CLUSTER F#%*K

Posted: 10th July 2023

“President Joe Biden’s decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine is a disaster for people in the war zone, for the chances of de-escalating the conflict, and for human rights globally.

These weapons are outlawed by more than 100 countries around the world, including all but a handful of NATO members. As the New York Times reports: ‘Since World War II, cluster munitions have killed an estimated 56,500 to 86,500 civilians. They have also killed and wounded scores of American service members. Additional civilians, including children in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Lebanon, the Balkans and Laos, continue to suffer from incidents involving remnants of cluster munitions.’

In sending these weapons, Biden is bypassing a US law that restricts the use of munitions to those with a failure-to-detonate rate of less than one percent. The Pentagon estimates a ‘dud rate’ of 6% for these cluster munitions. In other words, on average, 4 or 5 of the 72 submunitions from each shell will fail to explode on impact. They will lie on the ground, a deadly hazard to anyone who approaches them for years to come.

Congress, with the support of most Democrats, has approved over $100 billion in Ukraine spending, most of it for weapons and military assistance for which there is no accountability.

The administration claims that this vast expenditure is necessary to protect US national security interests. But few Americans see a critical US national security interest in whether Russia or Ukraine controls Donbas or Crimea.

What is a critical issue is the escalating conflict between the world’s two leading nuclear superpowers.

There is an urgent need for a negotiated settlement to end this conflict. It’s estimated that between 300,000 and 400,000 combatants have already been killed or injured in this war. The environmental impact is catastrophic, and the war prevents real international cooperation to solve the climate crisis and other critical global problems.

If this war is not to end in an unthinkable nuclear cataclysm, it must be resolved by negotiations.

Those negotiations should start now, and the United States should join in the global movement for peace, instead of escalating the war and littering Ukraine with illegal, indiscriminate weapons that will keep killing Ukrainians for decades to come.”

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War in Ukraine

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