How true are claims that the government of the United States have committed numerous war crimes, and if they are, how has the government responded to these claims?

by stuffenthusiast

A list can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdD9uSrNFT4

Has the government apologized, or been punished? Denied the existence of them?

Edit: Can someone tell me why I'm being downvoted? If the premise is really that ridiculous that's still an answer to the question...

Edit 2: I see now that Chomsky is not the most reliable source. However, the idea of the US as a state that commits war crimes (as defined by the Geneva Convention and other bodies of international law) is a commonly cited reason for hating or being cynical about the US or international law in general. What's the historiography on that?

LuxNocte

I'm not qualified to answer your question, but I hope I can help to explain the difficulty with your question.

"War crimes" is a very politically loaded term. A historian is more likely to answer the question "Did a U.S. President assist in a military coup in Iran?" than "Did a President commit a war crime by assisting a military coup in Iran". Whether or not an action is a war crime is a matter for a duly authorized international court to decide.

I only watched a bit of the video, but the speaker is making many assertions that the government likely would not corroborate. I can't say whether he's "right" or "wrong", but fact checking those assertions would likely involve a lot of ambiguity and come down to which sources you want to believe. This is generally counter to this sub's mission, which is geared towards more academic, settled "history", and not controversy.

TLDR: you're not being down voted because the video is "wrong", you're being downvoted because the experts here are not likely to weigh in without a large body of undisputed fact that is quite unlikely to exist.

Polybios

We have a FAQ section linking a few older questions on Chomsky's writing, those answers might give you some insight on where Chomsky's claims are coming from.

cpburke91

"Chomsky describes himself as a libertarian socialist and a sympathizer of anarcho-syndicalism (he is a member of the IWW)."

Source.

That may have something to do with the downvotes. You could rephrase the question to better reflect what is considered a US 'war crime' by someone with the beliefs of Chomsky or in general. I hope that makes sense.