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vietnam war
Report Details Ongoing Civilian Harm From Banned Cluster Bombs
"The Convention on Cluster Munitions provides a vital framework for ending the immediate and long-term harm and suffering caused by these abhorrent weapons," said one of the treaty's architects.
Sep 09, 2024
The overwhelming majority of cluster bomb casualties last year were civilians, with children making up nearly half of those killed or maimed by remnants of the internationally banned munitions, a report published Monday revealed.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) published its annual Cluster Munition Monitor report, which "details the policy and practice of all countries with respect to the international treaty that prohibits cluster munitions and requires destruction of stockpiles, clearance of areas contaminated by cluster munition remnants, and victim assistance."
That treaty, the landmark Convention on Cluster Munitions, has been ratified by 112 nations. However, numerous countries that are not parties to the agreement—including Myanmar, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, and the United States—continued to use or sell cluster bombs.
"Cluster munitions can be fired from the ground by artillery, rockets, missiles, or mortars, or dropped by aircraft," HRW explained. "They typically open in the air, dispersing multiple submunitions or bomblets over a wide area. Many submunitions fail to explode on initial impact, leaving unexploded duds that can indiscriminately injure and kill like landmines for years, until they are found and destroyed."
The results have been devastating. According to the report, 93% of cluster munition casualties reported by the monitor last year were civilians, while children made up 47% of those killed or wounded by cluster bomb remnants. Children are particularly vulnerable to unexploded cluster bomblets, which are often mistaken for toys.
According to the report, the following countries suffered more than 1,000 cluster bomb casualties in 2023: Laos (7,810), Syria (4,445), Iraq (3,201), Vietnam (2,135), and Ukraine (1,213).
HRW noted that "Russia has used stocks of old cluster munitions and newly developed models in Ukraine since 2022" and that "between July 2023 and April 2024, U.S. President Joe Biden approved five transfers to Ukraine of U.S. cluster munitions delivered by 155mm artillery projectiles and by ballistic missiles."
Meanwhile, unexploded cluster munitions dropped by the United States during the Vietnam War are still killing and maiming people, mostly children. In Laos, where the U.S. dropped more bombs than all sides in World War II combined, as many as 270 million cluster munitions were sprinkled over the country. Unexploded bomblets have killed an estimated 20,000 Laotians since the end of the war. It is believed that less than 1% of unexploded cluster munitions have been cleared in Laos.
The report highlighted some promising developments:
In December 2023, the convention reached a major milestone when Peru completed the destruction of its stockpiled cluster munitions, as it was the last state party with declared stocks to complete this obligation. Bulgaria, Slovakia, and South Africa announced the completion of the destruction of their respective cluster munition stocks in September 2023. These developments mean that member countries have collectively now destroyed 100% of their declared cluster munition stocks, destroying 1.49 million cluster munitions and 179 million submunitions.
However, there were also setbacks, such as legislation in Lithuania approving the Baltic nation's withdrawal from the cluster bomb treaty.
"Lithuania's ill-considered move to leave the Convention on Cluster Munitions stains its otherwise excellent reputation on humanitarian disarmament and ignores the risks of civilian harm," said HRW deputy crisis, conflict, and arms director Mary Wareham, who edited the new report. "It's not too late for Lithuania to heed calls to stop its planned withdrawal."
Speaking more broadly of the new report, Wareham—a joint recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines—said that "the Convention on Cluster Munitions provides a vital framework for ending the immediate and long-term harm and suffering caused by these abhorrent weapons."
"All countries should join and adhere to the convention if they are serious about protecting civilians from these weapons in the face of rising conflict," Wareham added.
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With Regards to the Christening of the USS Patrick Gallagher
Because we strongly believe, nay absolutely know, that the U.S. does not need another warship.
Aug 29, 2024
To Whom It May Concern:
Because I have twice visited the West Bank and know the personal stories of 40 year-old Palestinian men who were imprisoned as boys for simply yelling at Israeli soldiers—and beaten and dehumanized for months before being released without trial;
And because I now know that those horrific, forever haunting experiences were and remain commonplace for Palestinian youth and are symptomatic of a world where, “we (Israelis) believe they are worth more than they” (Palestinians);
And because by paying close attention to non-main-stream American and foreign media I know the horrific truth of Gaza;
And because I have a good sense that when thousands are killed under months of ceaseless bombing and thousands more remain buried under the rubble yet to be found, the crime rises beyond war to become, inarguably, a “genocide”;
And because I know of the influence of AIPAC and U.S. defense industry corporations on U.S. Congress members and, hence, on American foreign policy;
And because I know well that the siege of Gaza could not continue without U.S. cover and support;
And because, as not much more than an adolescent, as a consequence of the fiction fed me by a conventional education, I volunteered to go off to Vietnam;
And because I know that, as a consequence of that war of choice, two to three million Vietnamese were killed in defense of their country---and that 2-3 million others are institutionalized today unable to take care of themselves as 2nd and 3rd generation victims of Agent Orange;
And, because I also mourn the 58,281 Americans commemorated on “the wall”, lost in that war, generally, perhaps, believing the same fiction I had;
And because I know that millions, yes millions, of innocents have died in my lifetime, arguably victims of American wars of choice, endorsed and promoted by the American defense industry, in Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Panama, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Syria, Yemen, etc., (hardly an all-inclusive list);
And because I and others, on many occasions since the Berrigan brothers, in a Prince of Peace Plowshares action on February 12, 1997, have returned again and again to protest other
christenings” at Bath;
And because we strongly believe, nay absolutely know, that the U.S. does not need more warships, but rather that General Dynamics ought to be “converting” to the manufacture of “green” technologies.
It is for these reasons, in the spirit of the “Plowshares” movement, we chose to inconvenience the so-called “christening” attendees on July 27th—that they might give pause to consider the merits of our actions. That they too, might join us in a virtual revolution—to turn away from violence, to demand that our country do the same, to be a force for cooperation among the brotherhood of nations, rather than endorsing endless militarism.
For these reasons I chose to join like-minded fellow citizens in our efforts to make more widely known our nation’s reckless conduct. I proclaim my innocence and will be very pleased to have the opportunity to defend that position in court.
Not in my name!
Dud Hendrick
Deer Isle, Maine
USNA Graduate —1963
USAF Officer — 1963-1967
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From Vietnam to Ukraine: Asking Good Questions About Bad Wars
The establishment keeps coming up with convenient answers, but always to the wrong question.
Aug 11, 2024
In her final moments, Getrude Stein is rumored to have asked, “What is the answer?” No reply came from those gathered around her. She followed up with the retort, “but what is the question?”
The maximalist impulse toward Ukraine is approaching its final act in a similarly unenviable state. It, too, is on its deathbed, and it faces what increasingly resembles a crisis of meaning, fueled not by insufficient resources or flagging political will but by an ill-defined theory of victory.
There could never be perfect unanimity in what was a U.S.-led coalition of around 50 nations, but it can be surmised that the initial goal was to enable Ukraine, through a combination of military aid, sanctions, and diplomatic pressure, to decisively degrade and potentially defeat the Russian military. It became clear around the latter half of 2023 — though it must be said that many observers sounded the alarm bells a good while earlier — that some of the presumptions behind this approach were untenable.
Yet, three years in, this approach remains the dominant paradigm for framing the war in the absence of any clearly articulated alternative strategy.
Despite previous experiences with Russian countermeasures against HIMARS and other Western-supplied systems, the belief persists that Ukraine can tilt the balance of forces in its favor if supplied with the right equipment. Last year, it was Leopard tanks and Patriot missile systems. Now, it’s F-16s. Then there is the larger and more important question of the goals for which these weapons should be used.
Recent assessments urging Ukraine to shift to a defense posture represent a welcome departure from the proposition, thoroughly invalidated by the experience of the failed 2023 counteroffensive, that Ukraine’s military wields the offensive power necessary to expel Russian forces from all of its internationally recognized territory. Such calls reflect the realities of a conflict that has reaffirmed Carl von Clausewitz’s time-tested contention that defense is the stronger form of war and, if heeded much earlier, may perhaps have registered as sound advice.
But this approach unfortunately does not go far enough in acknowledging the severity of factors — military, political, economic, and demographic — working against Ukraine on and off the battlefield. Manpower and firepower are the two currencies with which victory in Ukraine is to be bought — Ukraine’s military faces dire, growing deficits of both. The country is roiled by a demographic downward spiral that will require a generational, whole-of-society effort to redress even if the war was to end today.
Moreover, recent data shows the Ukrainian population’s ironclad unity behind its government’s war aims has all but dissipated, introducing new and unwelcome domestic pressures from which the Zelensky government considered itself immune. A plurality of Ukrainians now favor initiating peace talks with Russia, a measure that has been functionally banned by the Zelensky administration.
There is a sense in which these proposed defensive strategies are even more fraught than earlier maximalist plans — which peaked in popularity following successful Ukrainian advances in late 2022 — to win the war by dealing a crushing blow to the Russians through lightning offensive maneuvers. The “knockout punch” theory of Ukrainian victory, wrongheaded as it turned out to be, can at least be merited with recognizing and seeking to work within the constraints posed by time.
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Invalid emailEnter your emailTalk of a defensive strategy tries to buy Kyiv time it likely doesn’t have, tapping resources it and its Western partners can ill afford, to achieve an end that has yet to be adequately defined. It is, in form and function, an exercise in whistling past the graveyard.
The war cannot be placed in autopilot, as it were, simply by postponing offensive operations and investing in defense. The problem is not only a stark asymmetry in latent power between Russia and Ukraine, but also and especially the asymmetry of vital interests and escalatory potential between Russia and Ukraine’s Western partners.
Yet the debate over whether or not the trends working against Ukraine can be slowed elides a more fundamental question: slowed to what end? If the intention is to buy more time, what is the time for? Is it to prepare for another large-scale counteroffensive to knock Russia out of the war; to slowly defeat Russia in a war of attrition; or to raise costs on Russia such that the Kremlin agrees to negotiations on reasonably propitious terms for Ukraine and the West?
The first two are hardly more realistic than the cavalier assumptions that underpinned the ill-fated 2023 counteroffensive. The latter is dubious at best in light of the trends discussed above.
Recent coverage of the war has captured with harrowing clarity the challenges confronting Ukraine. But this widespread acknowledgement still appears to be obscured behind a wall of political and military assumptions that have not been updated since the latter half of 2022. Too much of the thinking on Ukraine is caught up in refining, adapting, and justifying a dwindling set of tactical measures rather than articulating a realistic end state that preserves Ukrainian sovereignty and advances U.S. interests.
More military aid to Ukraine and additional sanctions on Russia are all too often treated as goals in of themselves rather than as instruments used to shape outcomes on the strategic level.
The American experience has always been underwritten by a kind of decentralized techno-optimism enabling a uniquely entrepreneurial, solution-oriented culture which has made the U.S. a global innovation leader. But this technocratic spirit, though a great boon in all manner of commercial and scientific enterprises, can become a major liability in more obscurantist matters of statecraft, geopolitics, and military strategy.
America’s trademark technical prowess, personified by the brashly confident Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, failed to pierce the fog of war in Vietnam because it proceeded from strategically unsound assumptions about the conflict’s broader dynamics and refused to correct course at key junctures.
The variables at play in Ukraine are undoubtedly quite different, but the potential folly — wading knee deep into a protracted conflict without a realistic theory of victory — is much the same, and the stakes are similarly high.
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