During the Vietnam War, the United States and major regional allies in Southeast Asia committed an interconnected series of crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, and Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan), thereby provoking a global religious, legal, political, and philosophical response against this wave of mass killing. Political philosopher John Rawls, cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky, the refugee from Nazi Germany and anticommunist Hannah Arendt, Martin Luther King, Jr., RAND specialist Daniel Ellsberg, and many others protested the systematic democide by the US and US-sponsored military dictatorships in Pakistan and Indonesia through the end of US military operations in Cambodia in 1973. Below is a survey of episodes from the start of South Vietnam's destruction onward.
In South Vietnam
editEffects of the air war
editThe US Army Air Force dropped approximately 160,000 tons of bombs on Japan, leveling half that country's cities.[1][2] 3,900,000 tons of bombs were dropped on South Vietnam.[3]