At the end of WWII American soldiers took up permanent residence in Italy, Germany and Japan. It was the real, in earnest, beginning of the American empire which has since expanded to virtually every corner of the globe.
While host governments rationalize the financial benefit provided by the U.S. military, local citizens generally have an unadulterated and undisguised antipathy. It is they who are up close and personal with the daily reports of drunken brawling, rape, murder and property destruction, as well as the arrogance and disdain of foreign youth wearing uniforms who treat them with a profound sense of entitlement and disrespect.
No place has been more vocal about their hatred of the chaos that accompanies American military occupation than the residents of Okinawa, Japan. With good reason, they are so adamant that the Americans go somewhere, anywhere, else that it has even made news in the U.S.
Despite the best, and usually successful, efforts of the military to cover up crimes committed by soldiers against local residents, the only people left in the dark are Americans. The citizenry of every country housing U.S. soldiers is well aware of atrocities committed by mostly young men who commit criminal acts and are abruptly shipped home and beyond the reach of local authorities. Our military makes every effort to protect American soldiers from the consequences of their own behavior.
And that's what they did with the incident of February 3, 1998, in Cavalese, an alpine ski town in Northern Italy.
That was the day that marine pilots flying at 500 to 600 miles an hour and 260 feet off the ground sliced the cable of a gondola carrying 20 skiers down a mountain in the Alps. No one on the gondola survived. The dead suffered horrific injuries and could only be identified from the effects they were carrying.
The plane few back to base where the pilots initially feigned surprise that they had caused any damage. It was the Who, me? defense.
Both the plane's speed and low altitude were violations of military policy, as was the pilot's destruction of the cockpit video. The deaths caused by the pilot's hot-dogging were violations of Italian law.
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