Clusterwha?
In an amusing moment yesterday, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino couldn’t remember why the White House opposes the Convention on Cluster Munitions that over 100 nations signed in Norway:
The basic answer is that the US opposes the treaty because despite the “legitimate humanitarian concerns” about the impact of cluster bombs on civilians, “The United States relies on them as an important part of our own defense strategy”. This is a pretty tautological rationale for opposing the treaty. The case for banning cluster munitions is that the use of such munitions as an important part of a country’s defense strategy comes at a high humanitarian price. The US military acknowledges the humanitarian concerns, but wants to use them anyway. Kids blown up by unexploded cluster bombs are just out of luck.
President-Elect Obama has in the past voted to restrict the use of cluster munitions, though we’ll have to see how long those humanitarian considers last when they come into contact with his desire to build a positive relationship with the military brass.
27 Responses to “Clusterwha?”
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December 4th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
i didn’t think the moment was very amusing.
p.s. the list of countries that did or did not subscribe to the treaty is revealing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Declaration_Wellington_conference.svg
December 4th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Is it time to just abolish the position of White House Press Secretary? I’m not saying the position was every some perfect and untainted source of information, but ever since it was discovered during the Monica mess that Press Secretaries could flat out lie and refuse to answer media questions without real consequences, it seems the job has become nothing more than White House Propaganda Flack.
I suppose Obama might “change” all that, but I suspect we’ll hear nothing but the appropriate talking points from his guy as well.
Mike
December 4th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Good God, she’s fucking stupid.
December 4th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
“Spotted a gook family sitting in a ditch
little baby sucking on momma’s tit
Dow Chemical don’t give a shit
Napalm sticks to kids”
December 4th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
I’ll bet all the surviving Indian tribes are just speechless with astonishment at Dana’s response.
December 4th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I suspect that the cluster munitions issue won’t go away soon. The issue: they work really, really well at f**king up enemy combatants that you’d like to clear out of the way.
The US hasn’t made much use of cluster munitions lately, but as with land mines in Korea, wants to leave it’s options open. Not surprising coming from a nation that will likely be at war over any given ten year period.
December 4th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Obama needs to move on this, this is very important, cluster munitions are evil.
On a lighter note that really bears no relation to the post or my prior point, since I don’t know how to email you, Kobe and Lamar of the soon to be world champion Los Angeles Lakers will be in DC tonight, in case you’re interested.
http://dcfab.blogspot.com/2008/12/kobe-bryant-and-lamar-odom-at-park.html
December 4th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
How about we get Cindy McCain out here working on this. She has seen the problem, and supposedly understands the impact based on her visit to a school playground in Kosovo.
Unfortunately that hasn’t translated into votes by John McCain. He voted against an amendment that would require the US military to develop clear guidelines (not ban) on the use of cluster munitions in civilian areas.
Sadly John McCain isn’t the only one that voted against that amendment (went down 30-70), so did Biden, Dodd, and Clinton, but Obama voted for it.
You can read more details at my June blog post.
December 4th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
I think the issue is being treated very simplistically. Cluster bombs are part of what get us away from a total nuclear-based MAD strategy for peace on the Korean peninsula. The fact that in the past they were used in a way that’s now killing people (post-conflict) in various parts of the world isn’t organically connected to whether we should use them as a deterrent now, in a single part of the world where alternative strategies for keeping the peace are very suspect.
I’m generally skeptical of the notion that some weapons should be banned because they’re too good at killing people, but I’m specifically skeptical here because banning current use wouldn’t address the actual problem of past use. Ditto for land mines.
December 4th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
I’m sure he pays more attention to them then he does to the comments.
I can understand wanting to keep using clusterbombs (and land mines), but I would really want the US to come up with guidelines on their use, and more importantly, guidelines for cleaning up the areas where they have been used. And actually following the guidelines would be nice too.
I’ll go out on a limb and assume that Israel didn’t sign.
December 4th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
“Kids blown up by unexploded cluster bombs.”
One of the advantages of proof reading before posting is that you might not post sentences like that one. It’s clear from the context what you meant to say, but what you actually said is nonsensical. Almost palinesque.
December 4th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
well, how’z about this – President Obama fires / demotes / discharges any military brass who think the US should be in the business of using cluster munitions, which are genuine weapons of mass destruction, and whose use is nearly always a form of terrorism?
how about that? if anyone’s unhappy banning these inhuman weapons, they are not mentally fit for our military.
December 4th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
um, cmholm – they are used frequently in Iraq. as are land mines. what are you talking about?
oh, and Al, Tony Snow is ‘competent’ as a White House Press Secretary? in what universe? did the man speak the truth once during his tenure? what a joke he was.
December 4th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
…and while I’m at it, RichinPA – the main problem with cluster bombs is that they kill indiscriminately in a large radius. after-the-fact killings is part of the problem, but not the main one. using them is like walking into a bank robbery in progress with a flamethrower and burning everywhere there to death just to make sure you got the bad guy.
again, much like torture, using these weapons does not increase our safety. they multiply the number of people obsessed with doing us harm exponentially every time they are used.
December 4th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Maybe Commander Codpiece and the rest of Bu$hco thought this was a proposed ban on cluster-f*cks. How else would the GOP keep themselves amused for the foreseeable future?
December 4th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Say Wha?, the phrasing may have been infelicitous, but the problem with cluster bombs is indeed that many submunitions fail to explode when the bomb is used, and these submunitions linger in the general area and can later explode when disturbed – say, when a child picks them up. Because they didn’t initially explode, the dangerous and morally questionable parts of the cluster bomb are therefore the parts frequently referred to as being “unexploded” even though once they’ve hurt someone they’ve obviously done so by becoming, well, “exploded”.
December 4th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
“No. I think it makes sense to have the position — it’s just that the position should be filled by someone competent. The Bush Administration has been filling the position with incompetents (save Tony Snow).”
Snow may have been more socially adept and skilled at being a propagandist, but if that’s all the job entails…why is it necessary?
I’m sure Press Secretaries have always indulged in a little spin, but it seems they used to function more as an aspect of governing. Now, the job seems entirely consumed by the permanent campaign and really serves no legitimate news purpose. It just provide an unwarrented patina of respectability to talking points, obfuscation and blatent lies.
Mike
December 4th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
ever since it was discovered during the Monica mess that Press Secretaries could flat out lie and refuse to answer media questions without real consequences
Does the name, “Ron Ziegler” mean anything to you? Not everything bad originated in the Clinton adminstration.
“This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative.”
“Mistakes were made”.
December 4th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
onceler, I disagree. Like fuel-air explosives, or like any large conventional warheads, cluster bombs cause a lot of destruction over a wide area when they are used. This is not a moral problem in any way not shared by other weapons, and the wide area is only a problem in that there are weapons that should or should not be used in certain settings. The problem with cluster bombs is indeed that they leave behind unexploded submunitions to kill and maim people after the fact.
December 4th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
“Does the name, “Ron Ziegler” mean anything to you? Not everything bad originated in the Clinton adminstration.”
Yeah, but didn’t Ziegler experience some consequences from his dissembling? And didn’t he, while still press secretary, publicly apologize to Woodward and Bernstein for his early comments on Watergate?
As I mentioned, it’s not like the Press Secretary job was always a fountain of pure truth. But when Ziegler got caught lying and misleading the media, he and Nixon suffered some real negative effects from that. Today, folks like Joe Lockhart, Ari Fleischer and Tony Snow are just as abusive of the truth and just as destructive to the public discourse as Ziegler…and they’re excused or even lauded for it by the very media they mislead. The real wrath and anger only falls on folks like Scott McClellan and Dana Perino. Not for being liars but just for being bad liars.
Mike
December 5th, 2008 at 2:47 am
It works like this.
Most countries in the world treat their soldiers like cannon fodder: either march forward or we shoot you. Cluster bombs tend to negate that sort of thing.
Plus most of these governments – except the ones like Israel who get billions of dollar of US aid every year – tend not to be able to afford the planes and artillery to deliver hundreds of thousands of cluster bombs. So the advantage always lies with the US and other rich countries. Getting rid of cluster bombs sort of levels the playing field: soldiers from each side actually have to shoot each other. And a lot of these countries like China have a lot cannon fodder they can throw into the fight.
The US, on the other hand, treats its soldiers somewhat better – and doesn’t give a rat’s ass about brown-skinned people anywhere on the planet (except Israel, of course.) Plus, since US soldiers aren’t shot if they don’t march forward (in fact, they tend to turn their guns on their officers in such situations as we established in Vietnam), and in fact tend to be fairly cowardly about directly engaging the enemy in a firefight, the Pentagon uses high-tech crap like aerial bombing, smart bombs, drones and cluster munitions to assuage the US soldier’s – and his civilian relative’s – fear of actually having to shoot someone who is actually shooting back.
The US can’t afford to get rid of this stuff because then it would have to develop a military of actual warriors rather than the store clerks in the National Guard they have now. And if they started start treating its soldiers like crap, which the civilian population won’t tolerate, the civilian population would revolt against all these stupid wars.
As long as the US is just killing brown people in other countries from the air and with robotic killing machines, nobody in the US cares.
Until of course the brown people figure out a way to fly planes into US buildings in retaliation, killing US citizens. Then all hell breaks loose – and we go kill another million of them to prove we mean business.
The reality is that when the Muslim insurgent told Tony Stark he was the greatest mass murderer in US history, he was dead on right. The “Ten Rings” crowd were pikers compared to the US.
December 6th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
China also has not signed.
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