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July 16, 2008 at 18:45:01
Promoted to Headline (H2) on 7/16/08: by Bob Koehler (Posted by bobkoehler) Page 1 of 2 page(s) |
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The moral center of humanity slowly asserts itself. Only the most powerful are too afraid to join. You may have missed the news: At the end of May, 111 nations, including, at the last minute, Great Britain, showing the world the power of an unleashed conscience, agreed to an international ban on cluster bombs, surely one of the cruelest and, given the nature of war today, most unnecessary weapons in modern arsenals. Among those not endorsing the treaty and MIA at the conference in Dublin where it was debated were Russia, China, Israel and, to the surprise of no one, the United States of George Bush, that increasingly isolated moral rump state of which so many are so ashamed. Indeed, the treaty is widely seen as a “diplomatic defeat” for the U.S., so identified is the Bush administration with the sanctity of its WMD. The official U.S. stance on cluster bombs is that they have “demonstrated military utility,” which trumps “the humanitarian concerns of those in Dublin,” which the U.S. nonetheless shares with such passion that, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates explained in a recent policy memo, “by 2018 the military will no longer use cluster weapons with a failure rate greater than 1 percent. In the interim period the U.S. will deplete its existing stockpiles of cluster munitions with a greater than 1 percent dud rate by exporting them to foreign governments that agree not to use them starting in 2018.”
Certainly there is a hellish ingenuity to the cluster bomb, which was designed for use on an open field of battle. A “mother canister,” as it is called, opens in mid-air and releases hundreds of grenade-size bombs that “spew deadly shrapnel over very large swathes of land” when they hit the ground, as explained recently in the Salt Lake Tribune by former munitions researcher Dick Devlin.
And Canadian journalist Gwynne Dyer adds: “If they exploded high enough to let the bomblets scatter properly, a few well-placed cluster bombs or shells could destroy dozens of soft-skinned military vehicles and blunt the attack of an entire mechanized infantry battalion. A few hundred could stop an army corps.”
Of course, we don’t use cluster bombs to disable massing infantries. We haven’t fought that kind of war in over 50 years. We use them now in counterinsurgency warfare, against primarily civilian populations, in such places as Kosovo (U.S.), Afghanistan (U.S., Russia), Lebanon (Israel) and, of course, Iraq (U.S.). We use them, in other words, to shred innocent bystanders.
Oh, and there’s one other feature to these weapons: Up to 20 percent of the bomblets fail to explode on impact. The fight moves on, but the duds stay on the ground until someone — often a child — disturbs them. Then they go off. It might be years later, well after the war is over. But then, wars are never over — and each unexploded bomblet that litters the planet is a metaphor waiting patiently to make this point.
This last property of cluster bombs is the one that has made them a focal point of humanitarian outrage, out of proportion (it almost seems) to the number of deaths that belated detonations have actually caused over the years — worldwide, in the thousands — relative to the total number of people, civilians and otherwise, who are chewed up physically, emotionally and spiritually in the grinding fury and stupidity of humanity’s wars.
The Dublin accord creates a new international convention, to be formally signed in December, that prohibits the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of cluster bombs. While the big geopolitical players, the major devotees and users of this hideous weapon, are not a part of it, they will be affected by it.
For instance, Dyer, echoing other observers on the power of moral persuasion, writes: “Cluster bombs are now stigmatized as immoral and (for most countries) illegal weapons. . . . What the treaty really does is to shift assumptions so that international public opinion will see a country that uses cluster bombs as being in the wrong.”
Great, I say, but let’s expand the context. Banning or stigmatizing the use of cluster bombs will, at best, minimize one specific form of cruelty practiced in warfare. This may be an important step toward a saner, safer world. But too limited a focus could, at worst, bestow a faux-blessing on hellish wars fought with “legal” weapons only.
Governments can always find ways around specific moral strictures. The world banned poison gas after World War I, but World War II gave us the saturation bombing of cities and, ultimately, nuclear weapons.
Cluster bombs are morally preposterous because their long-term consequences reveal the folly of the short-term strategic ends for which they were employed. The principle that makes them wrong also stigmatizes war itself. Let us not stop demanding moral sanity till we get to the heart of our folly.
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Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.
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Few Americans Care About War, Bob.
Ever since the U.S. embarked upon two wars of aggression, I've been asking peace activists why they keep voting for crimes against humanity. Peace isn't on their radar. Yes, they go to rallies and protests, get themselves beaten and arrested, sign dozens of petitions to Congress, but when election time comes, they always vote to authorize war. Yesterday I was handing out flyers at the library when two of the biggest peace activists in San Diego came along. I decided to stop handing out flyers for a few minutes and see if I could talk them into not voting for war. They berated me for not voting for war and said they didn't want to talk to me. They have been involved in the local anti-Blackwater protests and they know as well as I do that Barack Obama is every bit as much committed to crimes against humanity as John McCain. They still intend to vote to give him their mandate to continue the wars of aggression. They also know that the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen, that nothing has changed except for the worse, and that even if Obama wins, we're still likely to get McCain as President. That doesn't faze them. The top investigators of U.S. election fraud, like Greg Palast, Brad Friedman, Richard Hayes Phillips, Bob Fitrakis, and many others, knowing that the 2008 election will be stolen, are still urging people to vote. I have a better idea. I've been asking people to boycott the war by not voting in November. There's a little pledge that some friends helped write, asking people to withhold their mandate from this illegitimate government and instead to work towards implementing the principles you called for in the Creekside Declaration. This is what it says: The United States government has refused to ensure free, fair, honest, transparent elections, and has ignored clear, regular and widespread evidence of election fraud and deception--the political parties and candidates ask for my vote but cannot ensure that my vote is counted. Once elected, officials no longer take my vote into consideration and cannot be held accountable, so my vote is not a voice in government and therefore not a true vote. ---------- You have called for citizen-owned transparent participatory democracy, Bob. You are opposed to war. What do you intend to do in November? What are you encouraging others to do in November? Are you one of those "good Americans" calling for peace but voting for war? Sometimes I'm encouraged, like when I see an article like this. But most of the time I feel like the courageous young martyrs of the White Rose Society in Nazi Germany. I am surrounded by good people who want peace, but they vilify me if I ask them to please stop voting for war. I have many activist friends in Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere who I correspond with online. When they ask me about U.S. politics, I sheepishly explain that most people live in countries and that some countries are better places to live than other countries but that I don't live in a country. I live in a very large lunatic asylum that only calls itself a country. There is no other possible explanation. by Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments) on Thursday, Jul 17, 2008 at 7:20:01 AM  (0+)
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There is no "government."
...there is no "country," only a confederation of corporate fiefdoms where they tell you at the door (if you still have a "job") with a snort that "...this is NOT a democracy." Since the "military" has been "privatized" with mercenary "employees," the yellow ribbons are all part of marketing. For most Mericans, war is jolly fun entertainment on their plasma screens... and "supporting" our "brave troops" with their wide yellow phylacteries show their piety and patriotism to everyone in the subdivision. Only when they are bawling before the ruins of their McMansions, scooping holes in the chem-lawn to bury the ashes of their dead children will they see the difference between war and the Sooper Bowl. It's all about distraction and entertainment... ...until they can be rendered into slaves or fertilizer. by waldopaper (15 articles, 3 quicklinks, 34 diaries, 609 comments [84 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, Jul 17, 2008 at 1:31:53 PM (0+)
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