Are Cluster Bombs Immoral?
Former US ambassador to Angola, and vice president for multilateral affairs at the International Crisis Group (ICG), Donald Steinberg, has penned an opinion piece in the Christian Science Monitor, reproduced here at the ICG website, urging the Bush Administration to “get on the right side of history” and join legislation put forward by Democratic leaders in Congress to “restrict or eliminate cluster bomblets.”
Steinberg writes:
n the 1990s, the United States did the diplomatic and humanitarian equivalent of shooting itself in the foot over the land mine issue. President Bill Clinton got the anti-land mine campaign moving when he went to the United Nations in 1994. Calling attention to the damage these weapons cause, he stated: “To end this carnage, the United States will seek a worldwide agreement as soon as possible to end the use of all antipersonnel land mines. The United States will lead a global effort to eliminate these terrible weapons and stop the enormous loss of human life.”
Three years later, we were on the outside looking in as the world celebrated the signature of the Ottawa Convention to ban antipersonnel land mines, now signed by every Western Hemisphere country except the US and Cuba, and every NATO member except the US.
Now Steinberg warns that the Bush administration is foolishly following in the Clinton administration’s footsteps, only this time the issue is cluster bombs, not land mines.
What are cluster bombs and why does Steinberg believe that there is a moral imperative to restrict or eliminate their use?
These weapons are dropped from or shot into the sky, separate into dozens of small bomblets, and explode on the enemy. But these weapons have such a wide and uncertain dispersal pattern that, when used in urban areas, they virtually assure that civilians will also be victims. And many bomblets – up to 40 percent in last summer’s fighting in Lebanon, for example – don’t explode on contact, and remain active on the ground after the conflict ends.
Some bomblets are shaped like soda cans; others look like shiny metal balls; and still others are painted an inviting orange. Curious children too often lose their limbs or lives picking them up. Even experienced demolition experts often lose their fight against these weapons: For example, among the first casualties in NATO’s Kosovo peacekeeping operations were experts trying to dismantle unexploded bomblets.
For more information regarding cluster bombs and the effort to have their use eradicated, see this article at the Council on Foreign Relations website. Here is a photograph of the sub-munitions that are contained within the cluster bomb.
As a personal aside, a friend of mine (who was working as a journalist for a Croatian newspaper at the time) was almost killed when one of hundreds of little bomblets exploded near him after a missile attack in the city of Zagreb in 1995. Shrapnel became embedded in his chest and his life was saved following emergency surgery.
