Some of these correspondents having been using their cynical and hateful views to divert us from the point - which is that cluster munitions, deployed during warfare, are still killing and maiming civilians NOW, often decades later! Many of the victims are children. Do we want this to continue? This Open Letter has been printed now because the Cluster Munition Bill is awaiting debate in the Senate. Unfortunately, its wording has been diluted from the true spirit and intent of the international Convention. This 'interoperability' clause is just one of the clauses needing improvement, to help prevent further deployment of this weapon that goes on killing... and maiming... long after conflict has ceased.

These "virtuous Australians" are looking to ban munitions that one day some poor bugger may have been saved by? These munitions are NOT used without a target, they are used to kill the enemy as quickly and as effectively as possible. Cluster munitions are designed to effectively kill people, that is what they do.

They aren't shiny or painted in pretty colors to attract children, they are marked as they are to allow them to be readily recognised and avoided by those in war-zones. Unfortunately our enemies have found that they can hide amongst civilians and shoot, if anyone responds, of course they are targeting civilians, because everyone who makes it through psychological assessments and rigorous training is killing for the sheer joy of it, not because they want to protect their mates from being killed by ratbags.

When such moral exemplars as the signatories to this noisome legislation travel overseas and enforce bans on hidden, camouflaged, improvised explosive devices which are designed SPECIFICALLY to kill civilians, then they'll have some credibility. IED's have dodgy, improvised explosive and equally dodgy mechanisms. They are much more prone to undesired outcomes, which kill people just as surely as they were intended to do. They are used as tools of collective punishment, by extremists, on those who try and make a life as best they can.

Its funny in a non-amusing way, how 'collective punishment' and 'explosive devices' are only mentioned by hand-wringers when it suits their views. Deliberate use of the same is conducted daily by those they support, but we wouldn't want to ban that.

'Custard's particular obsession seems to be with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), but seems to have no understanding of what Cluster Munitions are and how they are deployed - nor that they act like IEDs, only randomly instead of intentionally.

So here are the undisputed facts: A cluster bomb is a weapon containing multiple explosive submunitions. When the canister opens, these small bombs are spread over a wide area. The US dropped huge numbers of them in the Vietnam War, not only on Vietnam, but also on Laos (on which the US had not declared war). Many were jettisoned over "empty" jungle because the bombers were not allowed to return to base with bombs on board.

Cluster munitions are indiscriminate and inhumane weapons. The high failure rate means that those that failed to explode at the time can lie in wait for decades as de facto landmines, killing and maiming for generations after a conflict has ended. There are accidents from landmines and cluster munitions every day.

So, Custard, they did not "kill the enemy as quickly and effectively as possible". Many WERE used without a target, jettisoned to make the planes safe to land. Many are in shapes and colours attractive to children, for instance the Soviet Union's past use of yellow plastic 'butterflies'. Or how about those deployed in Lebanon by Israel? - each attached to a little parachute. Or the US BLU bomblets used in the Vietnam War, each the size and shape of a tennis ball. I could go on - but I hope you've got the point. And decades after deployment, many of the mechanisms are very dodgy indeed!

I agree that IEDs are dreadful weapons. I hope that you now understand that cluster munitions are also dreadful, deadly, indiscriminate weapons. Unlike IEDs which are often detonated by vehicles, even the footfall of a child can set them off - or just the effect of years of corrosion.

The percentage of 'cluster munitions' that do not explode as designed is minimal. The number that pose an unacceptable risk to 'innocent civilians' - other than those in the area intentionally targeted - is miniscule. The unacceptable risk of 'IED's' (the single leading cause of civilian deaths in Iraq, Lebanon & Afghanistan) cannot be calculated, they are designed as a means of attacking unarmed civilians, preferably those who think they are otherwise safe.

When they are banned and life-sentences (or preferably death sentences) are enforced for those who make/use them and hand-wringers take action to enforce the same, then perhaps try and outlaw useful weapons systems. What next? Ban artillery altogether? Require Australian troops to risk their lives and incur greater casualties operating against enemy forces who use whatever they please, wherever & whenever they please?

Banning effective weapons systems means that the people on the ground are left with only ineffective weapons systems. The lesser weapons systems 'might' be marginally more selective, but they are still filled with high-explosive and inside shrapnel producing metal casings. ie. High Explosive rounds aren't a tool of brain-surgeons, they too have a serious non-selective blast radius and a lethal distance which is taken into account when they are used. There is also a statistically insignificant (not when it is in your loungeroom though) number of 'unexploded devices' ("UD's") per 1,000 rounds utilized with ALL explosive shells.

Areas in Lebanon that had numerous "UD's" lying around after their being bombarded by the IDF had been bombarded heavily for days on end. The reason they were bombarded is because Hezbollah had built fortifications into those areas to protect their rocket launching sites. The statistically insignificant becomes visually significant when tens/hundreds of thousands of rounds are directed at a small area in a short time frame.

But the single most deadly 'weapon' system, the 'IED' (that I'm obsessed with) is a concern of mine and rightly so. They are evil weapons, like landmines, designed and used to terrify people out of pursuing their normal existence through fear of the consequences of an innocent step.

I would say that a 30% failure rate from US cluster munitions deployed in the Vietnam War is NOT ‘minimal’! And I would say that present-day victims of cluster munitions left in the ground from the Vietnam War ARE ‘innocent civilians’. These accidents are still happening every day in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Many of the victims are children. The Vietnam War ended over 35 years ago.

But of course, this was not the only war in which cluster munitions were deployed. In fact, they have been used in some 35 countries and regions since World War 2. More recently, they were used in Angola, Chechnya, the former Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iraq, and now Libya. Of the four million cluster bomblets dropped on southern Lebanon, the United Nations estimates that one million did not explode and that two-thirds of these were scattered in populated areas. Fully 98 percent of the casualties caused by cluster munitions are civilians.

By any measure these weapons cause indiscriminate civilian casualties. These wide-area weapons do not meet the two most important obligations of international humanitarian law to protect civilians during armed conflict:
1) the need to distinguish between civilians and combatants and
2) the need to avoid civilian losses that are out of proportion to direct military gains. Cluster munitions pose severe risks to civilian lives at the time of use and for decades afterward. They also have long-term impacts on peace operations, post-conflict rehabilitation and civilian livelihoods. Communities are deprived of their productive land and family breadwinners are often deprived of a livelihood.

Every year the percentage of people in Oz not worth defending continues to grow.
Hasbeen,
there hasn't been such a spot-on observation/statement for a long time. The sad thing is that way too many are way beyond comprehending the gist of it.