Have many Americans heard of US war crimes in Vietnam such as the My Lai massacre?

Very valid point, but the fighting in the late 90's were much smaller scale compared to what most Americans consider a "War". Since we have such a large military capacity, we quite often intervened trying to stabilize areas wracked with civil wars and genocide. I know that this could be argued against as more than mere "police actions", but that's the official position on wars such as Bosnia, Kosovo and in Somalia. They were smaller conflicts, in which we had a moral dilemma on whether to intervene in order to help save lives, or remain peaceful and watch from the sidelines. Once again, i want to reiterate that i understand that there were many other areas we could have intervened militarily (Rwandan genocide and the Sudan comes to mind) and there were most likely ulterior motives involved with every action. The civil war in Liberia comes to mind when thinking about moral questions. The U.S. had ships parked off the coast during the civil war, and when people were being slaughtered and child soldiers were being used by both sides in the seige of the city Monrovia, many innocent bystanders wondered why the U.S. didn't come in and do anything. If the U.S. had gone in alone without UN support, many people would most likely just blamed it on U.S. warmongering.

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