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> I cannot see how US Military leaders should not be tried for their actions in an international court.

War crimes are a final insult of the victor over the vanquished. While the US was not victorious in Vietnam, neither were they defeated by the Vietnamese/USSR.

Don't think that war crime trials are about any sort of justice.

Exactly. Another obvious example were the bombings done by the allies during WW2. Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Dresden (less known because they didn't use nukes, but with no less destruction: [1][2]) would have been classified as war crimes for certain had the allies lost.

[1] http://www.currentconcerns.ch/archive/2003/02/20030230.php [2] http://timewitnesses.org/english/~lothar.html

As far as I know, nobody, on both side, got prosecuted for terror bombing.

Don't think the Japanese and Germans are not guilty either.

Did Germany get prosecuted for their V2 campaign? I think there are things you kind of agree on are allowable in war and others not -like mustard gas, etc., targeting of civilians with no military value.

And yes, I'm sure had we lost wwii we'd have been in for war crimes, such is the world.

In a "total war" there are no "civilians with no military value".

The UK Bomber Command in WW2 had a strategy of "area bombing" - which was basically to hit the centre of German cities because they were easy to find and to hit at night. There were lots of euphemisms used e.g. "dehousing" - but everyone knew that it was a policy of targeting civilians.

Of course, the UK was on the winning side, so no war crimes trials.

An example of "dehousing"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War...

I can recommend "Bomber Command" my Max Hastings for a very even handed account of the UK air campaign against Germany - my father was in the RAF in WW2 (not in bombers) and it's pretty difficult for me to combine the individual heroism of the aircrews with the awfulness of what it was they were actually doing - especially as the the impact on the course of the war was apparently so small.

http://www.maxhastings.com/1979/bomber-command/

My father was a navigator and bomb aimer on Wellingtons and later Halifaxs during WWII. He very rarely mentioned it, brushing off questions from my younger self saying he never really saw much action. It wasn't until I was a lot older that I realised that this wasn't the truth and he had been in the air force since 1942.

I can only assume (my father died several years ago) that he felt somewhat ashamed of his time in the war. I didn't appreciate the negativity surrounding the bombing campaigns until more recently when they opened the memorial in Hyde Park corner in London (http://www.rafbf.org/1794/bomber-command-memorial.html). It's difficult to appreciate this when you grow up watching films like the Dambusters and 633 Squadron and seeing these guys as heroes. Dads are always heroes.

I can imagine why he didn't want to talk about it - the rate at which bombers were lost (3% to 5% was typical) and the need to complete 30 missions must have been incredibly stressful.

> While the US was not victorious in Vietnam, neither were they defeated by the Vietnamese/USSR.

Wait, what? At the very end US Troops were evacuated from Saigon, and the city was taken over by the Viet Cong. That was the end of the Vietnam war. South Vietnam was reunified with North Vietnam. It's still a communist country.

I'm very sorry, but exactly how is that not complete and total defeat, except under ridiculous exceptions like, "it wasn't really a war because: Congress"? What a disservice to everyone that fought.

The war escalated to the point where LBJ could neither stop, nor continue without basically destroying his legacy (as well as humanitarian and social goals), so he just kept fighting.

You completely missed his point, which is that nobody was in a position to try the U.S. for war crimes after Vietnam. There are many kinds of defeat. To be charged with war crimes requires utter defeat, not merely an unfavorable end to the conflict.

> To be charged with war crimes requires utter defeat

Officials from all factions in (for one example) the Bosnian civil war have been tried by the ICTY. So unless all sides suffered "utter defeat", that is demonstrably untrue.

One could argue that prior to the establishment of modern tribunals starting with the ICTY (but also including the ICTR and ICC), that was the case. And there might be other reasons that the US, in particular, is difficult to hold accountable. But its pretty clear that it is no longer the case that "to be charged with war crimes requires utter defeat", or even mere defeat.

You should read "utter defeat" to mean "subject to the decisions of others." Nothing more, really. You can charge anybody with anything. I'm talking about enforcement.

The USA stopped fighting, they weren't defeated. Just because the Vietcong won doesn't mean the USA lost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconditional_surrender

> exactly how is that not complete and total defeat

The US just left. They left with egg on their face and not looking so superpowery but neither Vietnam or the USSR were in a position to do anything to the US. The US lost, but the US was not vanquished. Actually they basically went home and life just continued on.

The Nuremburg Trials were possible because the Allies were in direct control of the territory of Nazi Germany and had removed it's government. Below someone brought up the various Yugoslav conflicts, but even then, they stopped and then started rounding up the former leaders because NATO basically made it happen. NATO did forceably end those wars.

> War crimes are a final insult of the victor over the vanquished.

The nature of war and sovereignty and the absence of international institutions has certainly led to that being a non-implausible perception of war crimes enforcement in the past, but I'm not sure that can be squared with the more recent situation demonstrated by ad hoc tribunals like ICTY and ICTR as well as the standing tribunals like the ICC.

> While the US was not victorious in Vietnam, neither were they defeated by the Vietnamese/USSR.

On the other hand, if you are posting from some alternate universe where that is true, the current experience in war crimes prosecutions might also be different there, too.

> 2. Military was told to destroy crops used to feed guerrillas.

> 3. Later discovered nearly all of the food they destroyed were being used to support the local civilian population.

To be fair, there is no distinction between the food guerillas eat and the food everyone else eats. Destroying the crops that feed the guerillas means destroying all the crops, period.

I'd further add that destroying food supplies is a pretty old strategy in war. Theoretically, it would result in less death, because most opponents would surrender before letting their people starve.

Except that it is classified as a war crime under Article 54 of Protocol I of the Geneva Convention:

It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.

Ahh yes how could anyone forgot about the rules of war. Lol.

You are being down voted but yours is the only correct attitude when it comes to war. There are no rules, justice, good guys, bad guys, innocents or the guilty. These are luxuries we afford ourselves when talking about war diatanced from us by a certain measure of time. The only truth that exists when war is ongoing is the human capacity for evil expressed through some supposed agenda and dead bodies.

From what I purpose of Agent Orange was to deny the Viet Cong supplies in South Vietnam. "Friendly" South Vietnamese were to be relocated to strategic hamlets and provided food if needed.

This was not an attempt to starve the civilian population.

Agent Orange was in widespread use in South Vietnam - the same people that the US claimed it was there to protect in the first place. The US was destroying it's allied civilian's food...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aerial-herbicide-spray-mis...

> I remember reading a book, Crimes Against Humanity, which said how Nazi leaders, especially those participated in the Holocaust were tried for their crimes. I cannot see how US Military leaders should not be tried for their actions in an international court.

With the benefit of 40+ years of hindsight, the use of Agent Orange was regrettable, no doubt.

However, I don't think it is responsible to compare the decision to use Agent Orange with the Holocaust.

The questions you should be asking are: What was the intent? What was known about AO at that time?

While using a somehow poisonous defoliant against crops and forests is certainly less atrocious than using a certainly lethal Zyklon-B directly against humans, destoying 85% of the crops is also somehow irresponsible.

All wars are bad things, purportedly waged to avoid even worse things. But the Vietnam War had something especially bad about it, probably that same feature that made the US fight for 10 years, ruin the country it tried to protect, and effectively lose the case. One thing I remember from a historical book about that war is a general saying (approximately) "Do you think we will change the entire way our military functions just to win a frigging war?".

This kind of mindset definitely leads to both atrocities and losing. NB: applies to project management in general.

What's the word for nazis causing intentional famines that wiped out at least 8 million russians and ukrainians? Also 'regrettable'? Not 'criminal'? And what's the difference then? Why was one side tried in Nuremberg and second one celebrated?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodlands

> What's the word for nazis causing intentional famines that wiped out at least 8 million russians and ukrainians?

Sadly, most partially or fully engineered famines have never been prosecuted. Witness an Gorta Mór or Holodomor.

How many people died from the famine? If it's only a tiny fraction of total war deaths, I'm upset but not really sickened.

It's the effects of the accidental contamination that sicken me.

This is nothing like the Holocaust. There was no attempt to wipe out civilians en masse simply to kill civilians.

To liken this to the Holocaust is massively disrespectful to the Jewish people, Holocaust victims, and the Americans who fought in Vietnam.

Far from all Americans who fought in Vietnam were honourable. Look to the Kerry quote posted by shoo. The scene in Full Metal Jacket with the helicopter gunner randomly shooting down farmers? An actual even witnessed by a journalist. It may not be the industrialised conveyor-belt-like method of the Holocaust, but there was the same callousness involved.

No, Vietnam did not have the same callousness involved as an entire nation's effort to wipe out an entire race of people.

Vietnam soldiers were a bunch of misguided young American cannon-fodder that didn't want to be there. Some of them were callous. It was not Nazi Germany.

Most German soldiers in WWII were unaware of the death camps, and were the same kind of mix of volunteers and conscripted youth with nationalistic and idealistic components. If you think it was the "entire nation" that was working towards the Holocaust, you need to read more books and watch fewer action movies.

Keep in mind also that men like Ernest Medina had a one-hour trial and was acquitted across the board, and William Calley was actually given a life sentence... very briefly, until the POTUS himself stepped in and changed it to house arrest, and shortly thereafter gave a full pardon. Meanwhile heroic men like Hugh Thompson were given senatorial censure and publicly hounded. Trying to paint the US portion of the horrors of the Vietnam war as merely the result of 'a few misguided conscripts' is, frankly, obscene. Hell, the journalists covering the war used to call the daily afternoon briefings from the military "The Five O'Clock Follies", due to the sheer amount of CYA bullshit in them.

Edit: Perhaps a question - who do you think is more callous: a soldier who rounds up 'undesirables' and puts them on a train to what they think will end up at a work camp somewhere; or a soldier who shoots unarmed, unthreatening civilians for either entertainment (door gunner) or some sense of revenge (My Lai massacre)? This is what I mean when I say similar callousness was involved.

Not to mention the CIA Phoenix Program death squads, whose methods were similar to the Gestapo's or the NKVD's.

Read this. Part of Hitler's plan was to create famines at the east to decimate the local people and provide food for Germans. At least 8 milion of people died in nazi-induced hunger, which makes it as huge tragedy as holocaust - but very few people know about this.

So, I ask again, how is killing 85 % of all crops different?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodlands

So you're saying the Nazi Holocaust and the U.S. invasion of Vietnam are equally onerous, because both involved destruction of crops?

That is comparing fundamentally different things based on a single non-essential concrete.

The most important point: Nazism was an evil fascist ideology that willfully killed millions. The United States has never been that way.

Secondarily, to give a concrete difference: The civillian death toll from Nazism was massively greater than the civillian death toll in Vietnam, even if you are extremely generous in figuring the latter (estimates range from 245,000 to 2 million, per Wikipedia).

Why is it important to divine which war crimes were more evil?

> So you're saying the Nazi Holocaust and the U.S. invasion of Vietnam are equally onerous, because both involved destruction of crops?

I think the point was that both the Nazi-induced famine and the US-induced famine (and subsequent contamination) are both war crimes.

> The most important point: Nazism was an evil fascist ideology that willfully killed millions.

No doubt, but it seems that the non-fascist America doesn't seem have been, in this case, much more interested in sparing civilians.