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TechnoratiUS Subverts The Cluster Bomb Ban
DUBLIN - The diplomatic conference to ban cluster munitions - bomb canisters that open and spew hundreds or thousands of bomblets that harm both civilians and soldiers - is being held in Dublin. The United States is not participating in the deliberations but it is making its presence painfully known.
In the 1997 treaty that banned land mines, the United States was no friend either. The difference is that the United States was openly and actively involved before, until it walked out on the last day, after being unable to force acceptance of its "negotiating package," which would have gutted that treaty.
For too many years, multilateral negotiations - unless related to free trade - have seemed to be anathema to the United States. This time, rather than risk open opposition as it had with the land mine treaty, the United States opted for strong and unrelenting pressure behind the scenes of the cluster treaty negotiations.
The United States is making no secret of its pressure on allies to weaken the treaty to serve its own interests. One official recently bragged that the United States had "spoken with" more than 110 countries about this treaty. It has told allies that it will not alter its military doctrine, structure, or deployments. It has also threatened that it will not remove its cluster munitions stockpiled in countries that do join the treaty - even though it did remove land mines stockpiled in countries that are part of the Mine Ban Treaty.
Much of the US pressure has been to get allies to either remove or seriously weaken a key provision in the draft treaty that prohibits governments from "assisting, inducing, or encouraging" states that do not join the treaty with any act that is prohibited by the treaty. As Tim Shipman wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald, "An official from the US State Department warned that under the treaty, British frontline troops who call in artillery support or air strikes [in Afghanistan or Iraq] from an American war plane, all of which carry cluster munitions, could be hauled into court."
In military jargon, such exaggeration could be called "firing for effect." The US official's warning is not accurate. Mere participation in operations where a US plane might carry cluster munitions is not prohibited, it is only deliberately calling in air strikes to use those cluster munitions that would be.
Many weapons treaties prohibit such assistance, including the Mine Ban Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention. Additionally, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty include similar provisions. The United States is party to most of those treaties. Its efforts in Dublin are really about undermining the treaty itself.
US allegations that the cluster ban treaty would undermine NATO are another obfuscation. The ban on land mines has not affected NATO. Belgium, which unilaterally banned cluster munitions in 2006, said its ban has in no way affected participation in NATO operations. In fact, a government official in Dublin told me a recently completed internal NATO study found that joint operations would not be affected by NATO members signing a cluster munitions treaty with the prohibition on assistance intact.
If the United States wants to try to weaken the future cluster munitions ban treaty it should do its own dirty work and not hide behind its allies.
One commander in the invasion of Baghdad in 2003 refused to order his men to use clusters. He recognized not only that it was unlawful to fire indiscriminate weapons into densely populated civilian areas, but also that he would put his own troops at risk as they later had to move through those clusters. In fact, the United States has not used cluster munitions in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, nor in Afghanistan since the invasion in 2002.
Banning cluster munitions is not antimilitary, it is pro-humanity. Banning cluster munitions protects civilians and US soldiers. The United States should stop bullying its allies and join in the work to ban cluster munitions now.
Jody Williams was the founding coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines for which she and the ICBL received the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. She is also the founding chair of the Nobel Women's Initiative.
© 2008 The Boston Globe
15 Comments so far
Show Allcontinually amused, have you seen BUGSY MALONE? I think the child gangsters had custard bombs.
It is scary when rogue nations are so arrogant they think they can apply this sort of pressure in the open with impunity. I'm perversely glad they do move so openly, but that they can, and get-away-with-it, is just shocking. Are we so powerless?
If that's the result and outcome of the 'grand experiment of democracy' then shove representative (US) democracy as the US practices it, out of practice and into history books as just another form of duplicity and deceit.
Cluster bombs are manufacturing disability. End the military industrial complex and dismantle the temples of worship to Mars, the God of War.
The daze of bait-and-switch and bullshit are over. This is the 21st Century. Apple pie will kill you.
The fact that bomblets are typically brightly colored round objects that look like toys, and are thus especially attractive to children, is certainly a diabolical touch.
But that characteristic is only a detail. I mention this because I wouldn't be at all surprised if cluster-bomb manufacturers agreed to design unattractive, uglier versions to reduce the potential child-friendliness.
Or perhaps cover the bomblets with those absurd disclaimer and warning stickers, like the labels Amerikan manufacturers stick all over items like stepladders, automobiles (check your sun visors), and every other damn thing that could potentially cause liability.
I can easily imagine some (Democratic) politician trumpeting this as a breakthrough, a necessary baby step, in eliminating cluster munitions. We got them to put scary skulls-and-crossbones on each bomblet, and we mandated warning labels in the language of the target demographic!
I don't care if they brand Deadeye Dick's sneering visage on each bomblet, which would surely cause innocents to run away screaming. Cluster bombs are an abomination which ought to be streng verboten no matter what they look like.
^^^^ Of course they do. They've said so quite openly. It's called "full spectrum dominance" and it even extends beyond the planet itself.
The hate us for our freedom?
The United States has no right to accuse anyone of terrorism, no matter what they have done, until they fix problems like this. Supporting the indiscriminate firing of cluster bombs, which can ill many innocent and defenseless people is just more proof that the US is an empire that has no regard for the damage it does. Organisations such as the UN are also at fault for not holding the US under scrutiny after all the crimes against humanity the Bush administration has committed. Heartless people who do not care about innnocent people being attacked, harmed, and/or killed do not support the ban. The US government wants to destroy everyone that disagrees with them, and take over the world.
As many readers here have pointed out, Bill Clinton rejected the landmines treaty, along with the international criminal court, and Hillary voted not to restrict cluster bomb usage to areas not populated by civilians. McCain and Clinton seem to echo David Lloyd George's vile remark of more than a century ago, "We must reserve the right to bomb niggers." Not only are these weapons immoral under any rational ethical or moral theory of just war, they are horrifically expensive because of medical and removal costs and counterproductive because they inspire outrage and anti-Americanism. Many retired flag officers support the ban, as do all people with consciences.
the bomblets look like toys
are they designed to kill children?
isn't there a cheaper way?
the US needs to invent some kind of child strangler to replace these weapons
or maybe poisoned ice cream cones could be dropped with tiny mickey mouse chutes
those kids aren't gonna murder themselves!
Good point jackool58!
We have a toxic mix of Christian conservatives wishing for Armageddon & seeing its fulfillment in the Middle East. The US role is the soulless hack killing for oil & Israel.
How sick is that? We need to get religious dogma out of our courts & government as the framers of the nation intended. In the rush to spend eternity in heaven we are making the Earth pure hell.
The US is the biggest threat to the world. What a joke that we point the finger outward & accuse others of terrorism, when our military threatens the world with total domination militarily & economically. We want a star wars system for preemptive attacks. We have gained a scary control over food supplies & will use it as a tool of persuasion.
As the US has been subverted by the military industrial complex, corporations & their destructive selfish agendas I feel the rest of the world must take down this a-social power structure. Shun the US by stopping all trade with our companies, throw out the 800 or so military bases that are generally unwelcome by the rest of the world, call in all foreign debt, stop trading in the US dollar.
Then restructure the UN getting rid of the so-called Security Council & make it democratic. Of course disband the IMF & World Bank immediately. Once the US is weakened (especially militarily like Japan after WWII), humbled, contrite & has paid reparations for the destruction it has brought to many nations of the world it could rejoin the community of nations.
Larry Gibson
The Important thing about this issue is that The United states of israel and its military base in Palestine , are the Rogue Nations on this planet, they pose the single most immediate threat to world peace.There forein policy basically is "might is right".
You 've got to hand it to them, Israel is a failed state in all sense of the word and yet it controls the most powerful and evil Empire in history,and until the paople of America wake up to that fact and accept what the rest of the world knows,i am afraid that nothing will change,Israel has Uncle Sam do its bidding and the American sheeple follow just like sheep,it is not complex and you don't have to be a rocket scientest to work it out.
But Unfortunately for the rest of the world sheep just follow and the Jewish Lobby continues to control congress and the American mentality,why is that so hard for you people to understand.
So you will continue to send your sons and daughters to be killed and maimed so that the greedy money lenders can accumulate more wealth,how simply can i put it.
They keep selling the "patriotic slogan" and you keep buying it,or is it just that the old saying that "people deserve the government they have" really does apply to The United states of Israel.I think that it does.
You had your chance in 2004 to wake up and you went "AWOL"
And who knows in 6 months time you will probably do the same and elect McCain.Because sheep dont have much to think with.
threats the only card the us has
[The U.S.] has also threatened that it will not remove its cluster munitions stockpiled in countries that do join the treaty ...
Well, I guess the appropriate answer to that threat is quite obvious. As a tennant, you've just violated your lease. So pack up your f___ing military bases and get the hell out completely.
Try as I might, I can never quite find the right words to describe the U.S. self-image in relation to the world's other six billion inhabitants. Arrogance doesn't even come close.
the usa and israel top the list of users of cluster bombs. crimes against the innocent is at the top of their lists.
Belgium [JURIST news archive] has become the first country to criminalize investment in companies that make cluster bombs.
Alliant Techsystems also makes these child maimers.
http://thisworldisnotforsale.com/dawc/myReportOnClusterBombs.html
An Israeli made cluster bomblet, installed with a self-destruct mechanism, was not used by the IDF during the war in Lebanon even though they would have drastically reduced the threat to civilian populations in the target areas. Instead, Israel used cluster bomblets manufactured in the United States which did not have a self-destruct mechanism.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1162378451634&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Google for cluster bomb manufacturers , and you won't easily find links to Lockheed, Raytheon or General Dynamics.
As the responsible parties wolf down their Memorial Day meat, rest assured all is ok in the banks and investments of the killing class. Their bottom lines depend on the patriotic killing terror of bomblets. Women and children in Iraq were slaughtered for the bottom line, and that's nothing to think about this holiday.