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Time's
Up For Land Mines
The Boston Globe
August 6, 2001
IF PRESIDENT BUSH wants to accede
to a treaty that may enhance the security of Americans while demonstrating
that he does not harbor an automatic hostility to all such international
agreements, he should release the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty for a ratification
vote in the Senate.
The case for US accession to the
treaty is overwhelming. The case against is deeply flawed - so much
so that it often seems little more than camouflage for a fear among
service chiefs that if they surrender this one superfluous weapon,
they might tumble down a slippery slope leading to a loss of the
power to choose all the items in the military's arsenal. The humanitarian
reasons for a treaty prohibiting the production, stockpiling, transfer,
or use of antipersonnel land mines should be self-evident. These
are weapons that mutilate and murder 22,000 people per year - mostly
civilians who step on mines long after the soldiers who sowed them
have stopped fighting.
Bush, like President Clinton before
him, acknowledges an obligation to assist in clearing land mines
and tending to their victims. Describing these humanitarian efforts
in a July 26 letter answering an inquiry from Massachusetts Representative
James McGovern about Bush's land mine policy, Assistant Secretary
of State for Legislative Affairs Paul Kelly noted: "Since 1993,
the US has contributed more than $500 million to humanitarian mine
action efforts."
Unfortunately, this concern for the
victims of land mines has not yet induced Bush to join the treaty
that bans them. "While we remain committed to eliminating the humanitarian
problems caused by the indiscriminate use" of land mines, the Kelly
letter cautioned, "in the context of the administration's ongoing
policy review, we must also examine the need for land mines on the
modern battlefields of the future."
The commander in chief will of course
consider military arguments for and against the use of land mines.
Accordingly, Bush ought to heed a letter sent him this May by eight
retired admirals and generals."It is our collective belief that
the United States does not need to retain any APM," or antipersonnel
mines, the senior officers wrote. "We feel strongly that it is in
the best interests of the American soldier and our country that
you `fast-track' US accession to the Mine Ban Treaty. APM are outmoded
weapons that have, time and again, proved to be a liability to our
own troops."
The writers told Bush this is true
even in Korea, where the Pentagon has claimed that land mines are
still needed, and that the mines planted there today belong to South
Korea, not the United States. Bush should follow this sound counsel,
understanding that once active generals and admirals retire and
feel free of the Pentagon's institutional inertia, they may offer
the same sage advice.
The
Scourge of Land Mines
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Dec. 28, 2001
Long after Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida
and the Taliban have become the subjects of trivia quizzes, Afghans
will be killed and maimed by devices that are anything but trivial:
buried land mines and other explosives abandoned by the combatants
of more than 20 years of war.
Americans, too, are vulnerable to
Afghanistan's lethal garbage: On Dec. 16, a U.S. Marine lost part
of his leg when he stepped on a land mine near the Kandahar airport.
Two other leathernecks were injured in the blast. Other Americans
in Afghanistan almost certainly will be injured or killed by mines
because so many of them are there.
Nobody knows for sure how many explosives
- mines, unexploded cluster bombs, loose ammunition - litter the
landscape. The Halo Trust, a British philanthropic organization
that is clearing mines in Afghanistan, reckons there are about 640,000
mines buried in the country, but others say there may be as many
as 20 million. Every day, on average, three Afghans lose their limbs
or lives in a land mine explosion.
Afghanistan is hardly the only country
to be polluted by this deadly debris. Up to 120 million land mines
lie hidden in more than 80 countries, including Angola, Cambodia
and Bosnia. And the victims are not always, or even usually, soldiers;
most are innocent civilians, notably farmers and their families.
Small children, of course, are especially vulnerable.
The Clinton administration passed
up a chance to ease this scourge when it refused in 1997 to join
125 other countries in signing a treaty that bans the manufacture
and possession of anti-personnel land mines and requires nations
to clean up mines already planted. The Clintonites did say, however,
that the United States would sign the treaty by 2006 if the Pentagon
came up with an alternative weapon.
Last July, however, the Bush administration
pointedly refused to reaffirm even that hedged commitment, saying
U.S. land mine policy should be left to the Defense Department.
But not everyone in uniform or recently
out of one believes anti-personnel land mines are essential. In
1996, for example, 15 retired generals urged Clinton to seek the
elimination of anti-personnel mines, describing a ban as "not only
humane, but also militarily responsible." The 15 signatories included
retired Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of Operation Desert
Storm, the 1991 war against Iraq.
The fight to eliminate the scourge
of land mines requires international cooperation, just as the fight
against terrorism does. The Bush administration should recognize
this and do what Clinton failed to do: Support the land mine treaty.
Whatever protection such mines may provide is more than outweighed
by the pain they inflict on innocent people.
Meanwhile, the U.S. ought to join
the Halo Trust, Red Cross, United Nations and other groups and nations
trying to cleanse Afghanistan of the hidden bombs that menace its
people.
U.S.
Should Support Ban on Land Mines
San Antonio Express-News
April 2, 2002
A recent earthquake in the warn-torn
nation of Afghanistan has added to its problems. The quake killed
more than 1,000 people and left many more injured or homeless.
But the terrible situation was made
even worse because of the millions of land mines planted throughout
the mountainous nation, which is roughly the size of Texas. Rescue
workers feared stepping on exposed or buried mines.
The buried explosives have killed
or maimed one in every 236 Afghan residents. About one-third of
all victims are children.
The problem is equally critical in
other lands torn by civil war, especially Angola, Cambodia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
American troops also have been victims
of land mines. Over the years, thousands of U.S. soldiers have been
killed in nations infested with the buried explosives. One died
last week near Kabul.
The number of soldiers killed or
maimed ˜ regardless of nationality ˜ has been minor compared
to the casualties in civilian populations, who are unintended targets.
In the last three decades alone, land mines have killed more than
1 million people.
Yet the United States refuses to
join 142 nations that already have signed a 1997 treaty prohibiting
the production and use of such weapons. Officials argue that land
mines are necessary along the border between North Korea and South
Korea.
The Bush administration is backing
away from a Clinton administration promise to phase out the use
of land mines everywhere but the Korean peninsula by 2003 and to
sign the treaty by 2006.
Surely technological advances in
weapons can make this major killer and deformer of innocent people
obsolete. And surely the United States, the world's only superpower,
should not refuse to join the rest of the world in banning this
monstrous hazard.
The Bush administration should change
course and sign the treaty. The huge task then remains of ridding
the world of the land mines already in place.
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