A similar situation with increasing abuses by U.S. military is developing in South Korea. According to official statistics of the South Korean authorities, the number of crimes, committed by the U.S. servicemen since their occupation of South Korea in 1945 to the present day, has exceeded one hundred thousand. Here it is necessary to mention murders, sexual assaults and numerous traffic accidents. Only during the reign of Lee Myung-bak, the number of crimes, committed by the U.S. servicemen in South Korea, increased by 22%, compared to the number of crimes committed during the reign of his predecessor and reached, from 2008 to 2012, nearly 2,000 cases. The perpetrators were arrested in only one or two cases. Under these conditions, it is not accidental of the U.S. Army command’s introduction of a ban on alcohol, as well as the abolition of the three and four day leaves for U.S. servicemen stationed in South Korea, in March 2013.
Ongoing military exercises of the U.S. Army do irreparable harm to the environment in South Korea: broken homes, emptied rice fields and forests, destroyed places and fishing reserves, killed animals and plants, poisoning with toxic materials. That is why the people in these areas suffer from diseases and die. According to incomplete data of the South Koreans, the damage, caused by the U.S. Army since its occupation of South Korea, is estimated at nearly 50 trillion U.S. dollars.
The so-called “Security Act”, entered into force under Washington’s pressure in 1948, is a legal tool for human rights violations in South Korea. As a result of this “law”, more than 118,000 South Koreans were arrested and jailed in one year only after its adoption. Thus, as a result of the initiated cases under this “law”: the People’s Revolutionary Party, the National Democratic League of Youth and Students and the so-called “East Berlin” case, innocent people died on the scaffold on charges of “supporting communism and helping the enemy” in 1960s–1970s.
Taking into account the significant growth of the offenses committed by U.S. servicemen in 2011, when there was a storm of disturbance in South Korea, caused by a rape of a schoolgirl by two American soldiers, the authorities decided to deal with the growth of American soldiers’ crimes. According to Yonhap News Agency in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of South Korea, “a call center” was created and a non-stop telephone service began to work, registering the U.S. troops’ offences and crimes on the Korean peninsula. In response, the Americans staged a mass brawl in the center of Seoul, wounding a policeman, and then attacking two law enforcement officers. There were also recorded numerous stab wounds during skirmishes between the Koreans and U.S. troops. As a result, official Seoul was forced to address with a note of protest to the U.S. authorities in connection with the unruly behavior of American soldiers on the Korean territory. Negotiations between the South Korean Foreign Ministry and the U.S. Department of Defense about the changes in the “Agreement on the status of U.S. troops in South Korea” (SOFA) lasted five years. In the signed agreement, there was included an article concerning environmental issues, and, moreover, the procedure of U.S. troops transference (suspected of committing crimes) to the Korean authorities has changed. American soldiers, who have committed serious crimes such as murder, rape, drug trafficking, robbery, etc. are transmitted to the South Korean justice “after being charged” and not “at the end of the trial” as it was before. As a result of the bilateral talks, it was also decided to conduct annual inspections of land, transferred to the U.S. servicemen, and to return those that are not being used to the Korean side. They agreed upon a number of other issues related to the working conditions of Korean workers at U.S. bases.
Of course, it is possible to find many other examples of illegal actions of U.S. troops in other countries where American bases are situated. These are the Manas base in Kyrgyzstan and many military objects in Germany, where there are 64,000 U.S. service men, most of them addicted to drugs.
Separately in the same context, we should consider multiple illegal actions of U.S. troops in areas of White House military interventions. These are the territory of the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, where due to U.S. Air Force operators’ drones “mistakes”, peaceful people died and continue to die and ground forces soldiers commit numerous atrocities against the local population.
So, who are these U.S. servicemen?
We cannot condemn all the American servicemen of the criminality increase in the U.S. troops in recent years. Yes, there many true heroes among the U.S. servicemen, selflessly fighting with gangs of drug traffickers and terrorists abroad, having received combat wounds and military awards. However, where did this criminality increase come from in the U.S. Army?
As noted by various U.S. media, today three-quarters of young Americans of military age are unable to serve in the modern army. These are the conclusions made by the experts of the personnel department of the U.S. Army (Army Recruiting Command). According to them, there are about 34 million young people, aged from 17 to 24 years, but only 13.4 % of them meet the requirements for new recruits. According to Strategy Page, of the remaining nearly 30 million Americans of military age, approximately 72.2% of them are not suitable for military service primarily in terms of their intellectual and physical development, 15.8% are persons with criminal records, as well as people suffering from alcoholism, drug addiction or obesity. Another 9.3% suffer from other diseases that do not allow them to join the Armed Forces. All these statistics forced the U.S. Defense Department to review the recruitment process of young soldiers.
Some experts believe that a significant role (in what happened in the past few years) in sexual violence increase (from 19 to 26 thousand cases) has played an official acceptance of homosexuals to serve in the army. This fact may be fortified by the sad statistics: men make up the majority of victims of sexual violence (14,000 cases). It is appropriate to recall that according to the law, approved in 1993, “Don’t ask, don’t tell”, gays and lesbians were granted the right to serve in the U.S. Army, not revealing their sexual orientation. However, on September 20, 2011, a new law was approved. It gave the right to the U.S. servicemen to speak openly about their sexual orientation.
An equally important reason of criminality increase in the U.S. Army was the fact that, in recent years, the number of people, willing to serve, decreased markedly. There are many reasons here. The most very significant reasons are: opposition to the foreign policy of the White House, a large number of dead and wounded recruits in the U.S. military campaigns, instead of the expected “permissiveness and bravura march onto occupied lands”.
In the context of ongoing White House expansion of U.S. military operations abroad, the Pentagon quickly invented an explanation: in the early 2000’s, the practice of non-renewal of contracts to “undesirable elements”, who violated discipline and order, was stopped. As a result, the annual number of such refusals from 1994 to 2006 decreased from 4000 to 81. In addition, significantly reduced were the selection criteria of the recruits, enriching the U.S. Army with various criminals and extremists, trying to bring into real life numerous bloody fights, sexual abuse and violence in dealing with the civilian population. And these affected not only soldiers, but also commanders. Here it is worth mentioning the recent scandal involving Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Krusinski, who for two months led the program to prevent violence in the U.S. Air Force, but was himself a rapist…
In June 2008, a decision was made about another reduction of requirements for recruits, which under the current rules for recruitment should receive a special permit, if they committed minor offenses in the past. Such permits are issued by the army leadership on the basis of the applicant’s positive references.
Currently, according to Pentagon statistics, the special permission for admission to military service is received by three out of ten recruits. In addition to the former petty offenders, some special permits are also required from persons with physical or mental disorders. According to many experts, such a simplification, when applying for service in the U.S. Army, makes inevitable the increase in number of people that are not only mentally limited, but have criminal tendencies.
Military violations, related to hazing, sexual harassment and insubordination, began to occur in all branches of the U.S. troops, causing severe criticism from the Americans and the media. In addition to a large number of offenses in the ground forces, many more happen in the U.S. Navy. The leaders of the offences are the nuclear submarine servicemen. Thus, it is necessary to touch upon the incident on submarine “Columbus”, where seven drunken sailors doused a colleague with alcohol and set him on fire.
One of the ways to solve these problems, in recent years, has been the extended practice of hiring citizens of other countries into the U.S. Armed Forces. Thus, now in the American Army there are about 30,000 foreigners from over 100 countries, who by serving in the Army get the possibility to begin the process of naturalization and citizenship, in the ordinary course, this can be done only after 5 years of residence in the United States.
However, the recent innovations have not led to a dramatic positive change; the criminality situation in the army has not improved. The desertion rates are high, even among natives of other countries. Thus, the command of U.S. Forces in Iraq, recently acknowledged that 250 soldiers of foreign origin deserted from the units of this country.
Another major concern of the U.S. Army became addictions in the military hospitals. In August 2013, the International Committee for Human Rights released a report that 20% of the U.S. servicemen take such strong psychotropic drugs as Prozac and Seroquel. Quite often, the soldiers begin to take opiates, under authorities’ pressure, or under any kind of “experiment”. In these circumstances, they can refuse such monstrous tablets only by the special permission from management. As it turned out during the investigation, the servicemen forced to take such drugs to enhance their combat effectiveness, do not feel pain or depression. Public organizations in the U.S. made demands for the dismissal from the U.S. forces of those involved in these methods of “treatment” by military doctors. However, there is no information on the results of this requirement.
Under these conditions of the recruitment to the armed forces of the United States and the greatest number of offenses committed by U.S. servicemen, it is not surprising that there occurred incidents with nuclear weapons that only fortunately, did not result in the deaths of thousands of innocent people.
Thus, in late 2006, U.S. servicemen sent to Taiwan helicopter batteries together with four fuses for nuclear warheads mounted on ballistic missiles Minutemen. They learned about the incident only half a year later, when Taiwanese customers complained about a failure of military equipment supply.
On August 30, 2007 at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, they announced the disappearance of six thermonuclear warheads, which the servicemen mistakenly installed on the left wing of an aircraft, and on the right wing, training warheads were placed. The operator examined missiles mounted on the right wing when accepting the work, but he did not examine the left wing. The captain, in his turn, also neglected the visual inspection of the aircraft. It was only by chance that these fighting nukes were not dropped on USA cities by the U.S. “defenders” themselves.
However, we should not get surprised if even the United States president loses the access code to nuclear weapons, as Hugh Shelton, former member of the USA Joint Chiefs Committee, reported in his memoirs ‘Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior’. In particular, he said, when in 2000, the representatives of the Ministry of Defense decided to change the country codes from the nuclear suitcase that had to be kept next to Bill Clinton, it turned out that the head of state lost them.
The underlined facts in this article, unfortunately, suggest about the sad situation in the U.S. Army and Washington’s enforcement of regulations in it. Due to the dispersal of the U.S. Armed Forces units in 130 countries of the world, it is clear that this situation affects the interests of the citizens of too many countries and they are unlikely to put up with all the lawlessness, criminality and violence committed by the U.S. servicemen. In this context, the further increased anti-American attitude is justified.
As for the Americans, they seem not to be fully aware of these problems and continue to live by the standards described by W. Fulbright: “We have created a society whose main occupation is violence. The most serious threat to our country is not an external force, but our internal militarism. A painful impression is created that we, in America, are clearly accustomed to wars. For many years now, we either by our own desire, or by others’ desire, fight or are ready to immediately start a war anywhere in the world. The war and the military have become an integral part of our everyday life and the violence – the most important product in our country.”
Vladimir Platov, expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
