User:Rhetth/List of military controversies

This is a list of current and past military controversies. While some are particularly acute and scandalous, others are less refined and involve more moral ambiguity. For the purposes of this list, the countries are listed by the area in which the event originated or took place. No judgement should be implied.

Historical context

In a historical context, the changes in moral standards throughout history should be taken into account. For example, the Hague Conventions in the turn of the 19th century detailed the first efforts to create international laws of warfare. This marked an awareness of what had previously been a military strategy (to kill) into a possible war crime (crimes against humanity).

“ The country was wasted by fire and sword fifty miles round; nor sex nor age found mercy; places sacred and profane had the equal lot of destruction, all razed to the ground, and with them the temple of Tanfana, of all others the most celebrated amongst these nations: nor did all this execution cost the soldiers a wound, while they only slew men half asleep, disarmed, or dispersed. ” — Tacitus,

Battle of Teutoburg Forest

An example of what would be deemed a war crime by present standards would be the enslavement and sacrifice for religious reasons of Roman soldiers by the victorious Germanic tribes after the Battle of Teutoburg Forest. The Roman revenge of this loss by the general Germanicus was described by the Roman historian Tacitus. Tacitus described the initial Roman attack on the unprepared German tribes as ruthless.

From the modern point of view, if Tacitus' account is true, both of these battles amounted to war crimes. Yet for these armies, in their times, it was an expected part of warfare. As moral consensus arises, so will there be clairity as to what is and what is not a military crime. Military controversies, on the other hand, lie on the border of this moral standard, and test the limits of where one divides clear wrong from clear right during warfare.

1900-1920

Ottoman Empire

• Great Calamity (1914-1918) — During WWI, millions of minorities, mostly Armenians, were displaced or killed by the Ottoman government. In the light of recent Balkan 'awakenings', the rights of Christian Armenians in the Muslim Ottoman Empire (an empire in name only since its climax in the 17th century) was being petitioned by the Armenian community (with the help of The Great Powers: Britain, Russia, and France). During these tense times of uprisings, coups, and forced relocations, Armenians became the focus during the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The controversy has arisen in whether or not the deaths of millions of Armenians was genocidal or retributive to all minorities (see Tehcir law for examples).

1940-1950

United States

• American mutilation of Japanese war dead - During WWII some United States soldiers mutilate Japanese corpses by, for example, taking home their skulls as souvenirs or trophies. President Roosevelt received a letter-opener carved out of Japanese bone as a gift by a Congressman but rejected this.
• Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — Faced with an invasion of the Japanese mainland, the US government began the Manhattan Project, which built the atomic bomb. President Harry S. Truman decided to drop the bomb to save American soldier's lives (interpolated from the invasion of Okinawa's 237,318 killed or injured). The controversy deepened with the nuclear aftermath, documented for example by Eugene Smith, a war correspondent who was injured in Okinawa.
• Bombing of Dresden in World War II - The bombing of Dresden by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and United States Army Air Force (USAAF) between February 13 and February 15, 1945, 12 weeks before the surrender of the Armed Forces (Wehrmacht) of Nazi Germany, remains one of the most controversial Allied actions of the Second World War. The raids saw 1,300 heavy bombers drop over 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices in four raids, destroying 13 square miles (34 km²) of the city, the baroque capital of the German state of Saxony, and causing a firestorm that consumed the city centre. Estimates of civilian casualties vary greatly, but recent publications place the figure between 24,000 and 40,000.
• Disarmed Enemy Forces Re-designation of German prisoners of war in order to violate their POW protection by the Geneva Conventions (see for example Rheinwiesenlager). As a consequence, many died, for example, when forced to clear minefields without proper training or equipment (see for example Eisenhower and German POWs). Instead of being released at the end of the war as required by the Hague convention, many were, for many years, kept as forced labor in Germany, the UK, France and the Soviet Union (to both of which the U.S. sent many hundreds of thousands of prisoners).

Germany

• The Holocaust by the Nazis — Adolf Hitler's Nazi party implemented an incredibly rigorous system for exterminating European Jews (along with Gypsies and other groups deemed inferior) as a way to further extend German prosperity, Lebensraum, and power. The fact that the normal German population could turn a blind eye or participate in the technical slaughter of so many fellow human beings makes the Holocaust one of the most morally repugnant singular events in modern human history and a testament to the depths of the human condition.

Japan

• Alexandra Hospital Murder - At about 1pm on February 14 Japanese soldiers approached the Alexandra Barracks Hospital. No resistance was offered by anyone in the building, but the Japanese attacked and killed the medical staff and some patients, including an allied corporal who was lying on an operating table. The following day about 200 male staff members and patients, many of them walking wounded, were ordered to walk about 400 metres to an industrial area. Anyone who fell on the way was bayoneted. The men were forced into a series of small, badly ventilated rooms and were imprisoned overnight without water. Some died during the night as a result of their treatment. The remainder were bayoneted the following morning.

• Banka Island massacre took place on 16 February 1942, when Japanese soldiers machine gunned 22 Australian military nurses.

• Bataan Death March - The march, involving the forcible transfer of 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in the Philippines from the Bataan peninsula to prison camps, was characterized by wide-ranging physical abuse and murder, and resulted in very high fatalities inflicted upon the prisoners and civilians along the route by the armed forces of the Empire of Japan. Beheadings, cut throats and being casually shot were the more common and merciful actions — compared to bayonet stabbings, rapes, guttings (disembowelments), numerous rifle butt beatings and a deliberate refusal to allow the prisoners food or water while keeping them continually marching for nearly a week (for the slowest survivors) in tropical heat. Falling down, unable to continue moving was tantamount to a death sentence, as was any degree of protest or expression of displeasure.

• Comfort Women - euphemism for women in Japanese military brothels in occupied countries, many of whom were recruited by force or deception, and regard themselves as having been sexually assaulted and/or sex slaves.

• Manila massacre of February 1945, refers to the atrocities conducted against Filipino civilians in Manila, Philippines by retreating Japanese troops during World War II. Various credible Western and Eastern sources agree that the death toll was at least 100,000 people. The massacre was at its worst in the Battle of Manila when Japanese troops took out their anger and frustration on the civilians caught in the crossfire and brutally looted, burned, executed, decapitated and abused women, men and children alike, including priests, Red Cross personnel, prisoners of war and hospital patients.

• Nanking Massacre - During the occupation of Nanking, the Japanese army committed numerous atrocities, such as rape, looting, arson and the execution of prisoners of war and civilians. Although the executions began under the pretext of eliminating Chinese soldiers disguised as civilians, it is claimed that a large number of innocent men were intentionally identified as enemy combatants and executed as the massacre gathered momentum. A large number of women and children were also killed, as rape and murder became more widespread.

• Sandakan Death Marches are the most infamous incident in series of events which resulted in the deaths of more than 6,000 Indonesian civilian slave labourers and Allied prisoners of war, held by the Empire of Japan during the Pacific campaign of World War II, at prison camps in North Borneo. Of all the prisoners held at Sandakan, forced onto the Death Marches and at Ranau, only 6 survived the war, all of whom escaped.

• Sook Ching massacre - anywhere from 25,000 to 50,000 ethnic Chinese in Singapore were murdered as part of a systematic extermination of perceived hostile elements among the Chinese in Singapore by the Japanese military during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore, after the British colony surrendered in the Battle of Singapore on 15 February 1942 during World War II. Sook Ching was later extended to include Chinese Malayans. The massacre took place from February 18 to March 4 1942 at various places.

• Tol Plantation Massacre - At least 130 Australian POWs from Rabaul were marched into the jungle near Tol Plantation in small groups and were bayoneted by Japanese soldiers. At the nearby Waitavalo Plantation, 35 Australians who had also been taken POW were shot.

• Wake Island massacre - On October 5, 1943, fearing an imminent invasion, Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara ordered the murder of the 98 captured American civilian workers remaining on the island, kept to perform forced labor for the Japanese. They were taken to the northern end of the island, blindfolded and machine-gunned. One of the prisoners (whose name has never been discovered) escaped the massacre, apparently returning to the site to carve the message 98 US PW 5-10-43 on a large coral rock near where the victims had been hastily buried in a mass grave. The unknown American was recaptured, after which Sakaibara personally beheaded him with a katana.

• Unit 731 - was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II.

Soviet Union

• Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union - 2.3 million German POWs were used as forced laborers in the Soviet Union after the war as part of war reparations to rebuild the country.

1950-1960

China/Korea

• Korean War Crimes — Prisoners taken by the Chinese and North Koreans were mistreated and other crimes of wartime, such as not allowing injured prisoners to be treated, were committed during the Korean UN peacekeeping mission a.k.a. (the Korean War).

1960-1970s

Viet Nam

• My Lai Massacre - The first Vietnam massacre publicly investigated and exposed to cite criminal neglect against military personnel.
• Tiger Force - Voluntary US Army unit accused of flagrant killings in Vietnam. Exposed in 2004 by the Pulitzer Prize winning Toledo Blade newspaper series.

Cambodia

• The Killing Fields

2000s

Iraq

• Iraqi insurgency — After the Baath party and Saddam Hussein was removed from power in Iraq by the 2003 invasion by the coalition forces led by the United States, the resulting insurgency from disenfranchized groups (funded by mostly foreign groups (Al-Quaeda in Iraq) began waging a guerrilla war against the occupying forces. As violence mounted, the target of the initial insurgency began to form their own counter-insurgency (composed mostly of Shiite Muslims such as the Mahdi militia or the Iranian-based Badr corps) against the Sunni Muslims, thought to represent the insurgents. These groups' actions included IEDs, hostage-taking, and sabatoge. The potential for this chaos and civil unrest has been seen as avoidable at best and blatantly ignored at worst.
• Mujahideen Shura Council beheadings — A video released by the Mujahideen Shura Council (now a part of the group, Islamic State of Iraq) showed the beheading of two kidnapped US military personnel from the 502nd Infantry Regiment operating out of in Mahmudiyah, Iraq.
• Rogelio "Roger" Maynulet — In 2005 Roger Maynulet, an Army Captain with a distinguished record, was convicted of killing a wounded Iraqi civilian. While his defense was that of a mercy killing (which is a punishable offense), it may have influenced the sentencing court, which sentenced him to no time in jail and for him to resign his military commission.
• Haditha killings — A current military case about a massacre resulting from a company of 3/1 Marines indiscriminately killing 24 Iraqi civilians in reaction to the death of a Marine by a roadside bomb.
• Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse — The large scale abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners by Army military prison guards was the first large scandal of the Iraq War.
• Mahmudiyah incident — This scandal broke due to the premeditated nature of the killings; one of the accused had since been honorably discharged from the United States Army due to "antisocial" reasons. Among the casualties one Iraqi girl was raped, shot, and then set on fire to conceal the incident.
• Basra prison incident — UK soliers in civilian disguise who shot an Iraqi policeman were later freed by UK tanks.
• Hamdania incident — An alleged war crime in which members of the United States Marines shot and killed an Iraqi civilian on April 26, 2006 in Al Hamdania, a small village west of Baghdad near Abu Ghraib prison.
• Wedding party massacre — A wedding party in Mukaradeeb, Iraq was the site of American shooting and bombing on May 19, 2004. American officials stated that the location was a "suspected foreign fighter safe house." Local accounts state that 42 men, women and children were killed during the incident.
• Baha Mousa was an Iraqi civilian who died whilst in British custody in Basra during September 2003.

Afghanistan

• Nangarhar highway killings — An elite unit of Marine Special Operations Command Marines were hit by a roadside bomb and reacted by shooting along 3-6 miles of highway, killing 19 civilians and injuring 50.

United States

• Guantanamo Bay detainment camp - Guantanamo Bay became a detainment camp for enemy combatants (vs. enemy prisoners of war) and the fluctuating conditions and legal proceedings of the detainees has garnered criticism across the world.

Russia

• Moscow theater hostage crisis — In 2002 Chechen seperatists took around 850 people hostage in a Moscow theater. The Russian military responded in part by pumping in what they called a harmless anesthetic gas, but which has been criticized as being the possible cause of sickness and death of many of the hostages.
• Beslan school hostage crisis - (2004) After Chechen seperatists planned by Shamil Basayev (who was not present) took over 1200 adults and schoolchildren hostage in Beslan, North Ossetia-Alania, various Russian military security forces such as the FSB spetsnaz converged on the site and attempted to safely rescue the hostages. As the days wore on, the unpredictability of the hostage-takers — and to some extent the hostage-rescuers — caused confusion and chaos, resulting in the military to storm the school building. Hundreds of hostages were injured or died, along with around 10 members of the Russian special forces. In the days that followed, the lack of information concerning what happened fueled conspiracy and distrust of the Russian government's handling of the situation.
• Andrei Sychyov — (2005) An army private whose bilateral leg amputation caused harsh criticism towards the military's handling of hazing and the traditional rules of submission (dedovshchina).

See also

• Command responsibility
• Law of Armed Conflict

Literature

Philosophy

• A Terrible Love of War - James Hillman's late-in-life interpretation of war, off topic from his usual topic of psychology and myth.

Journalism

• War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning - Chris Hedges, a veteran journalist of twenty years of armed conflict, writes about war's influence in people.

Memoirs

• War Is a Racket - Marine Corps Brig. General Smedley Butler's reaction to his experiences of corruption and conflicts of interest in military and political operations.
• The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien's autobiographical non-linear recollection about his experiences as a young man who went to the Vietnam War and his life after.