War Crimes in Indochina And Our Troubled National Soul

By Fred Branfman, AlterNet. Posted August 30, 2004.

We live in a time when truth has become increasingly irrelevant. Reality is indistinguishable from spin, not only from politicians but sports figures, church leaders and business executives. It seems almost pointless to note the latest untruths – who has the time to research the facts amid the welter of accusations, attacks, ripostes and counter-attacks?

There are certain lies so monstrous, so odious, so malignant, and so significant, however, that they cry out to heaven for rectification. One of these is the claim of the "Swift Boat Veterans" in their latest ad: that John Kerry lied when he stated that the U.S. had committed widespread war crimes in Indochina as a matter of policy as well as individual wrongdoing.

This nation has no greater moral failing that our ongoing refusal to take responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of Indochinese peasants whom we killed in violation of the laws of war. Those who shape opinion in this country have no higher duty to history or nation than to research the facts of U.S. war crimes in Indochina, and to educate our people and children about them. How can we teach "personal responsibility" to our children, for example, if we refuse to take responsibility or even admit our illegal murder of innumerable innocent Indochinese? Doesn't true patriotism call for perfecting our democracy by admitting our crimes and ensuring they never happen again, rather than remaining silent and repeating them?

We cannot understand the true nature of our nation unless we grapple with the contradiction that we are both the greatest democracy on earth and have committed in Indochina the most protracted and widespread violations of the rules of war of any nation since the end of World War II. Our children cannot understand who they really are unless they grasp the grotesque fact that their parents' generation not only killed innumerable innocent Indochinese peasants in Indochina, but have tried to deny this reality for more than 30 years now.

The clearest U.S. violation of the rules of war was the widespread U.S. bombing and use of artillery against villages throughout Indochina, in violation of Article 25 of the U.S.-ratified 1907 Hague Convention which states that "the attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended, is prohibited."

Uncounted Indochinese peasants were burned alive by our napalm, buried alive by our 500-pound bombs, shredded by our anti-personnel bombs, and obliterated by our artillery shells. By simply declaring non-combatants to be either combatants or their "supporters", the military justified illegal bombardment of populated areas, making millions of Indochinese peasants fair game for U.S. bombing and/or shelling.

Jonathan Schell described in The Village of Ben Suc, a book which strongly influenced the young John Kerry, how U.S. planes would fly over vast inhabited areas declared "free fire zones" by U.S. officials, and bomb villages and villagers alike. Equally devastating bombardment occurred from the millions more tons of ground artillery fired from army bases and navy ships upon undefended towns, villages, dwellings and buildings. I personally interviewed over 2,000 peasants who had escaped from U.S. bombing in Laos. Every single one said that their villages had been leveled by American bombing, and the evidence of this is still apparent to those who visit the Plain of Jars in northern Laos today. Most of this bombing was directed at undefended villages, since Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese guerrillas traveled through jungles so thick that their movements could not be detected from the air.

In Cambodia, U.S. officials claimed that they would not bomb a village unless the "Bombing Officer" at Nakhorn Phanom airbase in Thailand certified that enemy soldiers were present. This was a baldfaced lie. I tape recorded conversations between pilots and their controllers while bombing was being conducted that showed definitively that the Bombing Officer was not consulted before villages were bombed, as reported by Sidney Schanberg in the New York Times in May 1973. I later interviewed the Bombing Officer at Nakhorn Phanom airbase. He said his only task was to ensure there were no CIA teams in the area where the bombing occurred. Undefended villages throughout vast areas of Cambodia, inhabited by two million people according to the U.S. Embassy, were leveled by U.S. bombing.

Fred Branfman, as Director of Project Air War, exposed U.S. bombing of civilians in Indochina as it was occurring after interviewing thousands of refugees in Laos. He is currently a Santa Barbara-based writer.

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