EDITORIAL A war that is imprecise and endless
Last spring, President Bush insisted
that the war in Afghanistan was not a war directed against the people of that
country. In the aftermath of the bombing, however, U.S. actions have hardly
matched up with those words. The bombs keep killing, and those dying are the
ordinary people, not terrorists.
It is difficult to get accurate figures on the numbers killed by
American bombs during the conflict, though the San Francisco-based human rights
group Global Exchange has so far identified more than 800. That number is
certainly a low estimate of the total by any calculation. The Pentagon has
voiced its regret over civilian deaths but maintains it bears no responsibility
because the deaths occurred in a war zone.
But what about today, as the cluster bombs, a particularly vicious
and indiscriminate weapon, continue killing innocents? U.S. use of cluster
bombs (see story Page 7), which spread lethal bomblets over a wide
area, has compounded the problems of war litter in Afghanistan, which was,
before the U.S. bombings, the most mine-littered landscape on earth.
While modern warriors sell their conflicts as precise and clinical
affairs, the reality is quite different on the ground. Cluster bombs, deemed
pilot friendly because they require fewer passes over an area than
single bombs, are indiscriminate killers. After they are dropped, a high
percentage of ordnance remains unexploded, rendering land unusable and often
causing death and maiming.
One of the groups most actively opposing the use of cluster bombs
is the Mennonite Central Committee, which is urging a moratorium on the use of
the bombs. More information on that campaign and how to sign on in support is
available at www.mcc.org/clusterbomb. Other information is available at
www.globalex change.org
The United States has made an initial offer of $7 million to help
clean up the mess in Afghanistan. To place that amount in context, however, it
is about the cost of one-third of a day of bombing.
Much more needs to be done first to clean up the litter of war
and, in the longer view, to rid the world of these indiscriminate killers. At
the moment, no government supports a moratorium on the use of cluster bombs and
it is unlikely that any government will give such a move serious consideration
without considerable pressure from its own people and from the outside.
The tragedy in Afghanistan, where innocent people are killed daily
by bombs left behind, is compounded by the realization that death to a
breadwinner can mean desperation for a family in this poorest of nations.
Bomblets in a farmers field can be catastrophic in a country where only
15 percent of the terrain is actually habitable.
War is imprecise and, in the case of unexploded bomblets,
seemingly endless.
National Catholic Reporter, August 2,
2002
|