So, we’re arguing again about the best ways to kill people.
The decision by President Joe Biden to deliver to Ukraine a more dangerous set of cluster munitions that distribute bomblets that may later endanger civilians to resist Russian invaders who indiscriminately bomb hospitals and schools is presenting itself as more a question of American morals than one of ammunition effectiveness.
Over and over, we seem to be telling ourselves it’s perfectly fine to kill humans one at a time, just not with the wrong weapon.
Clearly, it’s a discussion we shouldn’t have to conduct, and the question of where morality enters has been hazy at best. It seems more about embarrassment that Ukraine has requested and apparently thinks it needs weapons of this type.
While we have our societal limits that we revisit from time to time, the whole idea of an argument about munitions in the middle of a shooting war for survival seems, well, nuts.
On the one hand, most of humanity outside North Korea seems to agree that launching nuclear missiles violates all our rules exactly because it would do too much widespread and permanent damage to life as we know it. On the other, the sizeable number of Americans who insist on owning and sporting automatic-style weapons best left for the battlefield on our streets in the name of personal safety is somehow regarded as protected by the U.S. Constitution.
We keep renewing our demand for death penalties for our worst criminal felons, but then spend oodles of time, effort, and court challenges on refining the method for their execution.
In battle, we watch governments argue internally about “proportionate responses” before releasing tanks, drones, and armored tank columns to seize hand-held explosives in a permanent city built around a refugee camp in the West Bank. Bombs, even “carpet bombing” techniques were somehow okay in Southeast Asia, while use of napalm finally was declared over the humanistic edge.
Isn’t there something missing here in the why we have wars and killings in the first place, about redirecting our efforts to keeping the situation from reaching that point?
Worry About How to Kill
Some months ago, we opened the board game Clue to play with our two grandchildren, then 7 and 9, in part because they seem to love detecting. Our inquiring granddaughter halted the proceedings by wanting to know exactly how someone kills using a candlestick – do you use it to burn someone or scare them or what, she asked, not thinking of striking them and sending her older brother into gales of laughter.
Either for the premise of a catch-the-murderer game or because of the pervasiveness of plots and lore in which people mysteriously disappear, it was never a question about morality of killings, just about the how of it.
Our failed legislative debates about whether and how to limit, regulate, or ban assault-style weapons never seems to grasp the same morality high ground as the fervor over abortion decisions or the current mania about culture wars more generally about life choices. As humans, we long have accepted some notion about standing our ground with weapons that kill.
The proposed solutions from a gun-loving nation for school shootings all center around providing more guns, more lethality, whether in trained hands or not. We’ve seen the Supreme Court double down on rejecting laws that seek to regulate open carry of weapons to such a degree that various states think it okay for weapons to enter churches and bars or to restrict gun ownership for people with mental and emotional problems. We’re now expecting a court case about gun rights for those identified in domestic violence.
It’s all about the how. Maybe that is the only question we can still handle. Clearly, even that narrowed discussion is not easy or obvious.
The Biden Decision
Based on a strict military assessment, Biden found reason to share cluster munitions –which contain bomblets that can scatter across a wide area, often not exploding until later – with Ukraine, which says it needs ammunition. In turn, Ukraine vows to map its narrow usage of the weapons.
Experts apparently agree that deployed responsibly, cluster weapons can be an effective military tool against armored columns.
Still, these weapons have been the target for elimination by 123 countries, who say they are worried about the cost to civilians. Of course, civilians already are being targeted through artillery and air-launched bombs and missiles that Russia finds within the definition of usable weapons even as the other side accuses them of war crimes.
The U.S. provided cluster munitions to the Saudis to use against Yemen until 2016, when international criticism grew too loud. But the U.S. still holds out from joining an international ban on cluster bombs. even as it is the world’s biggest contributor towards efforts to remove land mines post-war in now-civilian areas.
The Biden administration’s earlier hesitancy was reportedly over the “optics” of selling cluster bombs and that it may introducing a wedge between the U.S. and other NATO countries over the weapon’s use. It was not because of legal concerns.
In The Conversation, a scholar of weaponry and war argues that providing Ukraine with cluster weapons could serve to destigmatize them and could encourage – or excuse – their use by other states that may be less responsible that Ukraine vows.
We’re left with contradictions galore: Terrorism is a universal evil because civilians die, nuclear weapons and thermobaric weapons are no-no’s because there is too much permanent damage, automatic weapons are an acceptable self-defense weapon. But strong government defense to pandemics and health risks, environmental dangers, or limits on construction in areas open to natural disaster are all too intrusive.
We’re not debating the right, duty, or morality of dealing death, just the methods involved. Interesting planet you have here.
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