I understand a lot of Americans may support US giving cluster bombs to Ukraine in their war with Russia. They’re no doubt cheering President Biden for sending those grotesque weapons of death despoiling any ground they land in. The unexploded bomblets mostly harm little kids who pick them up out of curiosity, losing limbs and possibly life itself.
The Tribune gets kudos for Stephen J. Lyons’ scathing op ed decrying US sending them to Ukraine to blow up Ukrainians for months, years, even decades after the current war ends… if ever.
That anti cluster bomb post did not need to be answered by publishing Richard Hahin’s letter opposing Lyons by stating Ukraine needs them to “regain more of their territory and win the war quicker.”
That is preposterous. Had the US supported the cease fire/peace agreement brokered by Turkey with Russia and Ukraine in April, 2022, the war would have ended 15 months ago. Instead, over $40 billions in US weapons flowed into Ukraine, keeping the war going for over 500 days now, adding a couple of hundred thousand more Ukrainians to the war’s death toll.
Hahin also ignores the fact that the US called Russia’s use of cluster bombs a "war crime" early in the war. What is Biden’s justification for committing American war crimes now? Seems the US is running out of conventional weapons to supply Ukraine to keep fighting a lost cause. Apparently, sending cluster bombs into a war zone is not a war crime if that’s all one has in their munitions cabinet.
If Richard Hahin wants to support use of cluster bombs, he’s free to self-publish on social media. But the Tribune should no more print a letter justifying the transfer and use of cluster bombs than they should publish a letter advocating the transfer and use of poison gas.
Walt Zlotow became involved in antiwar activities upon entering University of Chicago in 1963. He is current president of the West Suburban Peace Coalition based in the Chicago western suburbs. He blogs daily on antiwar and other issues at www.heartlandprogressive.blogspot.com.
One can always claim the ends justify the means employed to get there but when it’s obvious the ends won’t be achieved…
……It’s a war crime against those mythical international laws….
Has Russia used cluster bombs in Ukraine?
There is always exception . “This time is different “- a obtusely raw moral cudgel that West uses to justify reaction to whether it is WW2 or 911 or Belgium babies held up high on bayonet or babies thrown out of the ICU or to the mental anguish to the deformed Lantos’s cadaver wetting itself in tears for the Kuwaitis or something from the past like Embassy seizure or Saddam gassing Kurds . But the argument on the exceptional moment is never allowed to the overtly non-friendly nations .