Billmon:
Having the U.S. government investigate Israel’s use of cluster bombs is like having the Unibomber investigate the London subway bombings.
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August 27, 2006
WB: Cluster Fuck
Comments
“Bad, Bad, Israel. We hereby fine you 50 dollars. Don’t worry, it will be paid for by American taxpayers. If you do it again, we’ll double the fine that American taxpayers pay. By the way, here’s some more cluster bombs to replace the ones you used – paid for by American taxpayers who support everything you do to protect yourself.”
-American Investigators
Posted by: steve ex-expat | Aug 27 2006 6:12 utc | 1
Rules of Engagement and limited forces available make cluster bomlets the new soldiers and therefore irresistible to commanders. Spreading them with artillery or from planes, they deny territory to the enemy, while “cleaning” it of anything alive at initial attack.
The fact that the U.S. rushed cluster ammunition to Israel speaks of the miscalculations of the IDF in estimating Hezbullah strength.
It’s a despicable weapon, worse than a minefield (and are you aware that Israel is still withholding the maps of its minefields in Lebanon? They are using them as a hole card (no pun intended) in negotiations).
(BTW – I think it’s Unabomber)
Posted by: SteinL | Aug 27 2006 6:34 utc | 2
But, leaflets were dropped by the IAF beforehand!!!!
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 27 2006 7:31 utc | 3
Just a little blackmale between friends I guess. The cons can’t openly and publically complain about Israels failure to deliver the kick-ass that was ordered, so they break a few knuckles about the details, and at the same time — make the administration look school boy geneva friendly — without mentioning geneva.
Posted by: anna missed | Aug 27 2006 8:33 utc | 4
The “investigation” is absurd along two different dimensions :
1. Cluster munitions are wrong from the point just before their designer put pen to paper on the drawing board, so no investigation of the “correctness” of the particular use of a weapon that was created as a general means of terror can justify their use.
2. Israel is “right” by definition, so will necessarily be exonerated by an investigation of any “wrong” doing. It’s a “known fact” that bringing up the possibility of a moral equivalence between acts undertaken by Israelis and acts undertaken by non-Israelis is prima facie anti-Semitism.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 27 2006 8:44 utc | 5
Now, now.
Prithee wait a few weeks, and all this will be put in perspective.
Once those 15,000 targets of opportunity on the Pentagon’s Iranian hit list start going up in shock and awe, any concern about some swarthy folk in Lebanon getting blown up while harvesting crops or strolling through meadows will be put in perspective.
What’s a few deaths in yesterday’s war when there’s fresh, hot war on TeeVee?
CNN already has their screen graphic ready for the October War —
Iran: Why Nukes Were Necessary
Posted by: Antifa | Aug 27 2006 9:28 utc | 6
Unibomber, Unibomber whatever the tabloid tag, the bloke was mad as a cut snake but I don’t think he lacked integrity, unlike the clusterbomb inventors, manufacturers, sellers ,and users.
We can all disagree with his methods, but his motive; restraint of the mad technology assisted rush off a cliff than humanity has embarked upon, is something that many of us can understand.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 27 2006 10:05 utc | 7
The US government is schizophrenic enough to entertain such inquiry without realizing own hypocrisy. The real problem is that having said they will look at the issue, they can’t just white wash it either. In any case whatever the final official results, there will be stuff in the files which will make their way to public knowledge at some later date.
What bothers me is not just the cluster weapons or the targeting of civilians and infrastructure, but the issue of the amount of firepower used by IDF in the war. I’m sure that much of the “smart” weapons used are dead accurate. The problem is that they are also too powerful by hundred fold. Since it is not economical to have smart weapons of low yield, the smarter they are the more powerful they tend to be, just to make the cost of the weapons justifiable. So it doesn’t really matter what supposed care IDF took in targeting, the stuff they used (and probably the only stuff they have) are just too powerful to not result in criminally culpable civilian casulties.
Posted by: YY | Aug 27 2006 11:08 utc | 8
Leftover Israeli bomb wounds children
Four children have been hurt by an unexploded Israeli cluster bomb while they were playing in southern Lebanon.
One of the children, Abbas Youssef Abbas, 5, was in a critical condition, the official Lebanese national news agency reported late on Saturday. The children were said to be playing with the unexploded ordnance.
The United Nations has confirmed 288 Israeli cluster bomb strike sites, including villages, across the south and says bomblets have killed 12 people since the August 14 truce that halted a 34-day war between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.
The bomblets that failed to explode are now a deadly trap for civilians who stayed in the south or who fled and are now returning.
Tekimiti Gilbert, operations chief of the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre in Lebanon, said last week: “It’s a huge problem. There are obvious dangers with children, people, cars. People are tripping over these things.”
Gilbert said he had no doubt that Israel had deliberately hit built-up areas with cluster bombs, in violation of international law which states that such munitions must not be used in areas where there are civilians.
“These cluster bombs were dropped in the middle of villages,” he said.
I disagree, YY, that “it doesn’t really matter what supposed care IDF took in targeting”. The IDF took care that these weapons went exactly where they wanted them. These terrorist atrocities are not “the unfortunate side effects of modern warfare”, as war aficionados are wont to imply.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 27 2006 12:39 utc | 9
As usual, a brutal observation, just brutal. And right on the mark.
Posted by: the hiker | Aug 27 2006 12:49 utc | 10
Great comments everyone. I have nothing more to add.
Posted by: Malooga | Aug 27 2006 13:17 utc | 11
JFL, you miss my point.
What’s really bothered me has been the justification Israel makes of IDF actions relative to the opposing H’bola attacks. True that the H’bolla rockets are “targeted” indescriminately. But that is because the weapons are basic and may as well be firecrackers relative to what the IDF has had to offer. Israel then jutifies the use of their weapons by stating that they do not target civilians or that the weapons are legal. However well targeted to surgically avoid civilians upon initial impact the subsequent explosion wipes out any pretence to protecting innocents. And in the case of cluster weapons there are just too much unexpoded bombs left where civilians are now returning. I’m just disgusted by the overkill of the weapons and the tactics.
Posted by: YY | Aug 27 2006 13:48 utc | 12
@YY
Here is one count of Israeli and Lebanese military and civilian casualties. Other sources provide slightly different numbers but the same rough percentages.
The ratio of Israeli military/civilian dead was almost 3/1. The Lebanese ratio was about 1/9. Some of the Israeli military casualties included soldiers hit by Hezballah missiles at staging areas, so Hezballah was aiming at military targets when they had intelliegence about them. However, most Israeli military casualties occurred in direct combat with Hezballah – which means that most Lebanese military casualties occurred during the same direct combat. So what did the missiles actually target?
We know that Israeli missile targets included Lebanese infrastructure (bridges, power plants, water/sewage plants, businesses, medical facilities, etc.). In other words, the missiles were used primarily on civilian targets, places that supported civil life and where civilians would be. The civilians might have been collateral damage, but they were collateral to the civilian life structures Israel wanted destroyed, not to Hezballah fighters.
Part of Israel’s strategy was to destroy civilian life support to set up conditions for occupation and eventual annexation. As noted before, most of the Hezballah fighters that died were killed in combat with Israeli troops. The missiles were just not very effective against them because they hid out under ground when not fighting and were too close to Israeli positions when they were fighting.
Since at least the American Civil War, militaries have recognized that the principle support base and lifeblood of armies and militias are the local populations for whom they ostensibly fight. Bleed the population and you bleed the army. Aggressor countries, like the US, know this. Their populations will tolerate aggression by their govts as long as they don’t suffer too much. Defensively, the equation is much different. Populations under attack or suffering occupation are willing to endure much more because their lives are directly threatened by the aggressor, so it is necessary to inflict much more violence to suppress/conquer a resistant population than on an aggressor population to repel it. Hence claims by the US and Israel that they are threatened and fighting in their own defence. Hence shock and awe on the target population’s life support. Hence concealing personal and financial costs of war from the aggressor public. Hence managing news, even writing it and planting phony stories to manage public opinion. OK, enough hencing.
The Israel/Lebanon war is a war of peoples, not of military forces. The Israeli military supports the aspirations of Zionists while Hezballah supports resistance to those Zionists by poor Shia (and now almost all Lebanese). The civilian casualties are not incidental to the power of the missiles but to the conflicting goals of the two populations that lead to the war and the purposes for which the missiles were used – to destroy the structure of life on which the people of south Lebanon depend so Israel can move in.
Posted by: lonesomeG | Aug 27 2006 16:35 utc | 13
George Galloway begins this weekend’s radio show from Beirut with commentary regarding cluster bombs used against Lebanon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrwnPNB3fN8
Posted by: everyday people | Aug 28 2006 5:50 utc | 14
Israel is a kind of black crime syndicate that deliver murdering and innocent killing associated with white ribbons and orchestrated by the masters in white house. condemning israel is not enough, the war lords in white house should be exposed and the purpose of global disputes and conflicts are evidence for the real masters..it was really a divine justice to bring israeli army to that glamourous defeat in south lebanon in order to initiate a return wavw that will take place inside israel and in arab world .. watch friends carefully the sequence and learn historical play
Posted by: Imad | Sep 8 2006 16:08 utc | 15
Israel is a kind of black crime syndicate that deliver murdering and innocent killing associated with white ribbons and orchestrated by the masters in white house. condemning israel is not enough, the war lords in white house should be exposed and the purpose of global disputes and conflicts are evidence for the real masters..it was really a divine justice to bring israeli army to that glamourous defeat in south lebanon in order to initiate a return wavw that will take place inside israel and in arab world .. watch friends carefully the sequence and learn historical play
Posted by: Imad | Sep 8 2006 16:08 utc | 16