http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/rep/NAVAER/Lingayen/index.html
"WE HAD TO FOLLOW THE PLANS"
When asked again and again why U.S. forces had attacked the towns along the Pangasinan coast so mercilessly. I.e. these were towns which were mostly totally evacuated by the Japanese military. U.S. commanders could only shake their heads and say, "We had to follow our plans."
I'm sure that might be a good enough statement for privates during a wartime""but for USA commanders, such lame excuses, as "We were just following the playbook written by others" are the logic of weaklings and followers or incompetents. Such Admirals and generals certainly lacked any sense of accountability and responsibility. This lack of use of military intelligence to me verges on war criminality. (The Japanese are justly condemned for blowing up and killing Filipinos without conscience during their invasion and occupation.)
However, when over decades every single American war has the same crimes of negligence and irresponsibility. The senseless killing and torturing of Asians and others goes on and on by the same military.
Such negligence in thinking is certainly a crime carried out by criminals-of-sorts. What do readers think or have to say?
IN a notuschell, whether it is Douglass MacArthur in a ship (or on shore) or recent American generals and officers in Iraq or Afghanistan, THE USA MILITARY machine continues to ignore facts on the ground, such as noncombatants on the ground when carrying out warmaking. Why has the USA military not improved in its capacity to protect civilians? I think it is because we never take genersl and officers in for war crimes trials like we should and as code of behavior
1 | 2
