Obama administration should join move to ban cluster weapons!

[LongTomH]

From Mathew Bolton's op-ed in The Guardian UK: Ban these pernicious weapons

There were some noticeable absentees as 100 countries gathered in Oslo this week to sign a treaty banning cluster munitions. While 18 of the 26 Nato countries were on board, the world's superpowers – the US, Russia and China – were all no-shows.

Why does the US, with its long tradition of human rights and international moral leadership, refuse to join this cause? Cluster munitions, after all, are inherently indiscriminate weapons, scattering "bomblets" over wide areas and leaving behind deadly "duds" that act as de facto landmines killing civilians long after war ends.

The US stayed away from Oslo partly because the Pentagon is rather attached to its cluster bombs. During the Vietnam war, the US military dumped thousands of them on Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The US also used cluster bombs in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, dismissing the many civilian casualties as collateral damage.

<snip>

Indeed, the Pentagon has long been loath to give up weapons, even seemingly contemptible ones, if they give US troops the slightest battlefield advantage. Despite considerable international consensus that the military value of landmines is outweighed by their devastating humanitarian effects, the Pentagon continues to assert its prerogative to stockpile and deploy mines.

More at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/06/armstrade-obama-white-house

Edited to correct misspelling of 'cluster.'

[tekisui]

1. Yes, he should. Even though his SOS-designate voted against the ban.

[Retired AF Dem]

2. I spent thirty years in the military

And never heard of a cluser weapon.

[AndyTiedye]

3. And "Depleted" Uranium Munitions

Covering another country with nuclear waste ("depleted" uranium) is a war crime!

Stop doing it!

[Meeker Morgan]

4. I wonder what Secretary Gates thinks about this. n/t