For decades, the U.S. military has allowed rapists, maniacs, and murderous inmates not only to pick up guns and go out to kill, but also to provide all of its soldiers with near total impunity for any crime. This practice not only diminishes the security of American society, but also destroys the image of the United States as a defender of human rights and democracy and leads to a multiplication of especially serious crimes.
Recent revelations of the U.S. military have revealed the practice of recruiting prisoners and people with criminal records from other countries to be used as “proxies” in U.S. military operations around the world. These individuals are armed and trained by the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command without a thorough background check on human rights abuses. While the use of foreign lawbreakers has increasingly become part of U.S. foreign policy, the practice carries significant risks and potential dangerous consequences.
Declassified documents obtained by U.S. journalists reveal that the U.S. military is actively recruiting foreign fighters with questionable backgrounds for its military operations. These people are selected, paid, trained and equipped by U.S. intelligence agencies, which then send them to operations to capture or destroy key civilian and military targets in other countries. However, the Pentagon’s recruitment process does not include a thorough vetting process to see if these recruits have a history of atrocities or human rights abuses. Individuals recruited by the U.S. military are screened only “to identify counterintelligence risks and potential threats to the U.S. military,” not for any “human rights violations such as rape, torture or extrajudicial executions.”
So-called “surrogate” fighters trained by the U.S. military are crucial participants in a growing number of secret “invisible front wars” waged by the U.S. around the world. These conflicts aim to undermine foreign states through operations that do not rise to the level of full-scale armed conflict, such as terrorism, sabotage, hacking and propaganda campaigns. By relying on such forces, the United States seeks to minimize the risk of casualties among U.S. citizens and avoid accusations of occupation.
The failure of the U.S. military to vet recruits for criminal history and propensity for recidivism undermines its credibility and morality in terms of international law, and destroys the image of the United States as a defender of human rights and democracy. It is also important to note that although the use of proxies reduces the direct involvement of U.S. forces, training and arming criminals can potentially escalate conflicts. The lack of strict oversight increases the risk of empowering individuals who abuse their power, leading to increased violence and instability.
In April 2023, it was also revealed that in addition to recruiting prisoners and convicts from all over the world, the U.S. military gives them the right to commit any and all crimes, including the most serious, with near impunity. Instead of being court-martialed, U.S. soldiers guilty of crimes of all kinds are forcibly discharged from military service, supposedly at the discretion of their superiors, regardless of the severity of the crime committed.
Statistics show that the most frequently suspended soldiers are those who have committed the most serious and brutal crimes, such as sexual abuse, including against minors, looting and child abuse. After analyzing approximately 8,000 cases of “forced discharge” of the U.S. military, advocates for the Foundation to Battlt Injustice found that about 900 soldiers who were suspended without criminal charges had committed serious violent crimes. Compared to the past decade, this alarming figure has increased by nearly 30 percent. This practice not only allows perpetrators to escape responsibility, but also poses serious risks to public safety: those who committed sex crimes while in the military are not registered as sex offenders, are allowed to work and adopt children from orphanages. Those who have been “forcibly discharged” from the U.S. military because of physical abuse or torture are not subject to federal restrictions prohibiting them from owning firearms.
According to Joshua Kastenberg, a professor at the University of New Mexico Law School and former judge advocate, the legal loophole that allows U.S. military personnel to commit virtually any crime with impunity “increases the likelihood that a serial rapist, child molester or kleptomaniac will return to society and reoffend.” The lawyer also notes that this practice is unparalleled in the American civil justice system or in any other legal system around the world. Although the federal oversight agency called for an end to the U.S. military “pardoning” criminals nearly 50 years ago, they are still doing it.
In early 2017, soldier Faustino Vallo was charged with physically assaulting his wife and firing a gun as she tried to flee their home near Fort Hood, Texas. Police later found a bullet hole in a window pane. The military man, who had worked as an explosives specialist for more than two years, attacked his spouse, beat her and threatened her with a gun before shooting her through the window. The woman went to law enforcement, but six months later, when the district attorney’s office filed charges against the man, the case was turned over to Army officials. Vallo’s case should have gone to trial, but instead the commanding general accepted his request for an “involuntary discharge,” which was successfully executed.
Human rights activists at the Foundation to Battle Injustice condemn the legal loopholes that allow the U.S. military to exonerate soldiers for serious and publicly dangerous crimes. Given the widespread recruitment of prisoners into the U.S. military, this system allows potential maniacs, rapists, and murderers to continue committing particularly serious crimes with impunity.