Until the middle of the last century the main victims of war were combatants. Since World War II the main victims of war are innocent civilians. Not just "collateral damage" (the euphemism to hide war crimes). Now there are "weapon systems" designed to be indiscriminate in their effect. The most notorious are cluster bombs, explosive canisters that spew their own small bomblets. Like landmines, they hurt mainly civilians. Like landmines, civilized nations are trying to ban them in modern warfare, just as poison gases have been banned. But the US is not participating. In fact it is actively impeding any agreement:
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.
[snip]
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. (Jody Williams in The Boston Globe via Common Dreams)
Who makes these weapons and orders their use?
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One of my favorite songs. I covered it on my blog making the comparison to Bush as well. With no historical notes, I would have thought this song was written just a couple years ago.
Revere, I think you are mistaken. It is my understanding that civilian casualties have essentially always exceeded the military casualties.
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm
Usually the deaths were from disease and famine not direct effects of weapons.
Who procures these weapons and then orders their use? I think we all know who, the chicken hawks who have never directly experienced war or the privation it causes. Just the vicarious thrill they get from imagining it.
daedaulus2u: You are right and I am wrong. I was thinking of weapon related deaths and you make the perfectly valid point that is the tip of the iceberg. Thank you.
kevin: Yes, you are right. The song goes back to the Freewheelin' album of 1963, so it is from even before the Vietnam escalation which began in August 1964 with the Gulf of Tonkin fraudulent episode. You can read more about the album and everything that was happening at that time in Suze Rotolo's book, A Freewheelin' Time which has just been published. Suze is the young woman on the cover of the album holding BD's arm. Her memoir of those years in Greenwich Village with BD is a wonderful read, honest, generous, sweet and full of the wisdom of distance. I was around those climes in those years and I czn attest to the veracity of all the events and people I knew about personally but there was so much from those years I didn't know about that I learned and benefitted from much there. But this book isn't just for us old geezers who were around then. It is also for your generation. I see a door opening into a creative and exciting new period much like the sixties and it is useful to know about the past to anticipate the dawning future. I highly recommend the book. I got my (two copies) on Amazon here.
Cicero defines war broadly as "a contention by force"; Hugo Grotius adds that "war is the state of contending parties, considered as such"; Thomas Hobbes notes that war is also an attitude: "By war is meant a state of affairs, which may exist even while its operations are not continued"; Denis Diderot comments that war is "a convulsive and violent disease of the body politic;" for Karl von Clausewitz, "war is the continuation of politics by other means", and so on.
Each definition has its strengths and weaknesses, but often is the culmination of the writer's broader philosophical positions.
The officer(s) in question were not disciplined because after review by the theater commander (Gen. T. Franks). He determined that to continue it was in his and that of his subordinates minds, "a slaughter." Indeed it was as we had killed as many in a week as we did in all of Desert Storm. As the defense of Baghdad began, the officers of the Iraqi Army were shooting people who tried to give up. So it was an ideological war up to that point and perhaps a response to an attack on the US. It became an economic one and still is today. If Iraq falls into the hands of Al Qaeda or the Iranians, 200 dollar a barrel oil isnt far off. We cannot fail.
But when to use cluster munitions? This isnt like using a Durandal on a runway for deprivation, these bombs are designed to kill large troop formations. Some are filled with basically bird shot and its flung out by 5 and 10 pound charges and bigger. It literally shreds your opponent and I for one wouldnt want it to happen to anyone.
But who orders it? Its a decision by a joint ground air command to use what are referred to as large bore weaponry. It could instead be a Paladin MLRS system strike that is designed to be an airburst and it shoots downward and kills tank formations. Or good old artillery that was so effective with the German 88's in the Battle of the Bulge. All are designed to keep an enemy on the defensive, under cover while you are advancing. Air power coming into being in WWII created the Dresden Raid type of attacks. Those were the firebombings of German cities and the demoralization of the populations and finally the actual targeting of civilians by the major powers as those populations were factory workers in munitions and side industries feeding them.
In the case of Iraq there were no munitions factories but there was a sizeable population that supported Saddam. They were pressed into combat service without uniforms and thats a violation of the Geneva. A civilian with a weapon is an automatic shot...terrorist. But, we also had the Revolutionary Guards and they were interspersed with them. So who to shoot or bomb? That question was answered at about the one week mark and the ROE's changed to shoot any armed civilian and of course any regular army troop. Any hostile action was to be responded to with devastating force...Shock and Awe.
That turned into a media frenzy when the S. and Awe became awe shucks, we are bombing the one guy with a 500 pounder and taking out a city block. So it became a politically correct war almost immediately. They of course could just surrender but this is not in their nature so the media started to define the ROE. Then the final assault on Baghdad.... They were still shooting and we were still responding with massive bombings and when the BDA's started coming in, they saw women, children, regulars and irregulars piled up like cordwood. Thats when the commanders started their pleas to stop. There wasnt any command structure in the Iraqi government for them TO surrender to us, so we did it for them.
Wars are fought for many reasons and the guys that make the decisions IMO should never have their hands tied for any one particular one, maybe though a group of them. If the ROE's are so onerous as they were in Vietnam, its better never to get into one. Iraq started over WMD's and they were there. The UN verified ones simply dissapeared and some say into Syria.
Current events from last year show that Syria with North Korean technical assistance and Iranian money were in the process of fitting WMD's in the quantity that Saddam had onto their missiles. The idea being to gaggle them with some six hundred inbounds and there simply is no way to interdict that many missiles even with their ARROW systems or PATRIOT-III. Their intent was obvious. Rain them down on Haifa, Tel Aviv and they would fold like a house of cards. I agree with that assessment. On the other hand, WWIV would have been initiated within 15 minutes of that.
We are still in the Cold War--WWIII for now. Lets try to keep it that way.
Who makes these weapons and who makes the decisions to use them Revere?
We do.
I think that is an incorrect assumption that the leaders of our country do not know the horrors of war, 31/100 members of the last senate were veterans, John McCain is most certainly a hawk, and is also most certainly familiar with the horrors of war. While I will agree that war has become a video game to most Americans, not something real and ugly, which costs lives, blood and body parts of those serving, and those who get caught in between those who are shooting at one another. The real danger of cluster munitions is not the large foot print, for they are not targeted at, or even relatively near civilians, it's the UXO left over, much like landmines that are so dangerous, for modern cluster munitions, the sub munitions are painted bright yellow, and kids like brightly colored toys. That is the UGLY side effect of a very useful tool in our arsenal. I for one do not want to remove a fairly low cost, very effective weapon, that can eliminate the threat from massed troops in the open, non or lightly armored vehicles and soft structures, it's just too damned handy. They don't have much use in MOUT which is what is currently happening, which is really the main reason they haven't been used since early on, there are no more massed troop formations to fight. So, who is using them? Those who are supposed to make that decision, those who are trained to make that decision, and those who actually understand the implications of that decision. Not an armchair general. We train and condition our soldiers and officers highly, and place a large burden on them, and there is a cost associated with making those decisions, and they pay it. Read Col Dave Grossman's On Killing.
It is not an assumption. The "leaders" of the Bush administration who lied the US into war did not serve in combat.
http://www.awolbush.com/whoserved.html
McCain did serve. Bush trashed him in 2000. It was Rove's push poll that lost him a crucial primary by tricking racists into thinking McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child (he had adopted an orphaned child with dark skin).
Yeah, I've always been impressed with the sheer evil of that. Using a push poll to lie about the other side gets you a point for evil, appealing to racism gets you a couple more evil points. But the winner has to be turning a good action of McCain's (adopting a Bangledeshi orphan) into a point on which to attack him. I guess you must need a hell of a thick skin to be involved in politics, because I've never seen how McCain got back to any kind of good terms with Bush after that election.
A big problem with all these arguments w.r.t. different weapons systems, to me, is that I simply have no idea how to tell whether they're valuable or necessary as military tools. If cluster bombs are something we really need, the situation is very different from the one in which they're something we kinda find useful occasionally. (A parallel case is nuclear weapons. I don't see how we could do without them, living in a world where others have them or could have them relatively quickly. But they're as nasty as any weapon you can imagine.)
If you want to get a better idea of why Bush/Religious and especially neocon criminals went to war, look up the BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares". The war had nothing to do with the geo-political situation, it was entirely based on fascist neocon ideology. The film is on the Internet Archive.
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
These guys wanted war for war's sake, to put it simply.
To war or not to war?
The wonders of the cluster bomb and deterrence of our enemies. No one ever thinks about that, now do they?
Cluster bombs are truly effective and horrific killers. Yes, they have potential to do a tremendous amount of collateral damage if deployed around civilian areas. If deployed around military targets, they kill and demoralize the enemy troops and can shorten a battle for the army that deployed them.
It is for these reasons that the U.S. military wants to keep the cluster bombs. They shorten battles and demoralize the enemy to the point where they are ready to give up the battle.
The United States has no policy of deploying cluster bombs in civilian areas. If it happens it is a regrettable incident and a mistake. However, the world cannot point to a pattern of this happening as a potential policy.
Contrary to what the United States does, our enemy the Russians have had no problem deploying cluster bombs in Chechnya in civilian areas. Or when they were the Soviet Union, they deployed them in Afghanistan in civilian areas without a thought. Now where is the bleeding heart liberal outcry about those cluster bombs? Or is it because it is fellows socialists and they get a pass? It is ok for fellow socialists to deploy cluster bombs on civilians, but if the United States wants to keep them in it's arsenal, then you must protest? What hypocrites!
You seriously don't think your fellow socialists will give up their cluster bombs now do you? They violate every arms treaty they have ever signed. They are held in check only because the United States still has weapons that they fear, and we have those weapons forward deployed close to their borders in the countries of our allies. Must we move those weapons out of those countries and leave our allies vulnerable? Do this just because you don't like the United States tactics over the Cluster Bomb treaty? What is next? Remove our forward deployed troops? What stops the Russians then from invading those countries?
Get real people. The Russians are a threat to world peace and so are the Chinese. Unless the United States maintains a strong posture militarily, we will open the door to their aggression and millions upon millions of innocent people will suffer.
bigdude: Of course the use by anyone of cluster bombs is wrong. Including the Russians (who aren't socialists, even officially, BTW). But that is immaterial; their occupation and oppression of Chechnya is no better than ours of Iraq and Afghanistan or the Chinese of Tibet. You seem to think that anyone who opposes Bush or the US policy more generally must automatically approve of Russians or Chinese. That is just partisan junk logic and everyone knows it. Most of us are sick to death of that crap.
> A parallel case is nuclear weapons. I don't see
> how we could do without them, living in a world
> where others have them or could have them
> relatively quickly
strange, that people now don't even "see" how we could
do without them.
Remove them, ban them worldwide, controlled by UNO
and your "where others have them" vanishes.
It's as easy as that.
Oops, USA doesn't want that, it thinks it has a
nuclear advantage (still) - well, wait some centuries.
Not if, but when...
Anon, it is not that easy, it is a pipe dream, a wonderful one Ill admit, but still a pipe dream. I grew up during the cold war and remember well the thoughts of annihilation, scared me bad enough that I had to go sleep with my mom a couple times as a kid. I would truly love for my daughter to not have to go through that. So, who is going to enforce this ban, and how, yes, the U.S. et al could dispose of their nukes, expensive proposition, who is going to pay for it? And how are you going to enforce it on a nation who wants them, say, Iran (not saying to do or dont, but how are you going to enforce this ban on a nation unwilling to be cooperative). And who is going to pick up the bill for that?
> Anon, it is not that easy, it is a pipe dream, a wonderful one Ill admit, but still a pipe dream.
it only requires the sincere will of the nuclear powers.
> I grew up during the cold war and remember well the thoughts of annihilation, scared me bad
> enough that I had to go sleep with my mom a couple times as a kid. I would truly love for my
> daughter to not have to go through that. So, who is going to enforce this ban, and how, yes,
UNO
> the U.S. et al could dispose of their nukes, expensive proposition, who is going to pay for it?
very cheap as compared to maintainance thereof. First, put all nukes under UNO-command,
then most are slowly destroyed or just degrade.
> And how are you going to enforce it on a nation who wants them, say, Iran (not saying to do
> or dont, but how are you going to enforce this ban on a nation unwilling to be cooperative).
as it was done in the past, see South Africa. Political,economical,militarical pressure
in this order. But by UNO=world consent not political blocks.
> And who is going to pick up the bill for that?
the nations. Some small percentage of their military budget.
Later hopefully some world-paliament of some "world-government for foreign affairs of
autonomuous nations" or such. World-Union like the European Union.
Actually I had an idea on how to enforce the no first use of nuclear weapons. An idea that each nation could implement unilaterally and which if enough nations implemented it would be (I think) extremely effective.
What I propose is:
1. A state outlaws the unauthorized use of nuclear weapons within its territory, declaring it a crime under their domestic laws, constituting an attack, and an act of war. They further declare that an act that causes the release of fission products into the atmosphere above their country constitutes a crime against humanity and a war crime due to the adverse impact on their civilian populations. (There might be a threshold for fission product levels that trigger it. Within country use would, but so might use in adjacent countries. Defensive use is problematic to define and account for.)
1.a. As a war crime, any order to use nuclear weapons is an illegal order. The person(s) issuing that order, as well as any person(s) who carried out that order are guilty of a war crime, and must be surrendered to an international tribunal for trial.
2. The state forms a treaty with all other ratifying states, that when a state uses an unauthorized nuclear weapon on its territory, that all ratifying states declare a state of economic war against the attacking state, and that all tangible assets of the nuclear weapon using state national government, state and municipal governments, all nationals, and all national corporate entities incorporated in that nuclear weapons using state and held within the ratifying state are expropriated immediately.
Tangible assets include ships in transit, aircraft, cargo, buildings, military equipment, military bases, industrial plants, merchandise, inventory, fishing vessels, buildings, personal property, deposits in banks, stock in corporations, and embassies. Equipment with only military use would be disabled and sold as scrap (armored vehicles, munitions, armaments, fighter aircraft). Dual use equipment (trucks, transport aircraft) would be sold as such. Nationals out of country would be returned with just the clothes they are wearing.
2.a. Assets seized by ratifying states are used to rebuild the attacked state and to compensate nationals and corporations of ratifying states injured by that nuclear attack. Rebuilding contracts to be administered by the state where the assets are seized. The nation seizing the assets is allocated 10% of the seized assets as compensation for implementation (and fission product exposure). To the extent there are any assets left over, those are used to fund humanitarian work in countries with a per capita GDP less than or equal to the seizing state. Those contracts to be administered the same way.
4. During the state of economic war between a ratifying state and the attacking state, an automatic 50% duty on all imports and exports between the ratifying state and the nuclear weapons using state is imposed. The state of economic war extends for 5 years from the date of the surrender of the perpetrators to the international tribunal. The duty going for rebuilding, any excess going for humanitarian aid in less developed nations. Any nation not imposing a 50% duty is subject to a 50% duty themselves. The nation collecting the duty would administer the contracts for the rebuilding and humanitarian aid, collecting 10% as compensation.
5. Reparations to the nation attacked with the nuclear weapon to the extent they are not covered by 3 and 4. This might be dropped. 5 years of confiscatory economic ruination might be enough. The 5 year period might be shortened for good behavior, perhaps how cooperative they are in demilitarizing bases and equipment.
Discussion:
This proposal puts the onus on preventing first use of nuclear weapons on those with the most to lose, those with assets. Those also happen to be the ones who have the most where-with-all to prevent such an occurrence from happening. Most people who are wealthy acquired or retained that wealth through rational behavior. Presumably they will attempt to retain their wealth through rational behavior also.
This is something that the World could implement without resorting to military force. It would reward nations without nuclear weapons, because their nationals, and corporations incorporated there do not have to worry about their assets being forfeited. It would make nations with nuclear weapons a risky place to invest because any investor could lose their entire investment if that nations political leaders use nuclear weapons.
It doesnt cost anything to implement. All it requires is enacting legislation. The expropriation, rebuilding, and humanitarian efforts could all be set up only after a use of nuclear weapons. Those programs are self-funded through the assets expropriated.
This doesnt violate the sovereignty of any nation. Any nation is still free to use nuclear weapons, however if they do, every asset not within their borders is forfeited. Every asset that they do not have sovereign control over. If a nation decides it needs to use nuclear weapons within its own territory for defensive purposes, this would be allowed.
Cluster bombs are a way of overcoming an inherent weakness in bombs, the inverse square law. Bombs overkill the middle and don't do enough damage at the edges By launching a closter of bomblets one can damage more soft targets over a large area than can be done with a big bomb. Problem is civilians are soft targets, so using a cluster munition can cause damage to more people than a single large shell or bomb. The big sell would vaporize a house and its occupands and kill a few people nearby, but at the other end of the block there might be no deaths and minor damage. A cluster munition will kill or wound many over the entire area. I commend that commander for his unwillingness to use them in a civilian area.
The other problem with cluster bombs is that some of the munitions fail to detonate, and thus present some of the same problems that landmines do. In fact, some Cold War era cluster bombs were designed so that some submunitions would not detonate. The idea was to drop them on forward air bases. Most bomblets would detonate and put so many little craters in the runway that the planes can't use it. The remaining munitions would prevent repair crews from fixing the runway.
When used in the right contexts, I don't think the use of cluster munitions is wrong. And yes, there was plenty of outcry from us bleeding hearts about the Soviets using them in Afghanistan. I was also a little unnerved they were used so heavily by NATO forces in the Balkans.
Perhaps the US would agree to the treaty if we could agree that we would use only those clusters that had about a one in five hundred failure rate?
I would love to be a pacifist, but deep down I believe there are some kinds of intrests that can only be served by warfare. And if one is going to make war it will sometimes require being nasty. Though I have never served, I am no chickenhawk. I believe the Iraq war was both a strategic blunder and a humanitarian nightmare. I'm just a humble progressive war nerd.
I have been told (during an on-site study tour) that in 500BC, besiegers used forced local civilian labour to build earth siege ramps against the walls of cities. The defenders would attack the enslaved labourers throwing rocks and shooting arrows. I think there are records of them tearfully doing so, since they were their own community. The weapons used in those sieges probably killed many more civilians than combatants, since the invading and defending armies were relatively small semi-professional groups.
There was a good political cartoon about the rapprochement that McCain and Bush are having.
http://news.yahoo.com/edcartoons/tomtoles;_ylt=Am4MEMRUbTAzK3amrTSACSYx…
daed: LOL. Thanks.