United States Campaign to Ban Land Mines

PRESIDENT BUSH'S new policy on land mines foolishly discards pledges made by the Pentagon during the Clinton administration. Improvements such as a $20 million increase in funding for the State Department's Humanitarian Mine Action Program are vitiated by Bush's refusal to end use of a weapon that kills and maims civilians and soldiers alike.

Bush's revision of Clinton policy's breaks an American promise to stop using all antipersonnel mines outside of Korea — including so-called smart mines, which are self-destructing — by 2003.

It is deceptive to portray smart mines as a humane advance over a policy that insisted on using persistent mines, also called dumb mines. Mines meant to self-destruct after a limited period are every bit as indiscriminate as other mines when it comes to selecting a Cambodian child, an Afghan farmer, or an American soldier for their victims.

Worst of all, Bush set back efforts to outlaw these cruel and unnecessary weapons by reneging on President Clinton's pledge that the United States would sign the Ottawa Treaty banning antipersonnel mines by 2006 if effective replacements for land mines were found by then. As Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy said on the Senate floor: "The White House has abandoned any pretext of joining other civilized nations to eliminate these outmoded, indiscriminate weapons."

While refusing to sign the Ottawa Treaty, Bush proposes to seek an international ban on the sale or export of dumb mines. But as long as other countries see the wealthy US superpower clinging to more expensive smart mines, they will continue refusing to give up their cheaper dumb mines. Bush's new land mine policy endangers the lives and limbs of US troops and delivers yet one more blow to America's standing in the world.

NEW YORK TIMES
A Bad Shift on Land Mines
3/1/2004

Land mines kill and maim thousands of people a year, many of them children. That is why 150 countries signed a 1997 treaty banning the production, use and sale of land mines and vowing to destroy their stockpiles. Due to Pentagon objections, the United States, lamentably, was the only NATO member that did not sign. But President Bill Clinton set in motion a policy aimed at bringing the country into broad compliance by 2006.

The Bush administration has now renounced that goal. Last week, it unveiled a new land mine policy. Parts of it are laudable. But the overall approach and message — that the United States will continue to produce such weapons, albeit safer, more sophisticated versions — is exactly the wrong one. It emphasizes American exceptionalism — we do it our way and we do it better — rather than American leadership. The result will likely be that the growing pressure to abandon land mine production and use around the world will falter. And it will further reduce Washington's ability to influence by example and teamwork.

There is welcome news. The administration is proposing a 50 percent jump — to $70 million — for land-mine removal aid, mine awareness programs and help to survivors around the world. Under the new policy, the United States will be the first country to vow to scrap all land mines that are not automatically disabled. American technology permits mines to deactivate themselves after hours or days, a huge improvement over the vast majority of "dumb" mines that can rip off the limb of a passerby years after being planted. Finally, the 1997 treaty focused on anti-personnel mines but exempted anti-vehicle mines. The new American policy will apply to both. The problem is that few countries have the new technology, and Washington is now stamping an American imprimatur on the ongoing use of land mines.

The administration rightly points out that no other country does more to support such things as mine clearance, education and assistance than the United States. Nonetheless, its new policy fails to acknowledge what it means to be the world's leading power. The right move is to join the rest of the civilized world and abandon the use of land mines.

INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE
Land mines: Another American Blow to Multilateralism
3/3/2004
By Wolfgang Petritsch

GENEVA Let's be clear about the U.S. announcement Friday on land mines. Washington's new policy seems to have a lot more to do with the Bush administration's controversial approach to multilateralism and internationally accepted norms than it does with a commitment to address a pressing humanitarian problem.

Monday was the fifth anniversary of the entry into force of the Ottawa Convention prohibiting antipersonnel mines. Far from being a rogue effort on the part of a small group of militarily insignificant states, it has taken hold as the international standard of action to address in a conclusive manner the human suffering caused by land mines.

With 141 countries having accepted the convention, Washington's announcement that it will turn its back on the convention's high standards seems to reaffirm that while international rules are fine for the rest of the world, the United States will go its own way.

Experience has shown that when the United States takes a progressive lead it can have a positive impact. President Bill Clinton was the first international leader to call for a total ban on antipersonnel mines. The current administration, however, by taking a narrow approach on land mines, has failed to seize the opportunity to show global leadership.

An approach based solely on the supposed tactical needs of U.S. forces threatens to undermine a higher standard accepted by most of the world. Undermining this standard will only reverse the astonishing progress that has been made, and result in additional civilian victims. In essence, the U.S. policy runs counter to its stated humanitarian objective.

It is inconceivable that the world's most technologically and economically superior power cannot forgo what many have referred to as "the poor man's weapon." And it is naïve to think that antipersonnel mines will make America safe from terrorism. Virtually all U.S. military allies have accepted the Ottawa Convention and consequently have made adjustments necessary to fulfill national security and defence responsibilities without antipersonnel mines.

The United States has demonstrated no need for antipersonnel mines in recent conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo. But it continues to disregard a multilateral solution by refusing to join states with which it shares common values.

The Ottawa Convention was born out of a desire to make multilateralism work. The effort has been worth it. Since the convention took effect five years ago, the use and supply of antipersonnel mines have been markedly reduced and few new land mines are being produced. In addition, the convention's members have destroyed more than 31 million stockpiled mines. Vast tracts of mined land have been cleared and the number of new victims is decreasing.

Cynics may suggest that the timing of the U.S. announcement - on the eve of an important anniversary for the Ottawa Convention - was designed to sap the will of the global movement to end the suffering caused by land mines. It is clear, however, that there is no stopping the determination of the 141 countries that have accepted a higher standard of international rules regarding antipersonnel mines and that these rules should apply to all states equally.

In November of this year, the Nairobi Summit on a Mine-Free World will take place. At the meeting, world leaders will review progress made and establish an action plan to ensure the elimination of antipersonnel mines. The biggest challenge facing the Nairobi meeting will be to secure the global commitment necessary to get the job done.

The United States has rightly stated that "communities victimized by deadly mines left behind after conflict deserve the full cooperation of all who support mine action" and that differing policy approaches "deserve to be discussed." So I would expect that rather than turning its back on the international community, the United States will participate actively in the Nairobi summit meeting. It is worthwhile to be a part of this dynamic process and to see effective multilateralism at work.

Wolfgang Petritsch, Austria's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, is the president-designate of the Nairobi Summit on a Mine-Free World, the first review conference of the Ottawa Convention. From 1999 to 2002 he was the international community's high representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

THE COURIER-JOURNAL LOUISVILLE
EDITORIAL: Banning landmines
3/2/2004

WHEN it comes to landmines, you can't really say the United States is part of the axis of evil, since the U.S. is trying to reduce the danger these awful weapons pose. But it's also one of the minority of nations refusing to sign the Mine Ban Treaty.

Like Bill Clinton before him, President Bush has rejected the 1997 agreement that bans use, production, transfer and stockpiling of antipersonnel landmines - devices that kill and injure thousands each year. Mr. Bush thus has lined this country up alongside such naysayers as Iran, Pakistan, Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, South Korea, Syria and Israel. He has put us at odds with 150 signatories, including such American allies as Canada, Britain, Germany and Italy.

He is doubling the money the U.S. spends each year to locate and remove landmines that serve no deterrent purpose, which is a step forward. But the Bush refusal to disavow such weapons makes the United States the only NATO country that hasn't banned them.

As the world's only superpower, the U.S. can try to carry on its back the project to create a less dangerous, more just world. Or America can arch its back, pridefully, and assume the rest of the world will fall in behind, dutifully following the American lead.

The problem, as George Bush the Bible-reading Christian knows, is that pride goeth before a fall. In the long run, no nation has successfully gone it alone.

Mr. Bush and his neo-con friends obviously believe that America will be the exception. They've made that clear by disdaining treaties and other such agreements, demeaning the United Nations (except when they need the U.N. to rescue them from their folly) and acting without strong international support. It's a gamble, and we're all at risk.

AKRON BEACON JOURNAL
Points high and low in land-mine debate; As usual, White House charts a separate course
3/2/2004
By Laura Ofobike

For a few days early in 1997, Princess Diana, trailed perpetually by photographers, visited Angola. The country was ravaged by years of brutal civil war, and it was by no means a routine stopover for glamorous royalty.

But Diana was there to make a point. Her presence (and the inevitable photographs) would help put human faces on a tragedy far removed from the awareness of legislators and policymakers for whom wars too often are simply a distant news story.
In Angola, the people who were paying the high price for war policies were the thousands of adults and children with missing limbs, mutilated, disabled people who had learned that one misplaced footstep could mean the end of life — or limbs if they were lucky.

These were the people likely to go down in military reports as collateral damage, casualties from the extensive use of land mines. And the collateral damage was adding up in war zones around the world, in some cases long after the wars were over.
The gruesome toll of the land mines became a cause celebre for Diana. She brought star-power, but the pressure had been mounting for years from international agencies like Human Rights Watch, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and the International Red Cross for governments to ban the use of land mines altogether.

Later in 1997, with Canada in the lead, the United Nations passed a treaty to ban the stockpiling and use of antipersonnel land mines, the ones that remain active and lethal years after they are planted. The Nobel Peace Prize for that year was shared by the ICBL and its civilian founders.

Those were the high-profile days of the effort to rid the world of one indiscriminate killer.

It has been five years since the treaty came into force. How far have we come? The ICBL reported that more than 11,000 people were killed by land mines in 2002. Between 15,000 and 20,000 people a year become casualties. An estimated 60 million land mines are in the ground in 60 countries. The moral imperative to eliminate the risks to civilian populations in war zones remains as strong as it has ever been.

So far, 150 countries have signed the treaty, including all the member nations in NATO with one exception: the government of the United States. The Clinton administration would only agree to consider signing the treaty in 2006 if feasible alternatives were available for use.

Last week, days before the fifth anniversary of the treaty, the Bush administration announced a revised U.S. land mine policy. The long and the short of it is, the administration will not sign the international treaty against the devices but chart its own course. It faults the treaty for not including a ban on land mines that are designed to destroy vehicles.

Like the Clinton administration before it, the White House argues there is a continued role for land mines in areas of intense conflict, especially as deterrents to attacks. ``Smart'' landmines, designed to self-destruct automatically after a set time, reduce the risks of indiscriminate harm. The administration would not eliminate these land mines.

U.S. stockpiles of the antipersonnel and anti-vehicular ``dumb'' mines that have no self-destruct timers would be scrapped in 2010, not in 2006 as the Clinton administration originally proposed. Still, dumb mines would remain in use in the demilitarized, no man's land between the Koreas.

The new policy also doubles to $70 million the money the administration would contribute to locate and remove land mines and to provide assistance in dealing with the toll of landmines.

The increased funding for dangerous, time-consuming mine-clearing programs is most welcome. Removing the devices is hardly the whole issue, however. Collateral damage from bombs and missiles and mines underground remains high, even in conflicts lauded as the hallmark of precision.

The question is whether the new U.S. policy advances more than a decade of efforts to minimize risk to civilian populations. Not much. Advocates of a total ban point out the failure rate of smart land mines is unacceptably high. About 10 percent of them fail to self-destruct, posing as much danger as any dumb mine would.

Moreover, because they are presumed to deactivate over a period of weeks, combatants are motivated to deploy large quantities of them, usually scattered by air without precision over target areas. It must be assumed, too, that the failure rate of smart land mines would mean locating and disarming them would demand the same care and large sums of money as dumb mines.

The United States last used land mines in 1991 during the first Gulf War. It banned export of all antipersonnel land mines in 1992. Still, it is hard to think that the high-technology arsenals of modern warfare, from satellites that can read a license plate from space to stealth weapons, can create no effective substitute to land mines to serve as deterrents against attacks.

More disappointing still, the new policy emphasizes the administration's go-it-alone approach to international problems. It appears oblivious to — or perhaps uncaring — how the actions of a lone superpower undercut efforts to rise above narrow national interests and pursue a genuine common good. If a military behemoth like the United States reserves the right to produce, stock or use land mines, what reason would others have to give up theirs?

Ofobike is the Beacon Journal chief editorial writer. She can be reached at 330-996-3513 or by e-mail at lofobike@thebeaconjournal.com

SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS (CALIFORNIA) EDITORIAL
Mines: Our Vicious Weapon 150 Countries have Signed a Ban on Them, but not the US
3/9/2004

The Bush administration announced two weeks ago that the United States will continue using land mines.

While the military will phase out traditional land mines in favor of “smart” mines by 2010, continued use of any land mines ignores widespread international agreement that mines are vicious, indiscriminate weapons. That's why 150 countries signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty.

The United States' failure to agree to a ban is a mistake. The humanitarian toll outweighs any presumed benefit these weapons might have. Our technological advances and the clear need for more directed weapons also make land mines obsolete.

According to the State Department, there are an estimated 60 million active land mines in more than 60 countries. Land mines cause 12,000 to 16,000 civilian deaths and disabilities every year, about a third of them children, according to Human Rights Watch.

U.S. officials say those deaths are caused by ``persistent'' mines that stay active years after a war is over. Smart mines are designed to self-deactivate, typically within 90 days, according to State Department officials.

Smart mines may not have the obvious long-term consequences that the older models do, but they're still far too risky. Even weapons that are directed at specific targets are a threat to innocent bystanders and our own troops, let alone a weapon in search of victims. That's what a panel of senior retired generals and admirals pointed out to President Bush in a 2001 letter urging him to sign the treaty.

Some responsibility lies with the Clinton administration, which supported the treaty in theory but didn't sign it, citing security concerns in Korea. It's not a strong argument. But at least President Clinton started preparing the military for compliance by 2006. He started reducing stockpiles and turned the emphasis toward using directed weapons systems.

As for the treaty, it is no surprise that the Bush administration is ignoring yet another international agreement. It's just that, this time, innocent lives are on the line.

These weapons don't use discretion. Our leaders need to show more of it when making such crucial decisions.

PITTSBURGH POST-GAZZETTE
Editorial: Mine safety / Bush makes progress, but could do much more
3/8/2004

The Bush administration has offered up a couple of fine initiatives in the worldwide effort to end the use of land mines, a cause dear to the heart of the late Princess Diana and a cause that won Vermonter Jody Williams and the International Campaign to Ban Land mines a Nobel Peace Prize in 1997.

But it disappoints that the United States won't sign a treaty banning these mines, as 150 other nations, including all other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, have done. The treaty, which former President Bill Clinton also wouldn't endorse, bans production, use, stockpiling and transfer of antipersonnel mines.

The administration's stance is peculiar, since the United States has not used land mines since the 1991 Persian Gulf war and mines planted long ago in South Korea to prevent an invasion from the North are to be eliminated by 2010. It is also odd in light of the fact that of the estimated 60 million land mines extant in 60 countries, most were not planted by the United States, though we have a stockpile of 18 million of them.

There is a plus side. Mr. Bush is to propose a 50 percent increase in spending, or $70 million, in fiscal 2005 to help 40 other countries remove land mines that are killing more than 10,000 people a year while serving no deterrent purpose.

He has also committed the nation to scrapping all land mines that don't have automatic timing devices that make them self-destruct, a first. Use of land mines aimed at destroying vehicles will require presidential consent. Both steps are excellent.

Within a year the United States will put at least eight grams of iron into stockpiled land mines to make them more easily detectable by minesweepers once deployed. That's also good. But as for ending the use of all land mines, Mr. Bush has set a sorry example for the world and contributed to the reluctance of powers like China and Russia to join in limiting use of these weapons.

The president could have shown creative, positive leadership in arms control and humanitarianism. He did something, just not enough.

HARTFORD COURANT
Editorial: Deadly Residue
3/15/2004

For Americans, the Vietnam War ended in 1975. For many Vietnamese, it continues. Since the war, an estimated 38,000 people have been killed and 100,000 injured by land mines or unexploded ordnance in the Southeast Asian nation.

We cannot go back and undo that tragic misadventure. What we should do is mitigate the damage.

Thus it is gratifying to see the United States and Vietnam agree to perform the first nationwide survey of land mines and other unexploded ordnance. Bombs and mines, three decades after the end of hostilities, still kill or maim someone - a farmer, a child, a metal scavenger - almost every day.

The agreement was negotiated by the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, an international humanitarian group. The State Department will invest $6 million in the project, which will be coordinated with a program to remove the mines and bombs.

Land mines remain a vicious global threat. The State Department estimates there are 60 million to 75 million unexploded land mines scattered in more than half the world's countries, which each year kill or injure as many as 18,000 people, nearly all of them civilians.

With the danger clear, it is hard to reconcile President Bush's decision to allow the U.S. military to continue using some types of mines.

The U.S. goal under President Bill Clinton was to stop using antipersonnel mines by 2006. Mr. Bush will allow the use of so-called smart mines, which have timing devices that automatically defuse the explosives within hours or days.

His proposal, aimed for 2010, would ban traditional "dumb" mines, both antipersonnel mines and, in an extension of the Clinton plan, larger mines intended to destroy vehicles. The president has also asked for more funding for worldwide mine removal programs.

To keep planting mines and paying to remove them is inherently contradictory, somewhat akin to offering subsidies for tobacco farming and then paying the costs of smoking-related illnesses. Even "smart" mines present some level of danger, as humanitarian groups argue, and often aren't effective as military weapons.

The Vietnam mine agreement was spearheaded by Bobby Muller, president of Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, and Deputy Minister of Defense Senior Lt. Gen. Nguyen Huy Hieu of Vietnam, both of whom were badly wounded in the war. Their example ought to guide U.S. policy.

BERKSHIRE EAGLE
Editorial: Fields of horror
3/15/2004

Yet another poll has confirmed George W. Bush's lack of popularity around the world -- two-thirds of Canadians and Britons take a dim view of Mr. Bush's leadership, as do three quarters of Germans and Spaniards -- and here is the latest reason why.

At the end of February, the Bush administration went back on Bill Clinton's promise that the United States would largely phase out the use of land mines by 2006. Instead, Mr. Bush chose to increase funding for land-mine removal, a good thing, but not to join 150 countries, including all the other members of NATO, in observing the 1997 global treaty meant to end completely the manufacture, sale, stockpiling and deployment of land mines. This places the U.S. on an ignominious list of land-mine recalcitrants that includes China, Iran, North and South Korea, Russia and Pakistan.

Land mines don't accomplish much militarily anymore. The U.S. in particular has far more efficient means for dispatching its foes in the 21st century. But anti-personnel mines still kill and maim thousands of innocent civilians, most of them farmers in poor countries, many of the victims small children. Cambodia and Afghanistan are especially dangerous for anyone stepping off well-trodden paths. Literally millions of mines have been buried in hundreds of conflicts around the world, and their indiscriminate nature regularly turns some of the planet's most bucolic scenes into fields of horror.

Mine-removal organizations praised the administration's doubling of removal aid to $70 million a year, but they deplored the U.S. decision to keep making and using mines. Mr. Bush did agree to phase out "dumb" land mines -- those that remain active and treacherous for years -- and use only those mines that automatically defuse themselves after hours or days.

Unfortunately, "smart" mines are expensive and most countries don't have the technology to make them. So any poor country that thinks it might one day go to war with the U.S., or anyone else, is likely to stick with the dumb mines. It won't matter to a shepherd boy who has lost both legs whether the mine he stepped on was manufactured in St. Louis or Shanghai.

The administration defended its unpopular move with a perfumed cloud of verbiage on U.S. mine-awareness and victim-assistance programs, all of them worthy. But while Mr. Bush is saying no to land mines with his pronouncements, he is saying yes with his example. As the most powerful nation on earth, America is in a position to lead the world away from this heartbreaking scourge by taking a principled, unyielding stand against land mines in world forums and with the power of its example. U.S. troops would also benefit from a no-mines policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Some renegade nations or groups would continue to use mines against the U.S. military, but the U.S. could deal with those forces using other means. It gains nothing by emulating its worst enemies.

CORVALLIS GAZZETTE
Editorial: Imagine a homicidal menace that survives for decades, lurking in its hidden place, waiting to kill the first person that crossed its path.
3/16/2004

Such menace exists in many places around the world, planted there against soldiers in time of war, but still killing children at play decades later: land mines.

The issue of land mine danger came home to Corvallis over the weekend, when people training to become members of Benton County's Search and Rescue unit stumbled over a something Saturday that looked like "a rusty charcoal-lighter fluid can painted United Nations blue."

The device probably was a remnant from the Korean War. In an eerie deja vu, the mine that the search and rescue trainees found was one typically filled with a dummy "charge" of talcum powder, intended to demonstrate to trainees the dangers of land mines in a real war.

That danger exists daily in 70 nations around the world, where up to 50 million so called "dumb" landmines impede road-building, agriculture and transportation, not only in war zones such as Afghanistan and Bosnia and Herzegovina, but where few tourists would expect to find them, such as Honduras and Morocco.

In 1994, the United States led the world in calling for "eventual elimination" of land mines, and the world quickly jumped on board. Technology helped, with development of "smart" landmines that blow themselves up after a while.

However, in late February, the United States decided to extend to 2010 the deadline for removal of all "dumb" landmines — four years later than the previous deadline and contrary to the on-going and impressive efforts of groups such as the Corvallis chapter of the Adopt-a-Minefield project. The local group raised $25,000 in December to remove mines from a field in Afghanistan.

Given the average global death rate from lanmines at one a day, that means up to 1,460 more people could die or be maimed than under the old removal plan, 1,095 of them civilians.

It isn't only the landmines that kill indiscriminately for decades that are dumb here.

MARIN INDEPENDANT NEWS (CA)
Editorial: Trouble Waiting to Happen
By Beth Ashley
3/7/2004

How deeply disappointing to see our government’s just-unwrapped proposal on land mines — not to stop making them, not to stop using them, not to join 146 other nations in a treaty to ban them, but a plan to produce new, different, “smarter” land mines.

Land mines that still main and kill.

One needn’t be an expert on such matters to cry out in protest.

Will we ever progress past the mentality of war?

Most of us first heard about land mines when Princess Diana championed the cause of a universal ban during a trip to Bosnia just before she died.

A few months afterward I interviewed Jerry White, a young man from Boston who, as a college kid, had lost a leg to a land mine while hiking in Israel. He now heads the Landmine Survivors Network, raising money to help land mine victims all over the world.

Within a year, I was standing by a roadside in Cambodia, talking to a little boy with a missing hand. He had seen the bright metal of a landmine buried in the earth and, thinking it might be a toy, picked it up.

Since then I have seen many more victims. They are commonplace in Afghanistan— young boys, old men, mothers who worked in the fields.

The wars are over, but the land mines remain, a scourge that maims and murders the innocent, a legacy with no point but brutality and sadness.

Somewhere I heard that one reason we do not renounce land mines is because we want to prevent North Korea from moving across the border into South Korea: our land mines already lace the border.

By seeking to make more and smarter mines – whatever a “smart” land mine is – we obviously have more uses in mind.

A New York Times editorial points to our new plan as yet another example of American “exceptionalism” – it’s OK for us to have nuclear weapons but not others, it’s OK for us to have land mines when the rest of the world is appalled.

A smart land mine, according to the new definition, is one that self-detonates after a period of time. OK. But what if it doesn’t?

Millions of “dumb” land mines (10 million in Afghanistan alone) just sit there in the earth – until they explode under some young man’s foot or are removed at a cost of approximately $1000 apiece, whenever the world finds the money to do so.

Governments are trying to support removal, and to the United States’ credit we are the largest single contributor to the effort worldwide.

But we still want to plant land mines in whatever places we see fit.

Partly assuaging our consciences here in Marin is Heidi Kuhn’s organization, Roots of Peace, which raises hefty sums of money for de-mining.

But de-mining is just not enough. We have to cease making mines, stop putting them into the ground. If the United States is truly committed to world peace, is this the crop we want to sow?

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Editorial: KILLING MACHINES; United States should reconsider, give up its land mines

Land mines kill and maim up to 20,000 people every year. Millions more suffer in other ways.

Mines make land unusable, depriving farmers of a livelihood. Mines spread a blanket of fear over a community; people know that each step could be their last.

The United States has been a world leader in the effort to remove land mines. The Bush administration has pledged to double, to $70 million, the amount of money it spends on mine removal, mines that, for the most part, it did not plant. That's true leadership, and it's money well-spent.

But U.S. leadership on the use of land mines has taken a wrong turn.

The 1997 Ottawa Convention, which bans anti-personnel land mines, has been signed by 150 countries. The United States is not one of them, however. The U.S. military at the time expressed concerns, so President Clinton set a target signature date of 2006, with the goal of finding alternative weapons in the interim.

Last month, the Bush administration announced it will abandon that course and will not sign the Ottawa treaty.

Instead, it proposes to switch to land mines that have a deactivation mechanism. After a period of days or weeks or months, they shut themselves off.

Even if mines had a deactivation rate of 100 percent, which isn't likely, they still kill indiscriminately while active.

The Bush administration says land mines are needed because they protect troops and also act as force multipliers, enabling U.S. forces to fight and win against numerically superior opponents.

But U.S. military minds are not unanimous in their support for the use of land mines. Eight retired generals wrote to President Bush in 2001 to urge him to sign the Ottawa treaty. Other military leaders, including Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who led the United States during the Gulf War, have spoken out against their use.

Their position is that the strategic value of land mines is more than offset by the dangers they pose to our own troops, as well as civilians. Mines also limit the offensive capabilities of friendly troops and restrict their movement, which is not good for today's forces, which depend more than ever on high mobility.

Included among land-mine opponents are several former U.S. commanders in South Korea, a place many point to as a textbook example of where land mines are needed for strategic reasons. All the countries of NATO have given up their land mines except the United States.

With its refusal to sign the mine ban, the United States is giving the rest of the world a reason to back out of the treaty. After all, if the most powerful nation on Earth insists on keeping them, why shouldn't everyone else? Other countries may decide they need to keep mines if they are to have any chance at a level battlefield. But many of these nations won't be able to afford the high-tech, self-deactivating mines, which means many more innocent people will suffer and die.

The United States could use other weapons as force multipliers, such as mustard gas. But it chooses not to. Such weapons are inhumane and kill indiscriminately.

That's exactly why most of the world's countries have given up their land mines. The United States should join them.

BERKELEY DAILY PLANET
Op-Ed: To Make the World Safe From Landmines
By Rita Maran
3/19/2004

It’s a firm belief of mine—and I can’t help but believe that my Berkeley neighbors share it as well—that people in neighborhoods other than where I hang out are as entitled to walk down their neighborhood streets in safety, as I am in my neighborhood. If that other neighborhood happens to be located in Kabul’s busy streets, or near Cambodia’s rice paddies, or in any of the thousands of neighborhoods in the 71 countries around the world where over 100 million landmines are buried, that doesn’t change my far-off neighbors’ entitlement to walk in safety. It’s just that in fact they can’t—and don’t—not in their neighborhood.

The problem for my far-distant neighbors is nothing less than the imminent possibility of death or a diminished life. Dismemberment may permit survival but not much more than that of what’s considered a decent life. Dismemberment happens often, especially to my neighbors’ kids—in Mozambique, for example, where my neighbors’ kids who are just old enough to tend the family cow are not quite old enough to keep the cow from wandering into tall grass where left-over landmines still lurk. In Bosnia, an 8-year-old came into this world after the war ended in 1995 and so was never shot at by snipers when she walked through her neighborhood to buy the day’s bread; these days in her neighborhood, if she makes a wrong step, she stands the risk of getting blown up by a leftover stray mine.

Danger signs with skulls and crossbones often warn people and animals to stay away from unexploded landmine sites in their neighborhood. But the signs are aged and fading, and they command less attention than they did when everyone’s body-memory of armed conflict was fresh. My friend’s neighborhood in Angola has had those scary warning signs for years—for decades, even—and she’s feeling mighty frustrated and discouraged about the toll that landmines continue to take of her neighbors and how little anyone seems to care. She wonders how much she can do, what steps she can take, to ensure that neighborhood kids stay safe and whole now, when the enemy is no longer formally the enemy, the war has been declared over, but the mines near their neighborhood go on wreaking terrible damage.

Landmines maim or kill approximately 26,000 civilians every year. Between 8,000 and 10,000 of those victims are children. The victims who survive endure a lifetime of physical, emotional, and economic hardship. In mine-affected countries, medical care is expensive and often unavailable; most countries are able to fill less than one-fourth of their annual prosthetic requirements. Landmine victims who end up unable to work become a financial burden on their families. Some are ostracized by their communities. As for their ability to make a living, mine-infested land is unusable for agriculture or habitation.

From January 2002 to June 2003, there were new landmine casualties in 65 countries. The majority (41) of these countries were not even at war; only 15 percent of reported casualties were military personnel. The number of injured survivors continues to grow in every affected region of the world, yet the assistance available for the rehabilitation and reintegration of landmine victims into society is hopelessly inadequate.

The Bay Area has for a long time attracted refugees fleeing for their lives. My Afghan neighbors in Fremont know about that, with relatives still being dismembered or killed in their neighborhoods in Afghanistan. My Serb friends, living still in the neighborhood where they were born and went to school and where their parents were born and went to school, received a small ray of hope last June. The parliament of Serbia and Montenegro passed legislation to accede to the Mine Ban Treaty. My Sudanese neighbors still in their old neighborhood in Khartoum were glad to hear that in May 2003, the Council of Ministers officially and unanimously endorsed the Mine Ban Treaty transmitted it to Parliament for ratification. And in Iraq, U.S. soldiers have perished in these months since the “major fighting” was declared over. Peace accords, cease-fires, humanitarian pauses—none of those procedures can guarantee safe passage across a field being farmed for the family’s basic food needs.

What about getting rid of the mines? No single technology is able to detect all types of mines, because landmines come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and are made from a variety of materials. The international community, including both public and private sectors, is working to improve current technologies to make the mine clearance process safer, faster, and more effective. Here in our Northern California neighborhood, Rep. Woolsey announced the introduction of legislation, the Roots of Peace Act of 2003 (H.R. 2299), that would authorize $10 million to help defuse unexploded mines in agricultural lands of formerly war-torn countries. The Bush administration just announced a new landmine policy, but has not changed its policy of staying aloof from the rest of the countries committed to abandoning the use of landmines.

Wars make headlines, but the continuing curse of landmines goes unheralded and will persist in our global society’s neighborhoods until we eradicate all landmines, present and future.

Rita Maran, Ph.D., is president of the United Nations Association-USA East Bay Chapter.

ALLENTOWN MORNING CALL
Editorial: Bush would do well to emulate Wilson more
By Malcolm J. Gross
3/22/2004

It's time to fess up and admit that when I was a teenager I wrote in a book. Defacing a book, my crime, has haunted me ever since. Worse, it was not just any book. It was volume 15 of the Book of History. I loved that series -- every volume of it. However, in volume 15, I wrote, "history may prove me wrong but I believe Woodrow Wilson was the greatest president of the 20th century -- 1957."

We don't hear much about Wilson today. President Bush did mention him somewhat favorably in a speech defending his invasion of Iraq last year but that was in Great Britain, on the edge of old Europe, where the president's right wing base seldom ventures. Republican columnists, in this paper, occasionally refer to "Wilsonian idealism," which I gather is something like "Massachusetts liberalism." Otherwise Wilson has become a forgotten figure and a president certainly not mentioned by Democrats, who fear his idealism will be used against them.

Actually Woodrow Wilson was really quite an admirable, if ultimately tragic president. Elected in 1912 as the first Democrat since Grover Cleveland 20 years before, Wilson was an unashamed liberal who quickly pushed legislation through Congress favoring free trade, established the federal reserve system, strengthened the anti-trust laws, created the Federal Trade Commission, and oversaw enactment of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. Although Wilson's record on civil rights was poor, the rest of his domestic accomplishments were little short of sensational.

However, it's Wilson's contribution to America's role in the world that has forever defined him.

In 1914 the whole world went to war -- the whole world that is except for the United States. Wilson, to use his successful 1916 re-election campaign slogan, "kept us out of war." By 1917, however, left with no choice because of Germany's indiscriminate sinking of our ships, Wilson brought America into World War I. Americans were convinced he had done everything possible to avoid war and that we were fighting not for ourselves but to "make the world safe for democracy." We went to war united largely because of Wilson's efforts.

A year and a half later with victory in hand, Wilson launched his final campaign to persuade us to join his new League of Nations. The League was a totally new approach to international affairs and America's position in the world. It called for international cooperation to preserve peace. It rejected the cynical balance of power that the British had used to preserve their empire for 250 years. Wilson's effort was a total failure; a series of strokes brought him down during a final speaking tour as he desperately tried to save the League from defeat in the Republican-controlled Senate. Then, tragically, he lived as a crippled broken shell of a human being clinging to the presidency and his concept of a new view of world affairs. As bitter and complete was his failure, the right wing of the Republican Party never forgot this rejected disdained figure who it believed symbolized woolly-headed internationalism. Wilson, even in defeat, had defined the fundamental question for America in the world. He saw the future world as a place where the strong used their might for right, not a place where the strong ruled regardless of right and considered only their own selfish interests.

The Bush administration has once again been confronted with the dilemma Wilson posed. In 1997, 150 countries signed a treaty banning the production, use and sale of land mines and promised to destroy their stock piles. Land mines kill not only in the war in which they are planted, but for generations afterward as that war's survivors try to remake their country. Recently, the Bush administration renounced the treaty's goals. Instead, it announced it would produce newer, safer, and more sophisticated land mines. It's hard to see how any land mine could be safe. Regardless, the administration's action smacks of the kind of unilateralism based on short-term selfish interests that Wilson so hated and feared. The alternative of America joining and leading the world to destroy and ban land mines strikes me as a better, more Wilsonian course. And nothing that has happened since 1957 has led me to erase my note that Wilson was the greatest president in the last 100 years.

Malcolm J. Gross is an attorney in Allentown.

RUTLAND HERALD
Op-Ed: Squandered opportunity on land mines
By Patrick Leahy and Robert Muller
4/14/2004

After a review that stretched over more than two years, the Bush administration announced on Feb. 27 its new one-page policy on land mines. Although heralded by the Pentagon as an approach that "will help reduce humanitarian risk and save the lives of U.S. military personnel and civilians," the policy is the latest example of this administration's casual disdain for international cooperation. The United States could have done the right thing by phasing out these indiscriminate weapons without endangering our troops or eroding our military capabilities.

A bit of history: In 1994, President Clinton challenged the international community to rid the world of anti-personnel land mines. At that time, more than 60 nations were littered with tens of millions of these tiny explosives that kill or maim innocent people for many years after a war ends. President Clinton's challenge was picked up by Canada's former Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, and in December 1997 a treaty banning anti-personnel mines was signed in Ottawa. That treaty has since been signed by 150 nations, including all of our NATO allies, as well as other nations that have joined us in Iraq.

But faced with opposition from the Pentagon, President Clinton decided not to sign the Ottawa Treaty. He did so for two reasons. First, U.S. anti-personnel mines are designed to self-destruct after days or weeks, making them less dangerous to civilians than cheaper "persistent" mines; and second, the military maintained that it needed mines for the defense of South Korea. However, recognizing the need for American leadership on a global humanitarian and arms control issue, President Clinton directed the Pentagon to "search aggressively" for alternatives to self-destruct mines, and, if suitable alternatives were fielded, to join the treaty by 2006.

Aware of the Bush administration's antipathy to treaties, we felt the best hope for progress on the land mine issue was an approach that accelerated the search for alternatives. That goal is now within reach. We will soon be able to deploy weapons that act like land mines but are not triggered by innocent civilians. This new generation of weapons will allow U.S. soldiers a wider breadth of decision-making and targeting capabilities on the battlefield. We did everything we could to encourage the president and the Pentagon to work with us on this approach. But rather than reach out, take charge and move forward, the White House looked inward and slid backward.

The centerpiece of the administration's new policy is the elimination, by 2010, of persistent anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines that do not self-destruct. Eliminating this category of mines is positive but not very meaningful. We haven't used these mines for decades - not even in Korea - because their risk to innocent civilians and to our soldiers is widely recognized. Hearing the Bush administration say that they won't use them by 2010 is a bit like saying they have decided that Americans should no longer use leaded gasoline.

The challenge is to get other nations to stop using mines. As long as the world's superpower insists on using self-destruct mines, appeals to nations like China, Russia, Pakistan and India to give up their persistent mines will fall on deaf ears. The Bush policy ignores this reality, abandons the past pledge to phase out self-destruct mines, makes only an oblique reference to alternatives, keeps weapons in our arsenal that the military itself says impede the maneuverability of our forces, and states categorically that we will not join the treaty. As a practical matter, this policy takes us back to pre-1994.

This president was well-positioned to hasten the day that land mines will bear the stigma they deserve. He not only could have done it without endangering our troops; he could have done it by advancing the date for fielding alternatives to enhance American military efficiency. Four years ago, a very senior Army commander admitted that U.S. policy on these weapons was irrational. In effect, he said: We don't want 'em, we don't use 'em, and we don't need 'em. The question for President Bush is: Why do we still have them?

Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, is the senior U.S. Senator from Vermont. Robert Muller is president of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.

DEFENSE NEWS
Op-Ed: Bush Land Mine Policy Outdated, Dangerous
By retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. DeWitt C. Smith
5/31/2004

The long-awaited U.S. land mine policy, announced recently and quietly by President George W. Bush's administration, represents a dangerous step backward in protecting civilians and U.S. troops from this indiscriminate weapon.

President Bill Clinton did not sign the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. But in 1998, he created a policy instructing the Pentagon to search for alternatives to the weapon and to phase out its use. The United States, Clinton stated in his policy directive, would join the Mine Ban Treaty by 2006 if certain conditions could be met.

The new Bush administration policy abandons any U.S. effort to join the Mine Ban Treaty by 2006, or ever. This is the wrong course.

As eight of us — all retired senior generals and admirals — wrote in a letter to President Bush soon after he took office, "We feel strongly that it is in the best interests of the American soldier and our country that you fast-track U.S. accession to the Mine Ban Treaty. Anti-personnel mines are outmoded weapons that have, time and again, proved to be a liability to our own troops.

We believe that the military, diplomatic and humanitarian advantages of speedy U.S. accession [to the Mine Ban Treaty] far outweigh the minimal military utility of these weapons."

Lingering Threat
Pentagon land mine casualty reports from Korea, Vietnam and the Arabian Gulf attest to the tremendous toll that these obsolete weapons, many of them U.S. weapons, have taken on U.S. service men and women.

Most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, dozens of U.S. troops have been injured and killed by mines, mostly laid by Iraqi, Iranian and Russian troops during the past few decades. Veterans across the United States have testified repeatedly to the devastating injuries this counterproductive weapon has inflicted on both U.S. soldiers and the civilians around them in the countries where they have been laid.

In fact, a U.S. General Accounting Office report on land mines during the 1991 Gulf War stated that some U.S. commanders were reluctant to use mines because of their impact on U.S. "troop mobility and fratricide potential."

Most noncombatant land mine victims who survive the blasts suffer blown off limbs and other debilitating injuries with very limited access to pain medication, blood for transfusions and rehabilitative care.
The new policy commendably proposes a significant increase in U.S. mine removal funding. It also directs the Pentagon to phase out "dumb" (nonself-destructing or nonself-deactivating) mines, both anti-vehicle and anti-personnel, by 2010. These mines, however, can and should be eliminated from the U.S. arsenal now.

The anti-personnel type of mines have not been planted by U.S. troops in well over a decade and are not particularly useful on the modern battlefield. So-called smart mines, those that self-destruct or self-deactivate, should not be retained indefinitely for possible U.S. use, as was announced in the new policy. Though labeled "smart," these mines cannot discriminate between the foot of a soldier and that of a child or between friend and foe. They tend to be scattered by air, making them difficult to mark and map; they pose tremendous challenges and costs for demining teams; and they threaten the lives and limbs of U.S. troops and innocent civilians.
Every NATO nation, except the United States and two new member states, has joined the Mine Ban Treaty. In doing so, U.S. allies have demonstrated that they can accomplish their missions and protect their troops with weapon systems available now.

In announcing the decision not to work toward accession of the Mine Ban Treaty, the United States may well encourage mine-using countries, such as Russia, India and Pakistan — which have laid hundreds of thousands of mines in recent years with devastating results for innocent victims — to continue producing and sowing their lethal and indiscriminate legacy.
The announcement also may complicate joint operations with virtually all U.S. allies who have banned the weapon.

A U.S. ban on anti-personnel land mines would enhance the country's combat mobility, strengthen its ability to work with and set an example for other nations, and most importantly, protect foreign civilians and U.S. sons and daughters in uniform when they are in harm's way. The new land mine policy is misguided and ought to be reconsidered for both military and humanitarian reasons.

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. DeWitt C. Smith is the former deputy chief of staff for personnel for the U.S. Army and was twice commandant of the U.S. Army War College. This commentary was written in coordination with the US Campaign to Ban Landmines.