I was watching a documentary about land mines the other night. Apparently, 150 nations have signed a treaty outlawing the use of antipersonnel land mines. Countries which have NOT signed include the Russian Federation, Israel, and, of course, the United States of America. Can anybody give me a good reason why the United States will not or should not outlaw the use of land mines?
if you want to have trouble sleeping at night,read up on depleted uranium. and we wont outlaw them because they kill funny talkin brown people good.
As I understand it, the US government and the US military considers the treaty is too broad in scope. I would also suggest that, like many such treaties, there's no enforcement of the law ...i.e., anyone can make a law, but it ain't shit unless there's adequate enforcement in place. Baron Max
Why do countries want to ban landmines? Is it because it can maim and severly injure a soldier while remaining alive? Well if so, when are we going to upgrade to .50 cal guns instead of our little .223 rounds? Those are rounds that don't instantly kill which leaves a victim wounded yet alive. Isn't that inhumane as well? We outta just all have one-shot kill weapons. Up the size of rounds, I say, so that our enemies die right off the bat, then we won't have to worry about these inhumane weapons of war leaving crippled people strewn about. Heh, inhumane weapons of war. What an oxymoron. - N
Baron Max: But signing up to this treaty is voluntary. The US signs it, then the US decides not to lay land mines any more. Simple. Are you saying the US won't sign a treaty simply because nobody will stop them is they break it? Neildo: No. It's because land mines stay in the ground long after the war has ended. Then, they keep killing innocent civilians for years and years. See?
I agree, Neildo, wholeheartedly. One of my main complaints about people is their inability to fully understand the concepts of war. And so many people think that, if the enemy hides within a group of civilians, that he should be protected from harm at all costs!! How fuckin' utterly ridiculous. Ditto for enemies who wear exactly the same clothes as the civilians ...like we should have bullets that ONLY hit bad guys, not the gazillion people that he's hiding behind. ...LOL! I loved, absolutely loved the UAV attack on the Al Queda house party! If we did it like that more often, we'd probably be out of Iraq and Afghanistan in a couple of months. But, no, we have to fight a clean war, with no killiing or maiming or disrupting the civilians who are hiding and helpiing the enemy! Geez, what fuckin' wimps we've become, huh? Baron Max
C'mon, James, you know exactly what I said and, most probably, you know exactly what I meant ....yet you pretend to that I meant what you said???? ...LOL!!! Well, geez, James, perhaps it would be best if the civilians didn't walk around over such mined areas. I mean, if they don't want to be drowned, they shouldn't go into the deep end of the pool, right? Hey, I know it's a difficult concept for such backward people of the world, but then perhaps it's a good thing to weed out such ignorance and stupidity? Baron Max
Estimated civilian casualties in Iraq are far higher than American military casualties. Not that you give a damn.
That would be great - if they knew where the mined areas were. But the Americans (and others) who lay mines often don't keep proper maps of mine fields. So the mines just stay in the ground, near the villages where they were layed. Millions of them. And nobody knows where they are. So, what happens is that villagers go chasing their runaway cow across a field, and suddenly - bang! - they step on a mine which isn't supposed to be there. Nobody cleaned it up after the war, because (a) they didn't care, and (b) they didn't bother keeping records of where they put the mines. Your lack of education constantly amazes me, Baron. I keep having to teach you basic facts. It's like you live in a kind of fluffy fantasy land.
It should be even higher than it is!! The fact that it's not just shows that our military men and women are not allowed to fight a war ...they're being held back by the wimpy, weak-willed bastards in the government. Had I been running that fuckin' war, there would be no such thing as Baghdad!! It would be nothing but a giant fuckin' smokin' hole in the ground. Baron Max
I live in a fantasy world?? James, I ain't the ones bein' maimed by land mines!! I also don't go chasin' cattle across mined areas! And after just a few people are killed by mines, I'd sure as hell know where the mines were ....why don't those ignorant assholes? Life is tough, James, yet you and those like you continue to see life as some kind of big, giant bowl of cherries .....with the pits already removed. What? You want someone to chew the damned cherries for you, too? Baron Max
Your compassion constantly amazes me, Baron. I consider it a privilege to meet somebody so self-centred.
Actually, James, I'm not self-centered at all. But unlike you and many others, I don't claim to love people a gazillion miles away, yet do nothing to help them except spout off a bunch of useless words on an Internet forum! Compassion? If y'all really had such great compassion for humanity, you'd not be here wasting your time telling us all about it ....you'd be out helping those people less fortunate than you that live with just a few miles of your own home. Is it compassion just to talk a big game, but do little or nothing? Baron Max
One again, Max leads us all off into the weeds with incoherent personal attacks on anybody who dares disagree with his position. Land mines are a weapon with the same validity as any other weapon on the battlefield. If I were trying to hold a perimeter defense I would sure feel a lot better with a minefield in front of me. The problem is that the minefields are almost never marked, and the mines stay live more or less indefintely. Vietnamese villagers are trying to cope with mines that were laid forty years ago, and to suggest that civilians ought to know better than to stay out of mined areas is simply ridiculous. Even more so when you consider modern weapons sown from aircraft, like cluster bombs. They are dispersed much more widely and randomly. Speaking of dispersion, something like five million mines were exported from the U.S. from 1969 to 1992, and I'll bet that most of those never went into the ground. The United States refuses to sign on to the mine ban (along with Israel, Russia, China, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Burma, Syria, and Cuba - nice company); why? There's probably a concern that a successful ban would just be the thin edge of the wedge in terms of banning other weapons. It's not because we can't properly enforce a ban - we ban things all the time that we can't enforce (see drugs, war on). Actually, with America's vaunted military technology the traditional landmine really shouldn't be necessary. Banning it would give the U.S. more of a strategic advantage than not banning it. Especially considering that, as far as anybody knows, the U.S. hasn't used them since the first Gulf War. So it appears that there are only two possible reasons for refusing to sign on to the ban. One is a pathological reaction against joining in any international agreement that MIGHT disadvantage the U.S. military or the arms industry. The other is that Israel, which seems to drive a lot of strategic decisions in the U.S., apparently needs mines to secure its borders.
Our problem with the treaty is it also covers such US weapons as the Claymore mine which is an perimeter defense weapon, ambush device, and MRE cooker. The treaty also has no teeth. The countries that have signed it can blissfully do what they want becuase there are no repercussion. The US is not about to put it's endorsement on such an empty Treaty. Hence why we did sign the Kyoto accord as well. By the way I have known several US mine layers and there are maps to US minefields. And the US army has a tendency to dig them back up as well. Talk to the ex Soviet Bloc about the other minefields.
That is because you do not understand what he is doing. His ignorance is feigned. He is sucking your energy. What they do is take people who are trying to get the word out. These people take part in the conversation. They always seem kind of stupid, kind of slow. They always want you to repeat things over and over and over and over. They are sucking your energy. By the 10th time you have repeated the same thing, you get sick of it. You don't realize it is just one or two or 3 people. You are tired after so much repeating, you cannot move on to the new stuff. You should recognize what he is doing. It is the same thing you guys are doing to me over in the masturbation thread. Keep asking the same thing over and over and over.
I would guess it has to do with responsibility. Who has left the most mines laying around the world? The USA. If the USA signs that law, maybe there is some kind of legal responsibility attached. The same reason the US won't sign the world court. They know if they did, George and Dick and Rumsfeld would be up on War Crimes charges faster than you could spit.
