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.
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.
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.
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.
[1] http://www.currentconcerns.ch/archive/2003/02/20030230.php [2] http://timewitnesses.org/english/~lothar.html
Don't think the Japanese and Germans are not guilty either.
And yes, I'm sure had we lost wwii we'd have been in for war crimes, such is the world.
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War...
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.
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.