Usually American soldiers and military personnel are exempt from local policing. In Germany, they couldn’t be stopped for a traffic control or asked to identify themselves by German police, only US military police. There even was a guy that got away with murder because of some related issues.
Yeah, the lack of local accountability was a large part of why Trump “threatening” to pull the military out of Japan was a monumentally stupid bluff. Japanese people already hate the US military, because the average Japanese person’s perception of the US military is “drunk dude causes damage/hurts someone and flees back to base where he will never see any punishment.” It also came at a time when hardline conservatism and patriotism (bordering on jingoism) is increasingly popular in Japan. Japan basically went “fucking do it then.”
Usually American soldiers and military personnel are exempt from local policing. In Germany, they couldn’t be stopped for a traffic control or asked to identify themselves by German police, only US military police. There even was a guy that got away with murder because of some related issues.
Here’s the story:
https://www.lto.de/recht/hintergruende/h/acquittal-despite-confession-wittlich-us-court-martial-justice
Yeah, the lack of local accountability was a large part of why Trump “threatening” to pull the military out of Japan was a monumentally stupid bluff. Japanese people already hate the US military, because the average Japanese person’s perception of the US military is “drunk dude causes damage/hurts someone and flees back to base where he will never see any punishment.” It also came at a time when hardline conservatism and patriotism (bordering on jingoism) is increasingly popular in Japan. Japan basically went “fucking do it then.”
I was immediately reminded of the g20 summit in Hamburg (not because of America) Well…