Six female Nobel Laureates have called for the elimination of cluster bombs because, apparently, they hurt people:
Jody Williams and five other female Nobel prize laureates on Tuesday urged civilians to press for the elimination of cluster bombs, which cripple children and others long after the fighting has stopped.
"While so many of the worlds arms cause so much human misery, cluster munitions deserve to be singled out as an especially pernicious weapon of ill repute," Williams said.
"They have become synonymous with civilian casualties," the US Nobel laureate read from the statement signed by her and five women Nobel Peace Prize winners: Rigoberta Menchu (Guatemala-1992); Shirin Ebadi ( Iran-2003); Wangari Maathai (Kenya-2004); Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire (Ireland-1976).
I wondered what these women were Nobel laureates in so I looked them up and apparently they're pretty much all against war and stuff. While I think it's great that someone doesn't like the idea of people getting blown up by little bomblets, what sort of government will be persuaded by their arguments? China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Russia, Uganda, etc? Or will it be those saber rattling Kiwis in New Zealand and those terrors of the North Atlantic, The Republic of Ireland, The Brits and the Danes?
Before you say "they are just trying to raise awareness" stop. I am aware bomblets kill people, even people not specifically at war. With all this raising of awareness, I can't concentrate on important things like the skyrocketing price of ammo or how bad the Yankees suck this year. All joking aside, this is the sort of bullshit that passes for humanitarianism. Get the minorities in Darfur religious tolerance or end female circumcision worldwide, but don't hector representative democracies about a weapon system while dictatorships can still use whatever the hell they want on whoever the hell they want.
3 comments:
Hector is such a good word.
Cultman says that ignorance about teh intentioal bombing of innocent civilians during war reveals ignorance equivalent to those who question cluster bombs; it is just as important for reasonable people to question saturation bombing "tactics" as it is for people to defy and condemn the tactics of whatever whacko-terrorist and/or rogue state out there employs.
Nice to know you're still alive Cultman.
Re what you said. No sane, moral person would deliberatly follow a policy that allows innocents to be killed needlessly. My point is that the nations likely to be swayed by these Nobel Laureates probably don't have these bombs to begin with and even if they did are not likely to use them in any event.
No nation has been "saturation bombed" since Vietnam. The problem with cluster bombs is that they are highly effective against multiple vehicles, aircraft, personal etc. but not all explode during the conflict when safeguards against dropping these things on civies have been followed. The next day comes Yusef and his mule and both are inadvertantly killed.
I'd love to hear from these ladies or anyone else for that matter, how to kill the bad guys while insuring that innocents like Yusef and his mule can live safely.
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