Letter from a Veteran: Trump is a War Criminal

Trump thinks he has the final say on a lot of things. Executive orders, tweets, etc. His recent pardoning of three convicted war criminals is just another instance of abuse of power. Not surprising for a fascist.

Trump claims to be the best friend the military could have. What could he possibly know about serving? I served for 8 years, both under Bush and Obama. I entered combat zones under both regimes, which drove us into “forever wars” that destroyed the Middle East and gave trillions of our tax dollars to war profiteering corporations.

While I was in, I was required to abide by the UCMJ, or Uniform Code of Military Justice, which regulates the conduct of service members at home and while deployed. Violations of several of these articles can lead to Court Martial, which is where committing war crimes will land you. You’ll either be sentenced to death or get time in the brig. During times of war, which we are always in, you can be summarily executed for simply refusing to obey an order. This has happened as recently as 2013.

The military is largely a fraternity, for lack of a better word, run by corrupt generals. There are the UCMJ’s rules and then there are the “real” rules. Crimes are routinely covered up, obfuscated, or flat out lied about. That’s how it works, and it will not change until workers (including rank and file soldiers) rise up to dismantle this thing.

For someone to get convicted of these types of crimes, they would have to have been particularly heinous.

Trump claims he wants to “take care” of veterans. If he were serious about supporting active duty troops, he would bring Washington’s wars and occupations to an end. He would champion more funding for the VA. But he has as much concern for the troops as do the oil company executives who ought to be tried for war crimes themselves, along with the politicians and generals who orchestrate these wars.

Think about what fascists want and see if this fits in with their agenda. Trump is signaling that he has the final say in terms of justice. The criminals he pardoned are now emboldened, as are other service members who have done or aspire to commit similar acts. At the same time, the military refuses to address the problem of white supremacy among the ranks and will no longer screen for white nationalist views as a condition of enlistment.

Murdering civilians, posing with corpses, white nationalism, what else is Trump ok with?

Support Assange and Manning, Defend the Right to Truth!

WHO ARE JULIAN ASSANGE AND CHELSEA MANNING?

Manning was a former army private who exposed the deliberate killing of civilians in Iraq by the U.S. army. Assange is the founder of WikiLeaks, an online journal that lets the public know what the government is really doing, like spying on U.S. residents or committing horrific war crimes. They were both recently arrested when they should be given medals for telling the truth.

While Manning and Assange are being persecuted, the Trump administration is issuing orders to cover up CIA drone killings of civilians and shutting down investigations into U.S. war crimes by threatening the judges of the International Criminal Court with arrest.

NUREMBERG TRIALS ASKED WHY NAZIS OBEYED ORDERS

Manning took the incredibly brave step to expose U.S. war crimes while in the army. After the Nazis were defeated and put on trial at Nuremberg the message was clear “You have the right to resist an illegal, inhuman order.” This is what she did.

PENTAGON PAPERS AND WIKILEAKS EXPOSED PENTAGON CRIMES

Daniel Ellsberg is a former state department official who released hundreds of pages of internal memos showing the horrors of the Vietnam War. These were called the Pentagon Papers. He was arrested but later exonerated. He is considered a hero. Assange simply released the same type of information digitally.

WHAT DID WIKILEAKS REVEAL?

In April of 2010, Wikileaks published the infamous ”Collateral Murder” video which showed the horrific 2007 U.S. Army massacre of more than a dozen people in Baghdad including civilians, journalists, and children.

Later in 2010, Wikileaks published the “Iraq War Logs” covering the period from January 1, 2004 to December 31, 2009. Manning helped to reveal that in that time 109,032 men, women, and children had been directly killed by the U.S.-led coalition. 66,081 of those people-—nearly two-thirds—were civilians. Wikileaks documents revealed 15,000 deaths that had previously gone uncounted.

The war logs also revealed widespread torture and rape by coalition forces as well as routine civilian killings by U.S. mercenary forces such as Blackwater.

In 2011, after being denied legal immunity for their crimes, U.S. forces were forced to withdraw from Iraq. Had it been earlier that the people of the world—and particularly those in the U.S.— learned the truth about this terrible war, many thousands of lives might have been saved.

Manning and Assange also helped bring to light U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan, revealing more than 92,000 documents related to the war over the same period as the “Iraq War Logs”. The previously covered-up Granai massacre stands as one of the most brutal crimes of this war: nearly 100 people—overwhelmingly women and children—lost their lives in a U.S. airstrike on May 4, 2009. Over 100,000 Afghans have been killed in this longest running U.S. war.

Wikileaks also brought the Guantanamo prison to the attention of the public, exposing the systematic and routine torture of over 800 prisoners. Among the prisoners were an 89-year-old Afghan villager with dementia and a 14-year-old boy who had been kidnapped from his family. More than 150 of these people were detained for years without charge.

ASSANGE AND MANNING ARE THE REAL PUBLIC SERVANTS. TRUMP, OBAMA, AND BUSH ARE THE CRIMINALS.

We deserve the right to know the cost of imperialist wars—especially since it’s our working class brothers and sisters that are under the gun. Because so many lives are on the line, we have a duty to counter the lies that U.S. wars are fought for “freedom” or for “democracy” or for any other noble sounding ideas. To counter these lies, we must arm ourselves with the truth. Wikileaks revealed the business dealings of the war profiteers and it revealed the devastating human toll of the arms that made these billionaires so rich. Wikileaks revealed the truth and for that, Assange and Manning deserve our support.