List of military scandals

This is a list of current and past military scandals.

1940-1950

United States

  • Japanese American internment during WWII by Executive Order 9066 which forcefully put Japanese Americans from the western coast of the United States (a majority who were citizens) into camps around the country. The United States government finally apologized and admitted the racist, non-military motives of the internment.

1960-1970s

United States

  • My Lai Massacre - The first Vietnam massacre publicly exposed to cite criminal neglect against military personnel
  • Tiger Force - Voluntary US Army unit accused of flagrant killings in Vietnam. Exposed in 2004 by the Pulitzer Prize winning Toledo Blade newspaper series.

2000s

Iraq

  • Mujahideen Shura Council beheadings - A video released by the Mujahideen Shura Council (now a part of the group, Islamic State of Iraq) showed the beheading of two kidnapped US military personnel from the 502nd Infantry Regiment operating out of in Mahmudiyah, Iraq.

United States

  • Haditha killings - A current military case AbOUT a massacre resulting from a company of 3/1 Marines indiscriminately [...] 24 Iraqi civilians in reaction the death of a Marine by a roadside bomb.
  • Nangarhar highway killings - An elite unit of Marine Special Operations Command Marines were hit by a roadside bomb and reacted by shooting indiscriminately along 3-6 miles of highway, [...] 19 civilians and injuring 50.
  • Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse - The large scale abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners by Army military prison guards was the first large scandal of the Iraq War.
  • Guantanamo Bay detainment camp - Guantanamo Bay became a detainment camp for enemy combatants (vs. enemy prisoners of war) and the fluctuating conditions and legal proceedings of the detainees has garnered criticism across the world.
  • Mahmudiyah incident - This scandal broke due to the premeditated nature of the killings; one of the accused had since been honorably discharged from the United States Army due to "antisocial" reasons. Among the casualties one Iraqi girl was raped, shot, and then set on fire to conceal the incident.
  • Hamdania incident - An alleged war crime in which members of the United States Marines shot and killed an Iraqi civilian on April 26, 2006 in Al Hamdania, a small village west of Baghdad near Abu Ghraib prison.
  • Ishaqi incident - The reported mass-[...] of Iraqi civilians allegedly committed by the United States forces in the town of Ishaqi in March 2006. After the incident, Iraqi police accused the US troops of rounding up and deliberately shooting 11 people, including five children and four women, before blowing up their house. A U.S. military spokesman at the time responded that it was "highly unlikely that [the allegations] were true".
  • Wedding party massacre - A wedding party in Mukaradeeb, Iraq was the site of American shooting and bombing on May 19, 2004. American officials stated that the location was a "suspected foreign fighter safe house." Local accounts state that 42 men, women and children were killed during the incident.

Russia

  • Moscow theater hostage crisis - In 2002 Chechen separatists took around 850 people hostage in a Moscow theater. The Russian military responded in part by pumping in what they called a harmless anesthetic gas, but which has been criticized as being the possible cause of sickness and death of many of the hostages.
  • Andrei Sychyov - An army private whose bilateral leg amputation caused harsh criticism towards the military's handling of hazing and the traditional rules of submission (dedovshchina).

See also

  • Command responsibility
  • Law of Armed Conflict

Literature

Philosophy

  • A Terrible Love of War - James Hillman's late-in-life interpretation of war, off topic from his usual topic of psychology and myth.

Journalism

  • War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning - Chris Hedges, a veteran journalist of twenty years of armed conflict, writes about war's influence in people.

Memoirs

  • War Is a Racket - Marine Corps Brig. General Smedley Butler's reaction to his experiences of corruption and conflicts of interest in military and political operations.
  • The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien's autobiographical non-linear recollection about his experiences as a young man who went to the Vietnam War and his life after.