1224blog
Shameful History
Nisour Square, Haditha, My Lai, Samar, Motobu Peninsula, Laconia, Canicattì, No Gun Ri, Wounded Knee, Elaine, all are locations where U.S. forces massacred civilians and through the years, most have been largely forgotten with the guilty largely unpunished.
It is hardly a complete list but represents some of the bloodiest and more shameful such incidents in U.S. history, incidents that to this day are largely shielded from the American public while the perpetrators are exonerated.
Keeping in form, President Trump on Wednesday pardoned four employees of a private American military security firm who fired machine guns and grenade launchers into a group of Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square, Baghdad, in 2007, killing or wounding at least 31.
The members of the Blackwater security company, a firm that was started by a longtime Trump ally who also is brother of the U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, had been convicted in the deaths of 14 people and they were sentenced to terms ranging from 30 years to life in prison.
As with other similar incidents through history, the Nisour Square massacre prompted violent, anti-U.S. sentiment, a factor leading to the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq.
Haditha, Iraq
A massacre on Nov. 19, 2005, in the Iraqi city of Haditha was prompted after a marine was killed by a roadside bomb. Later in the day, 24 Iraqi women and children were found dead. Seven years later, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich was the only marine charged as he admitted to one count of negligent dereliction of duty. He was sentenced to three months in prison with a reduction in rank and pay.
My Lai, South Vietnam
It was in 1968, when U.S. soldiers, under the leadership of Lt. William L. Calley Jr. descended on the village of My Lai where they went on a bloody rampage that left more than 500 civilians dead or injured. Calley was the only soldier convicted in connection with the bloodbath and he served just three years in prison, amid public pressure for President Nixon to reduce the sentence.
Motobu Peninsula, Okinawa
The U.S. Marines landed in Okinawa in 1945 and arrived at the village on Motobu Peninsula where they found no Japanese forces. Instead, they raped the women in the village and eventually were blamed with raping as many as 10,000 women on the island.
Laconia
U.S. aircraft attacked Germans who were rescuing survivors from the sinking British troopship Laconia in the Atlantic Ocean on Sept. 12, 1942. Pilots of a U.S. Army Air Forces B-24 Liberator bomber killed dozens of Laconia’s survivors with bombs and strafing attacks.
Canicatti, Italy
Army Lt. Col. George Herbert McCaffrey killed eight, unarmed Italian civilians in what is known as the Canicatti massacre. The incident occurred after American forces had captured the town in Sicily in July 1943. The town of Canicattì had already surrendered when U.S. troops entered and McCaffrey fired into a crowd that had failed to disperse.
No Gun Ri, South Korea
An estimated 300 to 500 South Korean refugees, mostly women, children and old men, were slaughtered in a U.S. air attack and by small arms fire between July 26–29, 1950, near the village of Nogeun-ri. The U.S. Army ordered attacks against civilians because of reports of North Korean infiltration of refugee groups. The incident was little known until a 1999 story by the Associated Press in which veterans corroborated survivors’ stories.
In 2001, the U.S. Army investigated and concluded the killings were “an unfortunate tragedy inherent to war and not a deliberate killing.” The Army rejected survivors’ demands for an apology and compensation, and President Bill Clinton issued a statement of regret, adding the next day that “things happened which were wrong.”
Samar, Philippines
Fifty-one American soldiers were killed on Sept. 28, 1901, by guerillas fighting to maintain Philippine independence after the U.S. took title to the island nation after winning the Spanish-American War.
General Jacob Hurd Smith ordered U.S. troops to conduct an indiscriminate retaliatory attack on Filipinos and to “kill everyone over the age of ten” and make the island “a howling wilderness.” Smith was court martialed and was forced to retire.
“I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States,” Smith said.
Wounded Knee, South Dakota
After Gen. George Custer was defeated at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the U.S. Army increased its campaign against western tribes, and in a series of military engagements and massacres, the Army defeated tribes such as the Lakota and Apache. The soldiers arrived at the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee on Dec. 29, 1890, with the intention of disarming the native Americans. The confrontation led to the killing of more than 250 Lakota men, women, and children of the Lakota and 51 wounded. Twenty-five soldiers died, and thirty-nine were wounded with 20 soldiers later awarded the Medal of Honor.
Elaine, Arkansas
African American sharecroppers were meeting at a church in Elaine on Sept. 30, 1919, to consider demanding a greater share of the farm profits when they were attacked by U.S. soldiers, locals and law enforcement who slaughtered at least 200 men, women and children. Five whites died in the gunfire. The attack came during a period when white veterans believed their livelihoods were threatened by African Americans returning home from World War I.
In the following days, Gov. Charles Brough called for 500 soldiers from nearby Camp Pike to “round up” the “heavily armed negroes” and to “shoot to kill any negro who refused to surrender immediately.”
The United States has a long history of brutality in its efforts to defeat those who are considered the enemy. Trump’s pardon of those responsible for the Nisour Square massacre will only further tarnish the nation’s reputation around the world and will give succor to those who would violate human rights in the name of the United States.