Today""in 2009""the photos on Lingayen Beach Exhibition show Filipino non-combatants being carted off by caribou-drawn wagons for burial. In contrast to the sad scenes of devastation of Pangasinan towns along the sea coast, there are some other photos which showed that some local people pulled out old USA flags to welcome the landing forces. Meanwhile, whole towns along the coast had been wiped out by U.S. bombers on the northern coast of Pangasinan, Philippines in a matter of days
Interestingly, American military historians have often considered the whole adventure at Lingayen to be a total success in January 1945, Filipino historians recall often that more Filipinos were killed in U.S. bombings and coastal strafing fire than Japanese soldiers in that month at Lingayen, Pangasinan.
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/rep/NAVAER/Lingayen/index.html
"WE HAD TO FOLLOW THE PLANS"
When asked again and again why U.S. forces had attacked the towns along the Pangasinan coast so mercilessly. I.e. these were towns which were mostly totally evacuated by the Japanese military. U.S. commanders could only shake their heads and say, "We had to follow our plans."
I'm sure that might be a good enough statement for privates during a wartime""but for USA commanders, such lame excuses, as "We were just following the playbook written by others" are the logic of weaklings and followers or incompetents. Such Admirals and generals certainly lacked any sense of accountability and responsibility. This lack of use of military intelligence to me verges on war criminality. (The Japanese are justly condemned for blowing up and killing Filipinos without conscience during their invasion and occupation.)
However, when over decades every single American war has the same crimes of negligence and irresponsibility. The senseless killing and torturing of Asians and others goes on and on by the same military.
Such negligence in thinking is certainly a crime carried out by criminals-of-sorts. What do readers think or have to say?
IN a notuschell, whether it is Douglass MacArthur in a ship (or on shore) or recent American generals and officers in Iraq or Afghanistan, THE USA MILITARY machine continues to ignore facts on the ground, such as noncombatants on the ground when carrying out warmaking. Why has the USA military not improved in its capacity to protect civilians? I think it is because we never take genersl and officers in for war crimes trials like we should and as code of behavior
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