By guest author, Marc Garlasco
If the devil is in the details then Satan is hard at work here. We’ve gathered at the home of the Gaelic Games to write a major new piece of international law. Here in the massive Croke Park Stadium in Dublin, nearly 1,000 diplomats and campaigners are thronging the chilly halls to hammer out the final text of a treaty banning cluster munitions. The United Kingdom is one of the lynchpin nations here, but they are clinging to their last cluster munitions and have thoroughly isolated themselves. Their delegation is doing all it can to defend the CRV-7 cluster rockets and it looks like they might just leave if they are not allowed to keep them. Why hold out for these and their M85s that failed so miserably in Basra in 2003? Part of the answer is the invisible elephant in the room, the absent United States whose interests the UK seems hell-bent on defending here. It's also the UK Ministry of Defence dictating policy to the government, supporting some nonexistent “need” to support joint NATO operations - which is funny since in Afghanistan, NATO is not allowed to use cluster munitions.
But at least the UK showed up. The US (along with China, India, Israel, Pakistan and Russia) has refused the invitation to attend, and is instead issuing alarmist briefings in Washington claiming that a ban on cluster munitions would stop the US military from helping out in humanitarian relief operations. This treaty models the land mine ban – the US has never signed on to that either, yet has managed to continue its involvement in joint humanitarian operations, so there’s no reason to believe this would be any different.
Why are we here? These weapons are indiscriminate killers. I walked through Basra in 2003 after British cluster munitions rained hot death upon the town, killing and maiming civilians. After the war, the carnage continued as children picked up the many unexploded duds; the lucky went to hospital for amputations, the rest are long buried. After Israel saturated Lebanon with 4 million cluster munitions in 2006, the world finally decided these weapons should be outlawed, and after two years of negotiating we are in the endgame. The UK is playing a critical role. As the closest ally of the United States, a member of NATO, and the single largest user of clusters at this conference, what the UK does influences many. Up to now the influence has been perceived as negative, but Gordon Brown’s statement gives us new hope: he opened the door to the possibility of a major change in policy. Instead of making a Faustian pact, he can take back the soul of the negotiations and show Britain is truly great.
Marc Garlasco is a Senior Military Analyst with Human Rights Watch
It is both sad, and shameful, that the US, Israel, Russia, China and Pakistan are not present at these talks. The first three named, have all used cluster bombs in civilian areas, and obviously want to continue doing so. Meanwhile, Israel, India and Pakistan have not signed up to the Non Proliferation Treaty, despite having nuclear arsenals.
We in the UK, are there, to defend the "rights" of our big bully friend the US, who can flout the Geneva Convention, make a mockery of imposing UN sanctions on other countries (Iran for instance), and make a habit of declaring war on other countries (too many to name).
It is time to distance ourselves from the "special relationship", because it only serves to isolate us from the rest of the World.
Cluster bombs are an obscenity, they target civilians, and will cause fatalities and horrific injuries years later (civilians in Vietnam, Laos are still being killed and injured, as a result of millions of US cluster munitions). Anyone using cluster bombs should be tried for war crimes, and sentenced to death.
Posted by: AndyUK | Thursday, 22 May 2008 at 07:28 PM
"I walked through Basra in 2003 after British cluster munitions rained hot death upon the town, killing and maiming civilians."
Well, let me see, these would have been laid when that miserable hypocrite, Ruth Kelley was mucking around government, proclaiming her faith and weeping crocodile tears over the unborn. Of course her pitiful cries about the right-to-life didn't extend to the Iraqi children she sentenced to death or mutilation by voting for war under the incompetent direction of Bush-Cheney. While I generally applaud the advancement of women in all areas of political life, Kelley and her sister in cowardice, Jacqui Smith, have set their sex's cause back by years, if not decades through their spineless adherence to Blairite/Brownian quasi-fascist orthodoxy.
"Instead of making a Faustian pact, he can take back the soul of the negotiations and show Britain is truly great."
National greatness requires great and courageous statesmen. Given the moral and intellectual pygmies we have scattered thickly as flies on a carcass throughout the governments of the world during the present time of global emergency, I wouldn't hold your breath on this score. Brown will do the bare minimum to scrape through this dilemma and weasel out of any commitments afterwards. The man's more wind and bluster than a band of bagpipes.
Posted by: Macander | Thursday, 22 May 2008 at 08:19 PM
Why not outlaw all weapons of agression? The only weapons that any country may hold in it's armoury should be just those required for self defence. Just as wars of agression are illegal, under various international treaties, so should weapons of agression also be illegal.
The human race has reached a point when the whole idea of war has become far to destructive, even without resorting to the use of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan are going to face a deadly and painful future thanks to our use of Depleted Uranium shells, as well as cluster bombs. Ultimately we too will also pay price.
We may not destroy the world but we can certainly make it unfit for humans and many other lifeforms to inhabit it.
Posted by: flipped | Thursday, 22 May 2008 at 08:26 PM
Macander -"National greatness requires great and courageous statesmen. Given the moral and intellectual pygmies we have scattered thickly as flies on a carcass throughout the governments of the world during the present time of global emergency, I wouldn't hold your breath on this score."
Abolutely brilliant!!
Where indeed have all the statesmen gone? All we have left in their place are shallow "celebrity" seeking imbeciles, who care only of their own legacies and image, of how history will portray them in the future.
Posted by: AndyUK | Thursday, 22 May 2008 at 08:27 PM
"Why not outlaw all weapons of agression? The only weapons that any country may hold in it's armoury should be just those required for self defence."
I quite agree. And when countries refuse to abide by this and build up stocks of "weapons of aggression", we can teach them what for by asking then nicely to stop and then throwing frozen Yorkshire Puddings at them if they refuse.
Problem solved. Why, oh why, won't our statesmen act on this issue when really it's all so very simple?
Posted by: Anthony | Thursday, 22 May 2008 at 08:35 PM
Anthony, it's easy to be sarcastic but the reality is that the biggest threat to the human race is it's own stupidity. The weapons now held by various nations are more than enough to render this planet totally unihabitable. Both the US and Russia have between them around 20,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled. Far far worse than even them are the stockpiles of biological weapons that are held by the US, Russia, Israel and god only knows what other countries. They have been described as the poor man's nuclear weapons as they are very cheap to make and far more dangerous. Think of a genetically modified Yersinia pestis(Black Death), Spanish Influenza(1919) or Ebola.
Albert Einstein warned us we have reached this point over 60 years ago, and many other scientists have told us that mankind is facing extinction unless we take steps to prevent our own demise at our own hands.
Posted by: flipped | Thursday, 22 May 2008 at 08:58 PM
War is pornographic in any form. Cluster bombs ??? For heaven's sake (literally), how pornographic can you get? Remember the naked Vietnamese girl fleeing from the monstrous Napalm? Need we say more? Bombs Away.
Posted by: ratog | Friday, 23 May 2008 at 08:22 AM
ratog: "War is pornographic in any form. [You forgot to insert several exclamation marks here]"
I think you ought to take a few deep breaths. Unless you get your jollies watching people being maimed and killed in very chaotic circumstances, I respectfully submit that war is not pornographic.
Sex and violence are not connected, and whatever the Americans may think, sex is not worse than violence. The former is generally characterised by people being rather nice to one another (or at least offering each other and interested third parties pleasurable experiences in exchange for filthy lucre). The latter, rather the opposite (albeit, filthy lucre is in there to; generally being earnt by those not being killed and maimed, nor even fighting).
Let's not confuse the two, eh? The world's in a big enough pickle as it is.
Posted by: Macander | Saturday, 24 May 2008 at 12:20 AM
There is no winner at war.
Humanity always lost against to war.
Nationalism is ok but racism is a ruin.
Best regards http://www.cimbom.gs
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Posted by: SOSS | Friday, 25 July 2008 at 04:56 AM
Democracy or Buyocracy?
The Chinese leaders called the yesterday’s demonstrations against the oppression in Tibet, protests; justifying their actions against human rights by saying it’s Chinese law.
If we take away our cultural differences, we see that the Chinese leaders are not that different from the American (and other) leaders. World leaders justify their own human rights abuses with clever sounding rhetoric; lies are not lies only spin. Do words, no matter how cleverly spoken make our leaders wrongs, right?
Yes, the Chinese system is not a just system we all know this, but what of our own governments, are they really working for human rights?
Free speech is the right of the one with the strongest muscle to get away with doing what they want too. The misuse of money buys muscle.
In a world where all can be bought, are there any reporters, editors, papers who are strong enough to ask just what does democracy mean. Democracy or buyocracy, under what system does global society really live?
Posted by: Paul Rhodes | Wednesday, 06 August 2008 at 11:29 PM