What it says about us is that we are willing to help or ally and not leave them in a lurch.
I’d remind you that we didn’t sign on to the ban and thus have the ability to provide them with these arms.
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Don’t pretend what is legal is what is moral.
Here I was referencing torture.
It still is about us.
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Please explain to me how a cluster shell expended against fortified, heavily mined trench lines created by an invading force dug is intrinsically more immoral than a shrapnel shell or an HE shell, because I am not getting it.
World War I ended 105 years ago. They are still finding unexploded shells in what used to be no-man’s land. When this war is over, the entire fortified front line is going to be filled with unexploded ordnance that will be a hazard for at least a century: landmines, high explosive shells, shrapnel shells, grenades, even a few unexploded aerial bombs. They are not going to make the post-war battle zone meaningfully more dangerous than all of the other latent death and destruction that will be left there.
Unlike incendiaries or poison gas they not intrinsically viler way for soldiers too die. Unlike landmines, the are not intrinsically more likely to go off if some farmer or child finds one than other kinds of unexploded ordinance. The moral opprobrium that attaches to them lies in their use against civilian populations, where they are truly terrible, and using them in a war of mobility where the greater number of them creates more opportunities for someone to unwittingly find one years or decades after the war.
More importantly, however, this is the Ukrainians’ call. They’re the one faced with the invading, war crime prone, army of a dictatorship bent on imperial conquest and cultural genocide. They’re the ones who will have to deal with the consequences if they win. But only if they win.
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What is legal is usually only moral by chance, but even then it rarely is.
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By that logic, then, chemical and biological warfare are perfectly fine. And why on Earth has the rest of the West outlawed them? Ignorant fools, evidently.
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Geneva Conventions, son.
I’m not. Don’t pretend that by denying Ukraine’s ask we would somehow be paragons of virtue.
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Yes you are. They have other asks we ought to oblige, short of WWIII.
Thank you for reading my mind.
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The debate on cluster bombs is the whole dead end story of war. The dreadful escalations that guarantee human suffering decades into the future. I was born in war, and in eight decades have only known war in this, our demented species. The Ukrainians are fighting for survival. I would give them the bombs.
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Yup. Zelensky said “I don’t need a ride. I need ammunition”.
If it’s clusters he has asked for, it should be clusters that he gets.
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Slavery was once legal.
Jim Crow was once the law in a large part of the country.
Japanese internment camps were once legal.
Black people could not vote. Legal.
Redlining by banks. Legal.
Women could not vote. Legal.
Putting a rape victim on trial, once perfectly legal.
Asset forfeiture is legal.
Abortion is illegal in a large part of the country. Women’s deaths, legal.
Shall I go on?
Think before you smugly condescend, old man.
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I never said otherwise. But moral justifications are never self-explanatory. People have to make the justifications, and there is always the issue of where one crosses the line. There was no more justified war than World War II, and the vast majority of Allied actions were fully compatible with the law of necessity. But was turning Monte Casino into rubble worth it? The fire-bombing of Dresden, towards the end of the war? The sinking of the Cap Arcona? Different people will have different opinions.
I am fully in support of providing cluster munitions to Ukraine. But the administration must be prepared to offer a serious, and accurate, justification: the average person in America has no idea about how lethal it is to try to clear a mine field while under fire from the enemy.
Well I know many will disagree but my general approach is that if you don’t know shit about something, you don’t get to opine about it. And I don’t mean you, I mean we need to ignore the loud uninformed dopes who would push us to do stupid things because they’re ignorant or squeamish.
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Sure, keep making a damn fool of your man-child self. By all means, please proceed.
Suuuuure! See D’Amanto, Al, for starters.
A wonderful proposal. That would shut down about 90% of talk about politics in America, and we would be the better for it.
I can dimly remember my youth in mid-20th century. People who didn’t know the answer would say simply, “I don’t know.” Now people loudly bloviate about the stuff the don’t know; see: Joe Rogan, et al.
As Mr. Dooley explained, “the problem ain’t ignorance, it’s people who know things that ain’t so.”
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How about this. How about YOU go to Ukraine and stand on the battlefield and then you can tell us what’s the appropriate way for Ukraine to defend itself. Not sitting on your ass in total safety bloviating your self-important out of touch morality.
I couldn’t agree more. Ever since Fat Donnie waddled onto the scene saying “I don’t know” seems about as popular as saying that you have a little dick. Listening to that fat waste belch on and on when he’s faking an answer to a question he clearly knows nothing about makes everyone who hears it that much more stupid.
“Well, we’re looking into that and it’s a horrible thing, isn’t it? No one has ever seen anything like it. Just terrible. Horrible. We’re doing things no one has ever done.”
I just wish once someone would ask the one and only essential follow up, "Excuse me Mr. Trump, but what the fuck are you even talking about? Do you even know?
The discussion so far seems to leave out an important piece of the frame that we were shown recently: the U.S. isn’t running out of shells, but rather approaching the “one-and-a-half wars” reserve threshold that we have.
That means “give Ukraine cluster bombs OR send them nothing” is a false dilemma.
One alternative would be to send Ukraine regular shells from our reserves, and save the cluster bombs for use by the U.S. in the event that we become directly embroiled in a new “major war” while Ukraine is still consuming our regular shells.
Giving regular shells from our reserves today could allow us to avoid having to use any cluster bombs whatsoever, but it also allows us to say in that case that we did more to exhaust the alternatives before resorting to them, that we used them as “a last resort.” Today we can’t say that, because it’s not our last resort, it’s merely the resort that allows us to avoid dipping into our savings – and that is not a morally defensible position.
I will add, I don’t have a problem with the “one-and-a-half-war” policy, and I think now would be a real bad time for the U.S. to drop its guard. It just seems like a no-brainer to spend from our ample reserves if we can temporarily fill that hole in our reserve with the “dirtier” weapons which are just as effective.
Support Ukraine winning their peace: yes
Willing to use cluster bombs: if needed
Agree that the current moment demands cluster bombs: no
All of that said, I am no armchair general. I’m glad Biden & co have Ukraine’s back, and Biden seems averse to war crimes.
ETA: also, it makes a difference that Ukraine is asking for them so they can use them on their own territory. I was more concerned with the practical paths for avoiding something morally undesirable, not with second-guessing their own evaluation of their needs.
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