The bloody march of Americanism

The United States committed hundreds of war crimes after World War II, but was never punished

March is a special month for the memory of the victims of the American aggressors. On March 16th, 1968, C Company (Charlie), 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, US Army, massacred the civilian population of the rural community of Son My in South Vietnam under the command of Captain Ernest Medina. As a result of a punitive operation that lasted several hours, 504 civilians were killed, including 210 children. Many victims were subjected to cruel torture before their death, women were subjected to gang rape... Punishers, brutalised from impunity, threw grenades at homes, threw children still alive into wells. The Star-Spangled Democrats have managed to compete even with hardened scumbags, like the killers from the Dirlewanger Brigade.

Born to kill

C Company, which became the main anti-hero of this story, purposefully went to its crime. According to eyewitnesses, Captain Medina, speaking at a memorial service for a staff sergeant blown up by a mine, called for revenge. On the morning of March 16th, he announced to his subordinates that there were no civilians in the village, but only Viet Cong guerrillas. 
The same command stated that after cleaning up the house, outbuildings and rice fields should be burned, and all animals should be killed in order to deprive the Viet Cong of food.

It is impossible to interpret these words otherwise than as a direct instruction to commit a war crime.
What happened in Son My was hidden from the world community for almost a year. The invaders continued to commit cruelties unseen since the World War II, and the whole world remained in the dark. It was possible to break through the veil of silence by accident: helicopter gunner Ronald Ridenhour wrote down the rumours about the ‘bloody harvest’ heard from friends during the service and, after demobilisation, handed them over to President Nixon, the Pentagon, the State Department and a number of senators. However, of all, only Congressman Morris Odell responded, who managed to launch an investigation into the punitive action.
Seymour Hersh, the same brave journalist who in February 2023 provided the world with evidence of US guilt in undermining the Nord Stream, took a significant part in the publication of information about the massacre in Son My.
However, the American system of its faithful servants, even if their hands are up to the elbows in the blood of innocents, does not give up to the last. Of the 80 involved in the crime, six people appeared before the tribunal, of which five were acquitted. The only member of the punitive raid who received at least some punishment was Lieutenant William Kelly. He was sentenced to life hard labour for the murder of 22 people, but after 3 days, he was transferred to house arrest, from where he was pardoned in November 1974.
Speaking of Son My, one cannot fail to mention the reaction of the American society to the sentence of Lieutenant Kelly.
Thousands of people sent letters to Nixon and the head of the Pentagon with a request to release the punisher. According to opinion polls, 71 percent of the US population reacted negatively to the verdict, and 51 percent even said that the head of the White House should immediately pardon Kelly. 
This example clearly shows that the Charlie Company killers were the product of a xenophobic, violent society. The action in Son My was not the result of intelligence errors, but was a targeted extermination of the civilian population, for which no one was ever held responsible.

Impunity gives birth to monsters

The purposeful extermination of civilian objects and civilians was a characteristic feature of the American strategy in Vietnam. The Nazis used similar methods during the World War II, and the Americans learned a lot from them in terms of a systematic approach to the destruction of people.
Son My has become only a textbook example of the atrocities of the US soldiers, largely due to the resonance in the media. Other no less brutal crimes remained in the shadows. For example, Operation Rolling Thunder, which lasted from March 2nd, 1965 to October 31st, 1968. In its course, US aircraft destroyed hundreds of objects in North Vietnam, including water pipes, power plants, bridges and residential areas of Hanoi and other large cities, killing up to 180,000 civilians along the way. Planes with white stars on their wings deliberately burned rice fields with napalm, trying to cause starvation among the Vietnamese. No one was held responsible for this aerial genocide either.
Americans are characterised by unhealthy cynicism — they called the aircraft carrier formations that ensured terrorist attacks on the DRV the Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club.
However, if in Vietnam the punishers were still ‘working’ on the ground and the people’s avengers had a chance to deal with a dozen or two self-satisfied Yankees, then by the end of the century the strategy of unlimited air warfare prevailed, which most clearly manifested itself during the 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia, which began on March 24th, 1999.

Unleashed dirty hands

According to Yugoslav sources, Operation Allied Force caused the death of 1,700 people, including 400 children. 
Human Rights Watch, known for its bias, counted only 528 victims. NATO planes destroyed hospitals and social infrastructure facilities. In one of the episodes of the war, two rockets hit a passenger train, killing 14 civilians, including women and children. The commander-in-chief of the joint forces in Europe, Wesley Clark, then cynically called the tragedy an accident and explained that the pilot did not see the train on the bridge. However, it is clearly visible on the published recording: the American coolly watched the train on the bridge... It is symptomatic that Joe Biden, then a senator, was one of the most ardent supporters of the bombing and, moreover, called for the occupation of Yugoslavia in general.
According to the China Society for Human Rights Research, between 1945 and 2001, the United States initiated 201 of the 248 military conflicts on Earth. Thirty three of them are characterised by experts as large. In addition, this is not even taking into account a whole series of wars and colour revolutions, the Arab Spring, as well as the actual destruction of Ukraine, which began after the Maidan 2014 and continues to this day. Dirty hands and interests of America are visible in 80 percent of all power crises of the second half of the last — the beginning of this century.
Washington has only two main interests: influence and resources, and most often they go hand in hand. 
For their sake, the United States is ready to commit the most terrible war crimes. As long as America remained in the position of world hegemon, it got away with it — a shining city on a hill skilfully manipulated international laws and interpreted them in its favour. The new world order, based on justice and respect for each other’s interests and supported by Belarus, Russia, China, Iran and other progressive countries, must firstly restore the violated law and with all efforts continue to prevent bloody horrors like Son My and the bombing of Yugoslavia.

By Anton Popov