Cluster bombs, along with most land mines, are part of the Area Denial family of weapons. Two Senators have come up with a curious approach to dealing with them.

Washington, DC – U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) today introduced an amendment to the FY 2007 Department of Defense Appropriations bill aimed at preventing hundreds of unnecessary civilian deaths and injuries caused every year by unexploded cluster bombs.

The Cluster Munitions Amendment would prevent funds from being spent to purchase, use, or transfer cluster bombs until the Department of Defense has adopted rules of engagement to ensure that cluster bomb are not used in or near any concentration of civilians.

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This kind of thinking is part of an annoying perception. Folks are still finding UXO from WWI, I think, and certainly from WWII. The reasoning seems to be that any weapon that may, at some time in the future, be mishandled by an 'innocent' civilian should be banned. Where does this chain of logic end up?

Contributed by Zero Ponsdorf on September 9, 2006 at 01:29 PM in Current Affairs, Dem Dumbness, Peacenik Stupidity, Zero Ponsdorf | Permalink

Comments

Posted by: GI Zhou

Bill,

Cluster bombs are not necessarily area denial weapons - it depends on the bomblet/munition inside it. There are no area denial anti-personnel cluster bomns in operational service due to international law. With the bombs they are talking about, the problem is with bomblets as they have a large number of blinds (unexploded bomblets) and therefore they need to be cleared. The biggest problem is that kids and animals can knock them and then they explode - they are indiscriminate and a pain the bum on air weapons ranges. Many will not allow cluster munitions to be dropped on them for safety reasons. I support Israel but they dropped the cluster bombs to interfere with the daily life of the people after the cease fire. Not good for your immage but it does give the Chinese engineers something to do.

Posted by: GI Zhou | Sep 10, 2006 4:32:02 PM

Posted by: ponsdorf

This is a "Yes But" issue. Any weapon system, no matter how hi-tech is going to fail.

Collateral damage is going to happen in war. And I know the EOD and engineer types hate to deal with UXO in whatever form it takes. Who could blame them?

But if we decide weapon deployment issues with the goal in mind of NEVER causing unintended accidents, what's left? If Israel deployed cluster munitions with the sole point being to kill and maim innocents there might be a case.

A very loose analog might be: Someone tries to break into my house. I open fire killing the bad guy and through over penetration or innacurate fire also wound or kill someone on the street. I'm guilty, at most, of manslaughter, not murder.

Posted by: ponsdorf | Sep 10, 2006 5:25:23 PM

Posted by: GI Zhou

Yes but you can still go to jail for manslaughter. The failure rate of these bomblets is up to 15 percent and they are meant as a means of destroying armour and people not as an area denial weapon. It is the wrong munition for use in this case hence the law of armed conflict issues. Proportionality is an accpeted rule under the Geneva Conventions which must be adhered to.

Posted by: GI Zhou | Sep 11, 2006 6:50:10 AM

Posted by: arch

What international law prohibits area denial munitions?

Posted by: arch | Sep 11, 2006 3:53:16 PM

Posted by: arch

There is a great Vietnam War POW story about cluster bombs (CBUs).

For those who don't know, we dropped a lot of CBU 24 in southeast asia. These were 800 lb clam shell cannisters filled with 200 bomblets each slightly larger than a golf bomb. The dispenders had a radar fuse that armed after a set time (typically 3 sec) and blew open the clam shell at a set altitude (typically 1500'). Each bomblet had four vanes designed to spin the ball up and arm its internal fuse. When it hit the ground, it would detonate. Duds were a problem. If the cannister did not open or bomblet did not spin up, the submunition would not detonate.

When Jane Fonda and Ramsey Clark made their infamous visit to Hanoi in July 1972, the NVA gave Clark a dud bomblet. While he was touring a POW camp, Ramsey was tossing the bomblet up and catching it like a toy. The American POWs, aware of the arming mechanism, urged him to "Spin it faster!" Unfortunately, he did not.

Posted by: arch | Sep 11, 2006 4:30:16 PM

Posted by: arch

As usual the Liberals are mixing apples and oranges, blaming CBUs for all the unexploded ordnance death and injury caused by mines, dud artillery shells and bombs in a number of long term battlefields - Indochina, Afghanistan, and the Balkins. These issues provided photo ops for Princess Dianna and other Cindy Sheehan types around the globe. The statement that these munitions "target civilians" is pure propaganda aimed at demonising our military and pandering to "mothers." CBUs target no one. "Up to 40%" failure rate is also total nonsense. The rates are 2% to 18%, and we are working on the latter.

The facts are mines and other area denial munitions are stabilizing weapons. If I put bar mines on my border, your tanks will not cross into my territory. That's good. I know where the mines are and if and when I decide to remove them. I can.

The problem is the lack of responsible military forces around the world. In Kuwait, Saddam's military mined the desert without good maps of the fields. The French, Japanese, Viet Minh, NVA and Vietcong never documented their mine fields. Our guys act with responsibility.

In 1999, there was another in a series of inane conferences aimed at outlawing mines and other munitions. We did not, and unless the Democrats are elected, will not sign it.

Oh, the Geneva Convention does not mandate "proportional response". In response to Pearl Harbor, we provided a Pacific War culminating in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. E = mC2.

Posted by: arch | Sep 11, 2006 5:08:31 PM

Posted by: ponsdorf

As far as my loose analogy: Like all analogies it's likely to break if pushed too far, but yeah, I could go to jail. I will have defended my family, and choosing to do that entails risks.

Beyond all that; I read the article cited as a blanket attempt at turning a weapon system into a useless tool by restricting its use. The article cites many other places than Lebanon as supporting their case.

I'm not as current as yourself on the technical details of the specific system used in Lebanon. At one time there were systems that would crater a runway, for instance, AND leave anti-personnel devices to prevent quick repairs. Ditto for anti-armor systems.

Even a single bomb can fail and turn into a hazard that needs to be dealt with. It seemed to me that the reasoning of the Senators is specious.

Salting the earth caused huge problems, as did Shermans 'total war' and Russia's scorched earth retreat. The list goes on as I'm sure you know.

The is no civilized way to wage war, I think.

Posted by: ponsdorf | Sep 11, 2006 5:28:56 PM