U.S. is slowly losing the battle to cover up Afghan war crimes

Australia did something extremely unusual today. It took an honest look at what it's elite troops did in Afghanistan, and then told the public.

Australian elite forces allegedly killed 39 Afghans civilians and prisoners unlawfully in an environment where "blood lust" and "competition killings" were reportedly a norm, according to a long-awaited official report.
The Australian Defense Force's (ADF) four-year inquiry into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan alleges that some patrol commanders, who were treated as "demigods," required junior soldiers to shoot prisoners to achieve their first kill, in a process known as "blooding." The report presents what it says is "credible information" that weapons or handheld radios were then sometimes allegedly placed by a body to make it seem like the person had been killed in action.

There has been a similar probe in Britain, but they were so horrified by what they found that they buried their own investigation.
While CNN reported the Australian war crimes they failed to mention how the report mentions U.S. troops.

“It’s important to understand that the elite Australian special forces were not alone in committing these atrocities,” said Patricia Gossman, senior researcher on Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch.

“Their soldiers have even said it was widely known that U.K. and U.S. special forces had carried out similar crimes,” she said. “It was part of a sick culture that essentially treated Afghans living in these contested areas as if they were all dangerous criminals — even the children — or simply as not human.”

Gossman said that at about the same time as some of the alleged Australian offences took place, there was a case of “alleged involvement of U.S. special forces in the forced disappearance, murder and torture of Afghan civilians in the Nerkh district of Wardak (province) in 2012-2013

There is no question that the United States committed war crimes in Afghanistan. Trump just recently pardoned two soldiers convicted of war crimes. The only question is how how pervasive were the war crimes and what steps were taken to cover them up?
For instance president Obama famously admitted to "torturing some folks", and then quietly forbade any further investigation into the torture.

Obviously no one in the US government wants our war crimes exposed. No one wants justice for the Afghan people nor to pay the price for committing those war crimes.
If the Afghan people are ever to see justice it must come from somewhere else. Somewhere external.
On March 5, judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) gave the prosecutor authority to investigate possible war crimes in Afghanistan.

The U.S. responded by threatening ICC staff and their families should the ICC pursue the investigation and then sanctioning the court.
Even our allies objected to our actions.

More than 70 nations voiced strong opposition Monday to what they consider threats to the International Criminal Court and decried sanctions on its top officials, issuing a statement that did not name any country but was clearly aimed at the U.S.

They declared that "any attempt to undermine the independence of the court should not be tolerated."
...The statement by ICC members from every region, "including nearly all of the U.S. government's allies, says loud and clear to the U.S. administration: This is our court, back off," Dicker said.

Among the signatories were Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, South Korea, South Africa, Spain and the United Kingdom.

If Trump really wanted to pull our troops out of Afghanistan one of the best ways he could do that is to allow our war crimes to be exposed.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

"Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't going away."
- Elvis Presley

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

A country with some semblance of moral accountability.
USFRUK could definitely learn from this.
Wish we had an honest media.
May open a few eyes.

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12 users have voted.

As an officer, part of his training included a class in the Ethics of Warfare. I know, it sounds a bit oxymoronic, but it did at least provide him with a framework of what is, and what is not, “acceptable” in times of war.

The draftees under his command, unfortunately, had no such training. On at least one occasion, following an intense firefight with heavy losses on both sides, he had to intervene to stop wholesale executions of wounded VC by his men after the battle was over. Is it any wonder that many soldiers committed acts that they later could never forget, or forgive themselves for when they returned “home” as civilians.

The moral compass of war time spins like a gyre. In a truly civilized world acts of war would be exceedingly rare, or non existent. Instead, war here is simply one more way to make a profit.

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

RantingRooster's picture

Not to mention it would expose just how much the democrats are as big of war mongers as the republicans, if not more so.

If Trump really wanted to pull our troops out of Afghanistan one of the best ways he could do that is to allow our war crimes to be exposed.

Remember SOS Hillary Clinton, in April of 2009 while testifying before congress said...

"I mean, let's remember here. The people we are fighting today, we funded 20 years ago. And we did it because we were locked in this struggle with the Soviet Union. They invaded Afghanistan. And we did not want to see them control central Asia. And we... went to work. And it was president Reagan, in partnership with the congress, um, led by Democrats."

No irony right?

To me, the fact our country launched an unconstitutional War in Afghanistan in the first place, is and of it's self, a war crime.

At a bear minimum, it was a blatant violation of the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 that the US congress had ratified, thus, according to our own constitution was "law of the land".

The AUMF was a joke of legal linguistic gymnastics.
(edit)
The act of launching military operations in a sovereign country, that did not attack us, nor threaten too, is by legal, constitutional definitiion, an act of war. Especially against that country's legal and lawful government and against their own respective laws, not to mention "international law, the UN Charter, Geneva Convention, etc..! (I'm thinking Pakistan, and other drone strike countries)
(end edit)

There was nothing within the existing law enforcement framework / mechanisms at that time, that prevented the US from going after, arresting and prosecuting Osama Bin Laden and his cohort of merry terrorists, who were funded by the CIA in the 80's to goad the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan.

I mean, flying a plane intentionally into a building, first and foremost, is a crime. The fact it was committed in the name of some "ideology", whether political, religious, and then we labeled it "terrorism", does not negate the fact, at the root of the "act", it was a crime. And the "rules" of criminal investigations were tossed out the window. Which it's self is a federal crime. Go figure.

The invasion of Afghanistan was an act of "bloodlust", not justice. Retribution is, bloodlust. (imho)

We are the "exceptional nation", because everyone else is expected to "obey the rules", except, the US. We don't obey the international "rules based order", we dictate it.

How does one hold our "beloved" leaders accountable for unconscionable, unlawful, and horrific acts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, when no force on earth has the power to hold them accountable?

Especially in this new epoch of a post fact, post truth world, amidst an epidemic of what I call, Cognitive Dissonant Madness. Much like the race madness "contagion" that infected the population NAZI Germany.

Your honor, my I present exhibit A.
[video:https://youtu.be/RxHp8Hughd0]

It's much easier to resolve the dissonance simply by ignoring the horror or the offending dissonance, much like a smoker who resolves the dissonance of the risks getting lung cancer from smoking, by simply ignoring the risks of lung cancer.

Got a light?

Dirol

(edited, minor grammatical faux paws (hehe), added small paragraph)

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C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote

@RantingRooster link

In July 2010, WikiLeaks published the Afghan War Logs, which contained over 75,000 classified Army reports detailing war crimes committed by coalition forces in Afghanistan.

None of the Bush or Obama administration officials who planned or executed the illegal war, nor any of the field commanders or even rank-and-file troops connected with any of the crimes revealed in the logs, were ever seriously punished.

The whistleblowers, on the other hand, suffered tremendously for exposing the truth. Both Manning and Assange were charged under the 1917 Espionage Act. Manning was convicted in 2013 and sentenced to 35 years in prison, although her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama just before he left office in January 2017.

Assange is today imprisoned in Britain's notorious Belmarsh Prison as he awaits possible extradition to the United States, where he faces up to 175 years behind bars, most likely in a supermax facility a former warden described as a "fate worse than death."

Both Assange and Manning have suffered abuse that prominent human rights advocates have called torture.

link

The saga of the United States military’s attempts to recruit young people by streaming on Twitch is full of twists and turns. Over the summer, the Army and Navy’s Twitch channels were flooded with messages about America’s copious war crimes, questions that almost always resulted in bans. But since these bans arguably straddled the line of free speech violations, the Navy is asking its streamers to adopt a different tactic when viewers bring up the military’s past atrocities: act like complete fucking babies about it.
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@RantingRooster

or are you just happy to see me.

Gotta light

a federal crime

whenever one is detected

getting away with murder for the sake of some

shareholder profit scheme

no morality, no question

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snoopydawg's picture

Not only should Trump let our war crimes be exposed, but as mentioned he should pardon Assange, Snowden and Chelsea. Just get up in front of the world and announce it. Be fun to watch who comes out against it.

I love how the media is saying that Trump is making our democracy look bad. This is said with a straight face 4 years after the world found out that democrats rigged the primary. Hello?

And of course Assange told and showed the world that we had no problem with letting war criminals walk freely after they blatantly murdered 11 unarmed men.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

RantingRooster's picture

@snoopydawg

Do a big press conference with ALL the MSM media in attendance.

he should pardon Assange, Snowden and Chelsea. Just get up in front of the world and announce it.

Pop corn sales would spike among republicans and emergency rooms would be over run with Liberals with Big Egos presenting symptoms of brain hemorrhaging.

Drinks

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C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote

snoopydawg's picture

As always it’s the effin hypocrisy.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg

kill me with your truthiness multi media
dying of truth deprivation

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