Excerpted from Discovering America as It Is

By Valdas Anelauskas
(1999)

Patrolling the New World Order

The U.S. has declared virtually the entire world to be its sphere of "vital interests." That is why the United States is building up its military presence in all strategically important areas of the globe. Meanwhile, in guise of ensuring American "vital interests," the United States has situated hundreds of military bases and other installations throughout the world which have become strong points for responding to what the U.S. views as international terrorism, with the U.S. Rapid Deployment Force as its spearhead.

U.S. servicemen deployed in foreign countries often behave in a manner typical of occupation troops. They rape local women and commit other outrageous crimes. In October 1995, the Dayton Daily News ran a series of investigative articles revealing that the U.S. military have "allowed hundreds of accused sex offenders to escape criminal prosecution or go free despite convictions. Then it sent many of them back to civilian life with no criminal record." It also revealed that more Marines and Navy sailors were tried for rapes, child molestation and other sexual assaults in Japan than in any other country where American servicemen are based.


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A more recent incident in Europe indicates even more clearly the extent to which American troops stationed abroad behave with flagrant disregard for the well-being of the "locals" - and to what extent they are nonetheless protected by the United States from local law enforcement and reprisal. Twenty Europeans - seven Germans, five Belgians, three Italians, two Poles, two Austrians, and one Dutch - were killed on February 3, 1998, in the ski resort town of Cavalese in the Italian Alps. They were riding a ski lift when a U.S. Marine Corps pilot, flying much lower and faster than rules permitted, flew his jet into the gondola cables, recklessly shearing them and sending the skiers plunging to their deaths. The plane cut through the steel cables with its tail fin while flying at a height estimated to be around feet above ground, in an area clearly marked on maps as being a ski resort. The minimum flying height in the zone was around 3,500 feet. This horrible incident touched off a wave of outrage that the American crew was speeding and showing off, in complete disregard for the people around them. Locals in Cavalese said that the U.S. pilots like to "joyride" on the planes, flying dangerously close to the ground. Area residents have long observed these pilots using the area for low-altitude cat-and-mouse games and other reckless flying. They were flying from the Aviano U.S. airbase on the Adriatic coast, a key base for U.S. military attacks against Yugoslavia and Iraq.

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As expected, on March 4, 1999, a military jury in the United States acquitted Captain Ashby of manslaughter and all other charges in the tragic deaths of the skiers. "This court finds you, of all the charges and specifications, not guilty," the president of the jury, Colonel William T. Snow, said. Had Captain Ashby been convicted, he would have faced up to ten years in prison for each death. Instead, the judge, Colonel Robert Nunley, said, "Captain Ashby is certainly free to go." When the jury of eight other Marines found that Ashby did nothing wrong at all, the military audience cheered. As the pilot's lawyer Frank Spinner commented, the verdict showed that in the eyes of American "justice," the incident was a "training accident and nothing more, not a crime."

To much of the world, a U.S. serviceman killed twenty innocent people and got away with it. This was a horrible slap in the face to the families of those killed. After such an outrageous verdict, one German woman, whose father and sister were killed on the ski lift, said, "There's a saying in Germany that one crow doesn't pick out the eye of the other one." A Belgian woman who lost her 24-year-old daughter told the press, "It gives us the feeling they were killed a second time..." "I buried my husband a year ago. Today it was his second funeral," another German woman commented.
Commentators across the political spectrum in Italy condemned the verdict as a whitewash and charged it was a symbol of American power and arrogance. As one Italian politician declared, "This is not only the acquittal of a pilot, this is the acquittal of an entire system." The deaths in the northern ski resort town of Cavalese were "almost an act of war within our country," commented a front-page commentary in Corriere della Sera, the largest circulation Italian daily. La Republica, another leading newspaper, remarked: "Many things have changed in this world regarding international relationships, but not the impunity of the powerful."

Valdas Anelauskas

How current. More anti-america and anti-military from Streaker.

Yeah... old article... but so what?

Don't you find rape that goes unpunished objectionable?

Of course I do. Just try not to push an agenda. Thanks for coming out.

If you object to rape (and unpunished rape), along with other crimes which go unpunished, then you shouldn't have an issue with my "agenda", which it would appear you agree with.

If you object to rape (and unpunished rape), along with other crimes which go unpunished, then you shouldn't have an issue with my "agenda", which it would appear you agree with.

I guess you'll follow up with articles about unpunished rape from all areas of the world soon. I am certainly against any form of rape, and I can't imagine that you would use that to further your anti-American agenda.