Leicester Bishop Tim Stevens has challenged the government’s decision to stockpile M85 cluster bombs, telling the House of Lords the weapons were an unconscionable evil.
“I speak as one deeply troubled that the United Kingdom military is using these M85 weapons in my name,” Bishop Stevens said on May 17, rejecting government claims that cluster bombs were a legitimate part of the military’s arsenal.
Cluster munitions are an anti-personnel weapon whose shells explode above a target, raining smaller ”˜bomblets’ over a large area. The bomblets do not explode upon contact with the ground, but are detonated when trodden on by infantry.
However, “civilians are almost the sole victims of cluster munitions” and account for 98 per cent of the weapon’s casualties a May 16 report by Handicap International (HI), a London-based advocacy group said.
HI’s report stated more than 440 million cluster bomblets have been used in the past 42 years and that the number of casualties from the weapon could exceed 100,000. Over 400 million people currently live in areas littered with unexploded cluster bombs in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Balkans.
He’s right and his public stand does him credit.
I think that hacking a person to pieces with a sword is abominable as well. But we must confront the fact that we live in an abominable world, or, more precisely, where humans do abominable things.
Cluster bombs are merely munitions like all the rest. It is not the munitions but how one uses them which lends any moral action to them. If my grandson goes into the military and he is badly outnumbered by a host of those who would readily take his life, I would prefer that the military has such defenses as cluster bombs in the arsonal to help those I love to survive.
DonGander
DonGander,
You’re right in what you say: munitions are not per se evil, and this is a rough world. And I agree that if my sons go off to war I want them to come home again whole and entire. But the fact is that cluster munitions and land mines take the legs and feet and lives of hundreds of children each year, and do very little good to pay for themselves. Once they’re launched, they’re damnably difficult to turn off, and they become a blight on the land they lie in. We foul our own nests when we use them, and we might just be fouling our own nests by having them. In a world where “humans do abominable things” we must remember that some of those things are done by us. Perhaps it would be better if we did something to make it harder, not easier, for us to do those abominable things.
“Perhaps it would be better if we did something to make it harder, not easier, for us to do those abominable things.”
I do not assume that we (our military) always does the right thing. We need to take our part in their governance. War is Hell. I hate war. But as we are going to have war whether I like it or not, we (assuming that we are fighting a just war) should want every weapon available and all the right weapons used. I want H Bombs in our arsonal but I sure hope that we continue being reluctant to use them.
All I’m saying is that I agee with you that they should only be used under rare and unusual circumstances – but not done away with.
DonGander
Cluster bombs are probably used to channel enemy combatants into killing fields. As with mines, once the battle is over civilians become the causalities. Getting rid of these things is next to impossible. People are still being killed by mines form world war two. The post I was on in Bosnia was filled with restricted areas from mines and unexploded munitions. Mine clearing leaves about 5 to 10% of the mine in place. I don’t know how you stop using them in war considering there effectiveness in combat.
Currently most artillery (not mortar) munitions are of the dispensing submunition types, so this issue is quite widespread at present. The issue, technically, is a lack of reliability of the munitions to actually detonate on contact. This article elides over the technical issue in order to obfusticate the reasons why these munitions are used in the first instance. In order to achieve area effects one bomblet dispersing round has the equivalent effect of 3-6 high explosive rounds, and meanwhile causes much less collateral damage. So I’m not sure if the presented cost-benefit analysis is correct in the first instance.
The issue of aerial munitions is another matter. Prior to 1991 aerial delivery of munitions was characterized by huge delivery probably errors. So dispensing huge numbers of bomblets in cannister munitions made sense in order to get some effect on the real target while admittedly wasting 90% of the effects on other areas. After 1991, it became obvious that using high explosive munitions with terminal delivery systems was much more cost effective, as we have seen in two wars against Iraq and in Afghanistan (and with the IDF in Lebanon).
So this issue is becoming less and less of an issue except in the artillery case, and in the future probably holds the real possiblity of wider use of terminally guided munitions for the artillery as well. In the meantime, better bomblet fuzing would alleviate this issue as well.
Which brings me back to my main critique of this article and those of its ilk. If you wish to argue about Just War or such topics, do so. Don’t bloviate about how war is conducted as killing is essentially immoral in the first instance and is means indiscriminant in the moral sense. On the other hand, if you wish to object to how inefficient one method of killing is or the collateral damage issues that result, getting a job as a defense contractor would be appropriate.
Tom Roberts – thanks for the informative and helpful posting. Yours is the sort of post that makes replying to blogs worthwhile for me.
I don’t get your final comment about getting a job as a defense contractor, though. Seems to me that every citizen, Christian, and human is obliged to be concerned with important issues regardless of profession.
Thanks for making my opinion a more informed one.
Laocoon- +Leicester’s logic would put his efforts most effectively into the rather arcane mechanics of how the munitions are designed, not how they are used. It would seem to me that once you allow for a war, you are going to have civilians killed and civilian assets destroyed. All the technical babble in the original is simply arguing over “worse” or “bad”, when the argument should be over why the war is there in the first instance. So if he wants to reduce cluster munition ineffectiveness (for killing civilians represents not killing/maiming/suppressing military targets) then work in the arcane world of fuze and terminal guidance designs. But I would suggest +Leicester’s intent is really another and this cause of the moment is in fact a stalking horse for a more serious issue.