Cluster Bombs... and “Protecting Human Rights”
June 1, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
When the U.S. invades or attacks a country, it often says it’s to “protect human rights.” When it wages war, the U.S. claims to avoid civilian casualties at all costs. You’d think cluster bombs wouldn’t be anywhere in this picture, because cluster bombs are barbaric weapons designed to indiscriminately kill or maim lots of people.
Victims of cluster bombs in Afghanistan and Ethiopia demanding a ban on cluster bombs, May 2008, outside an international conference on cluster bombs in Dublin, Ireland. Photo: Flickr/pxkls
One cluster bomb sprays dozens, even hundreds, of small lethal bombs across a large area, sometimes the size of a football field. According to Legacies of War, “More than 98 percent of known cluster bomb victims are civilians and 40 percent are children, who are drawn to the small, toy-like metal objects.” (legaciesofwar.org, “Cluster Bomb Fact Sheet”) During the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the United Nations estimated that up to 40 percent of Israeli cluster bomblets failed to explode on impact, and years later they pose a dangerous threat to children and others (BBC, November 22, 2006).
The use and distribution of cluster bombs is banned by 107 countries. But two countries where cluster bombs are not banned are the United States and Saudi Arabia (Israel, Russia, and China have also refused to ban cluster bombs).
Did you know that the U.S. has manufactured and supplied Saudi Arabia with cluster bombs? Or that Saudi Arabia has dropped cluster bombs at least twice this year in Yemen, from U.S.-supplied planes? Did you know that in 2009, the U.S. Navy fired cruise missiles with cluster bombs and killed dozens of civilians in Yemen? Did you know that during its 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. used 13,000 cluster bombs containing two million bomblets?
And the U.S. has a long history of terrorizing and murdering children and others with cluster bombs. As part of the U.S. wars against the peoples of Indochina in the 1960s and ’70s, from 1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped over two million tons of ordnance over Laos in 580,000 bombing missions—the equivalent of one planeload every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. At least 270 million cluster bomblets were dropped as part of the bombing campaign.
So tell us again—who is the great protector of human rights in the world?
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