where you could free fire on the Russian civilians with impunity to how that effects the game play, but countries that supported Chechen separatists condone such terrorism as long as the correct side is doing it.

Would be amused to see western reaction to a Russian game that allowed you to massacre people in a Berlin or Paris or London or New York airport with no consequences.

Hell... populate the airport with the rich and powerful of the west and it actually might sell rather well....    

Lots of my friends don't understand my fixation with weapons and war... I am not into death and violence... and also why I never joined the military... I am not into death and violence.

What I like about video games is progression... you start out with basic equipment and as you progress you get better stuff and in the newer games you can upgrade and modify the equipment to make it better.

In the real world you can work for a company for years with no pay increases at all and the next economic downturn get laid off... video games are more rewarding, even though they obviously are not and just waste time really.

But that is what life is... you are born and then you die and life is what you do between those two major events in your existence. Find things that make you happy and try to create a situation where you either do that for a job, or the job you get to pay for everything gives you lots of free time to do what makes you happy.

yup, the famous airport scene... " i am a CIA agent, lets just go gun-down innocent civilians".
Makes you wonder if they have this massive magnet in langley where they put these guys trough.
And when they come out of the other side their entire personality and moral compass has been whiped.

i really tend not to watch western war movies either. Things get just twisted to an absurd degree to paint the West like the good guys.
Like American Sniper, yeah lets go paint everything black and white to justify your actions.
or Band of Brothers, where this U.S soldier shoots german POW's.
or Fury, ..i wont even start about that one...
I just switched it off and never watched again.

Not that i can escape it fully, there are still people in daily life that want to talk about such movies with me from time to time.
And i try to find the right balance between being social, and adressing that i do not agree with it for x reasons.

Nowadays its "what do you think about Russia and Ukraine?". And i start about my experiences working with the Russians in Afghanistan doing NATO's logistics.
And you just see people's worldview crumbling as i go on and show the pictures on my phone.

The only movie i really endorse is We where Soldiers. Where the vietnamese are also treated with respect.
And also the movie showing the human cost of war.

No harm into being weapons and war, if anything its good to have informed understanding of weaponry and events. in order not to repeat history, or see trough all the propaganda media in the West.
I am not into Death and Violence either, I signed up out of an very naive mindset at the time i was going to fight for an "better world" and serving my nation. I was an first-class dumbass kid.

Not everyone joins up for wrong reasons, it is just that Reality makes good intentions irrelevant in the current state of western foreign policy.
And if you are not carefull you end up doing warcrimes "because it is an order" as well.

Hey wait..."video games just a waste of time"?   my programming skills started with videogames .
Thats my Hobby you are talking about here!  

Meanwhile, over time, there is evidencethe fact that in real life there are no restrictions for Americans in the matter of ensuring national interests during armed conflicts. So it was in the eighties of the last century during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). Documents declassified to date and interviews with participants in the events of that time that have appeared in the media indicate that Washington, at least since 1983, has had data on the use of chemical weapons by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein in the war with Iran mustard gas), but did not bring them to the attention of the international community, while Tehran desperately needed to document its accusations.

In 1986, the US Department of Defense proposed to transfer intelligence information to Baghdad, but it was rejected because the CIA and the State Department "anathematized" Saddam Hussein and his "thugs". However, the situation changed in 1987, when the CIA, relying on space intelligence data, reported to US President Ronald Reagan about the preparation of the Iranians for an offensive on the southern sector of the front in the region southeast of Basra. After reviewing the report, Reagan imposed a resolution addressed to Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci: "Iranian victory is unacceptable."

This served as the starting point for the subsequently implemented by the US and Iraqi military departments of the program for the exchange of space and electronic intelligence data. Colonel Rick Francona, who was then the military attaché of the American embassy in Baghdad, claimed that these were actually ready-made target designation data packages for Iraqi aircraft, which, along with artillery, were also used by Baghdad to use chemical weapons (a nerve agent poisonous sarin action). In March 1988, chemical weapons were used against Kurdish rebels, and a month later, against Iranian troops during the liberation of the Faw Peninsula. The defeat at Fao was the reason for the cancellation of the offensive of Iranian troops on Basra and, on the whole, contributed to the end of the war on terms acceptable to Baghdad and Washington.

https://bmpd.livejournal.com/4522362.html

So funny. Killing 1,5+ Million people.