Poison gas was scientific technology’s bid to heighten the horrors of warfare a century ago. Tens of thousands were wiped out or wounded by sprayings across no man’s land. Logos of World War I soldiers usually have them outfitted with gas masks. Human ingenuity invariably rises to the challenge as it has since the crossbow and the catapult to eliminate the enemy. Weapons like the Gatling gun and the musket with the rifled bore, which have changed warfare, usually survive the shocked indignation of people when they are first introduced. But indiscriminate ones, like gas, which kill combatant and civilian alike, are banned by international agreements. So should landmines be.
The Mine Ban Treaty’s International Standing Committee meeting will convene in Geneva June 20 to 24, as will the Convention on Cluster Munitions’ Intersessional meetings there from June 27 to 30. To the surprise of many Americans, the United States refuses to join the world push to ban the weapons that keep on hurting long after armistices are signed. Right in there with China, North Korea, Iran, Myanmar, Cuba, Pakistan and five other, stellar nations, we are among the few left who claim there is some merit to manufacturing and using weapons that injure or kill many more civilians than soldiers. One hundred fifty-six nations have signed treaties to abandon manufacture and use of them.
The Obama administration needs a push to reject Pentagon advice that has kept us relying on such lethal devices that continue today to kill and maim Vietnamese, Cambodians and many others whom we fought long ago. The candidate who campaigned on a platform of change and reason seems to be backtracking, as have past presidents once in thrall of the military-industrial complex.
Our military argues that such fiendish mines and cluster bombs must be used to keep North Koreans north of the 38th parallel. Human-wave charges of red Chinese could reappear to turn a stalemate into a defeat.
Landmines lie on the ground or are slightly buried. They are detonated by contact, by touching a wire, by radio, or even by mere proximity. Those that are made of plastic are impervious to metal detectors. They explode shrapnel, with some created to bound a yard into the air before exploding, in order to spread their reach. Some are even made to resemble toys which the user nation also air drops, to attract children. Because soldiers saw themselves as vulnerable to their emplacement of mines, many objections to them have surfaced within the ranks since their first large use in World War II. Mapping where mines were originally air dropped or placed becomes problematic with rain. Vulnerable independent aid workers are usually the only ones tasked with removing them after a war. And that ever American final determinant, money, notes that for every dollar spent in making landmines, a thousand are needed to clear and deactivate them.
Catholics and others are well familiar with the so-called Just War theory. It is supposed to be a standard to be used before engaging in war, or at least after outbreak of hostilities, to decide whether circumstances make a war morally allowable. The one traditional tenet that today makes the theory obsolete in the minds of many is the one requiring that warfare reasonably distinguish between combatant and civilian. Weapons of mass destruction like landmines or gas or nuclear or biological ones kill all in a target zone. That is where scientific technology has brought us. Its weapons obliterate people and property without consideration of one’s allegiance.
Celebrities have offered their names in this cause. Princess Diana was just one who spoke out with the hope of engaging as many as possible, especially if one were to feel unqualified to take a stand on so technical or secular an issue. Those however who enjoy living in a democracy should not need to be told that the people, those knowledgeable and those who would not see themselves as knowledgeable, decide such things. Looking at the evidence moves a growing number of Americans and others worldwide to call for a universal ban of landmines and cluster bombs.
Does it make a difference for one small person to speak up? Because some have, only Myanmar laid landmines in 2009. There are fewer new landmine casualties and in fewer countries each year. International trade in landmines has virtually halted. More than 45 million landmines have been removed from arsenals and destroyed. In such small ways does God act through activists.