These are not the bad kind of cluster bomb, because they are dropped on and not by official enemies. (photo: US Air Force)
The New York Times has an article today (9/5/13) about a Human Rights Watch report charging Syria’s government with the use of cluster bombs, a “widely prohibited weapon.” Cluster bombs are munitions that release hundreds of miniature explosives; as the Times‘ Rick Gladstone writes, “Each bomblet detonates on impact, spraying shrapnel in all directions and killing, maiming and destroying indiscriminately.”
Gladstone quotes a Human Rights Watch spokesperson calling cluster bombs “insidious weapons that remain on the ground, causing death and destruction for decades.” The reporter goes on to cite the Cluster Munitions Coalition peace group on the deadly effects of these weapons:
The coalition said that children make up one-third of all casualties caused by cluster munitions. It said 60 percent of the total casualties caused by the weapons are civilians going about normal activities.
There’s a Convention on Cluster Munitions signed by 112 countries who have agreed not to use or possess these weapons. Who wouldn’t agree to such a thing? Well, aside from Syria, the article does mention:
There are 85 countries that have not signed the convention, including three permanent members of the Security Council—China, Russia and the United States. Most countries in the Middle East have not signed, including Syria, Israel and Jordan.
Huh—so the country that the New York Times is based in, where most of its readers live, is one of the countries that refuses to sign the treaty banning these horrific weapons? Maybe that’s worth a mention before the eighth of 11 paragraphs.
In fact, readers might be interested to know that not only does the U.S. not ban cluster bombs, it actually uses them—they’ve been used by US forces in Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq, with the most recent target being Yemen. As the Human Rights Watch report notes in a portion not quoted by the Times:
The last reported US use of a cluster munition was in Yemen on December 17, 2009, when one or more TLAM-D cruise missiles loaded with BLU-97 bomblets struck the hamlet of al-Majala in southern Abyan province, causing more than 40 civilian casualties.
But that’s the strange thing about cluster bombs: When they’re used by official enemies, they’re weapons of indiscriminate terror (FAIR Blog, 4/16/11, 1/2/13). When they’re used by the United States, they’re not much worth talking about.
Is the NYT a semi-official organ of the State Department, or an official one?
@ Eric — Well, they did agree to Operation Mockingbird..
Two things on that:
first, it’s appalling a news outlet as “prestigious” as the NYT is able to withstand that which ought to have *buried* any news agency, namely allowing for the CIA to network/promulgate their ideas in and through news stories, essentially disseminating agitprop rhetoric so to back black budgets and covert ops; ops which, mind you, have run amok and which have gotten us into the same fucking mess we are now attempting to fix in the Mid East (see Operation Ajax and Operation Cyclone, for starters, to see how we have radicalized the likes of Iran/OBL).
Second, you reeeeally hafta have a big set a balls on you to name your operation of disseminating propaganda (through a long and storied traditional news outlet like the NYT, no less) “Operation Mockingbird.” I mean, that right there should give you an idea of what sort of nefarious entity we are dealing with, one which both gives zero fucks about spewing propaganda and also, just to add insult to injury, names its operation after a passerine bird that simply mimics the songs of others…
Up next: DOG BITES MAN.
It is a warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting and are not divided by any genuine ideological difference.
This is not to say that either the conduct of war, or the prevailing
attitude towards it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous.
On the contrary, war hysteria is continuous and universal in all countries, and such acts as raping, looting, the slaughter of children, the reduction of whole populations to slavery, and reprisals against prisoners which extend even to boiling and burying alive, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one’s own side and not by the enemy, meritorious. But in a physical sense war involves very small numbers of people, mostly highly-trained specialists, and causes comparatively few casualties. The fighting, when there is any, takes place on the vague frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only guess at, or round the Floating Fortresses which guard strategic spots on the sea lanes. In
the centres of civilization war means no more than a continuous shortage of consumption goods, and the occasional crash of a rocket bomb which may cause a few scores of deaths. – 1984 THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM
by Emmanuel Goldstein
This says it all, we ignore the signs at our own peril, but we really need to relook at ‘war’. It is become nothing more than chess for the uber-riche.
Thanks for this. For more on U.S. warmongering and hypocrisy, please see warmonger.us. We must stop the madness.
The short answer is simple: REMOVE ALL PSYCHOPATHS FROM POWER!
Par for the NYT. It’s made pro-U.S. gov’t bias an art form. I wonder if having to report the NSA stories isn’t making them a little crazy…
Well who can stand up for any bullet on up to a nuke designed to kill people?Often innocent people?But the article does not give any information at all why this weapons system was developed.Certainly it was never intended to be used against a civilian hamlet.Read a bit on why and what this weapons system was designed to do….and its intended application.Then move on to misuse…..and unforeseen(or foreseen)consequences of collateral loss of life.Cluster bombs for instance are very effective at attacking enemy airfields.It “seeds” the field causing great damage and hampering reconstruction.Like any bullet or weapons system that works well it will be hard to remove from our arsenal or the Russians for instance.
@michael e
That’s an incredibly naive view of weapons designers. Do you seriously expect people to believe that when U.S. generals sit down with Raytheon executives they say, “We want a bomb that can destroy enemy airfields,” but then add, while wringing their hands, “But only if it can’t possibly be used to hurt civilians!”? Or that in the course of designing something like a cluster bomb, not one of the dozens or hundreds of people working on the project ever thinks, “Gee, this could do some real damage to soft things… like… hmm… people!”? Do you yourself seriously believe that–that weapons designers are either stupid fools or benign angels?
Of course they know what they’re doing! The point is, they’re ok with it, and they even pursue weapons that can be justified as “anti-airfield” but in reality can be used against anything. (Which only proves that even generals and weapon designers are human, too, and also have a psychological need for a positive self-image, thus the rationalization of terror weapons as having strict military-to-military uses.)
The proof is in the simple and obvious fact that these weapons are *constantly* used in civilian areas, by every military that uses them, the U.S. chief among them.
I’d recommend reading about Oppenheimer’s clear and explicit knowledge of what the nuclear bomb that he was creating would be used for (annihilating civilians) and his realization of the depths of moral evil he had sunk to. These people know very, very well what they’re doing.
@Tom Saltsman
That’s a tall order when the institutional structures we have — competitive markets and private profit chief among them — encourage “psychopaths” to run for office… or at least compel “psychopathic” decisions once they’re in office.
The point is, even if you could “remove all the psychopaths from power” (and I have no idea how one would go about doing that), the structures that allowed and enabled people that value power, wealth and privilege would still be in place. You’d still have a tiny but enormously wealthy group of people who basically own the country, and use their wealth and power to make sure that government policy reflects their interests. You’d still have labour markets that treat people like products and crush hope and talent and capability on a daily basis. You’d still have ecological insanity driven by corporate bottom lines.
If you only change who sits on the throne, you might get a kinder and gentler king, but he’ll still be a king at the top of an empire.
Focus on the structures; they’re far more important than the individuals that sit on top of them.
Andre Im not saying that.When they sit down to implement a new system -they are developing for things that worked not as well in that type of engagement in the past..Cluster bombs were originally designed for use against massive soviet tank battalions that would be used to enter Europe in the event of war.This was during the cold war.Also a prime use would of been shutting down warsaw pact airfields(as i stated).As with any system it is designed to Kill.Kill and destroy intended targets.Now to your question do they consider it could kill innocents.As with any weapon system from A to Z Yes.Yes of course.Now do they intend it to kill innocents?Civilians?I would say that is a bizarre thought, yet deserves a solid NO as an answer.Unless we return to total war as in WW2 with carpet bombing, or even Hanoi …. this method it is a complete waste in the allocation of resources.And certainly we have more terrible weapons that could do that job effectively.The use of mines for instance is to interdict enemy movement.Not children on the way to school six months after the conflict has moved on.Yet……You are angry that it has been used against civilians.That is untrue.If you are angry that the damn things always kill civilians you are of course right.
The use of mines for instance is to interdict enemy movement.Not children on the way to school six months after the conflict has moved on. – Micheal e
And yet they continue to use them, and allow that to happen anyway, claiming that it would be too hard to ‘remove them’. In other words, like all war criminals they have lost their humanity and continue to do things that we punished other for doing. If I, in my profession, use a chemical or compound that is know to cause harm to people in an inappropriate manner, even if the intent was ‘for the good’ I am still subject to prosecution for criminal liabilities for the misuse. In using a weapon intended for use against military machines and personnel on civilians in civilian areas, is still a criminal misuse of that tool. You are still not allowed to use unjacketed bullets to shot people, even in the middle of a conflict; it is still a crime.
I am sure the Germans, the Russians, the Chinese, and any other country who has done similar atrocities all attempt to justify the means according to the end, but in the end it is still a Criminal, making criminal decisions, and committing crimes against humanity.
Pad I agree with you in context.That being.. any weapon be it machete, or mines, being used to kill innocents- is a war crime.But bombs deployed for use against enemy forces that kill innocents is a very different thing.The very idea that weapons designed for one purpose are not subject to collateral damage is a spurious belief.But is it all a war crime?Well to the Amish who believe that if you take a gun into your hand -you take a gun into your heart.It is.Any bullet made is a thought to kill.I wont even argue that.I will say I do not believe it is our governments aim to kill or would innocent people.But until war and conflicts end……it will go on and on and on
What else would you expect from a country that produces cretins like the bush and the cheney, homegrown Nazis that tortured, rendered, and murdered prisoners of war with impunity? The Obama administration would not consider for a moment holding our ex-president and his vice president accountable: it’s called American exceptionalism! Be proud to come from such a magnanimous nation but for heaven sakes do not write to your president or to congressional members and question this sacred policy!
So…the real issue in this article isn’t that the NYTimes failed to mention that the USA uses cluster bombs, but that it appeared in the 8th paragraph out of 11 paragraphs?
Funny thing about this article: It failed to mention that the USA still uses cluster bombs until the 5th out of 6 paragraphs.
So…how is this article better than the NYT article which mentions the fact earlier, proportionally, in its story??