UN Condemns America’s Cluster Bombs to the Ukraine

Just so you understand, they are called “cluster bombs” because they drop a cluster of bombs. They dump this load, and when someone gets hit, no one can retrieve them, or they will themselves step on a bomb. These things line the battlefield (Ukraine will obviously send them to civilian areas, because that is their strategy), and they stay around for decades. They’re known for killing or mutilating kids playing in fields long after the battle is over. 120 nations agreed to ban them, because they are such an affront to the basic decency of mankind.

What the hell are the Bidens doing?

What this does is give Europeans an out to condemn the US and pull back support for this American war on Russia.

The cluster bombs aren’t going to make any difference at all. Maybe they’ll kill a few extra civilians, but they would never be a game-changer on the battlefield. The tanks and missiles could have been game-changers and were not.

Sending these banned weapons that mutilate kids is going to be a game-changer on the international goodwill scene.

Everyone is sick of America, which is an absolute bully.

RT:

A spokesman for the UN secretary-general called out the use of cluster munitions on Friday, as the US prepared to announce supplying artillery shells of that type to Ukraine.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “supports the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which, as you know, was adopted 15 years ago. And he wants countries to abide by the terms of that convention,” his spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York. 

“And so as a result, of course, he does not want there to be continued use of cluster munitions on the battlefield,” Haq concluded.

The White House has confirmed that cluster munitions will be included in the latest batch of military supplies for Ukraine. Kiev has hailed the delivery as having an “extraordinary psycho-emotional impact” on Russian troops, which the Ukrainian army has not been able to push back in a month of heavy fighting.

Yeah, announcing that you are going to commit war crimes with banned weapons is going to have a “psycho-emotional impact.” But what you would think the emotion would be is outrage rather than something that would be useful.

One of the reasons the Pentagon cited for providing the dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICM) was that the US was running short of conventional 155mm artillery rounds to send to Ukraine.

Human Rights Watch and other groups have objected to the plan, noting that cluster bombs have a high rate of unexploded ordnance that continues to kill and maim civilians for years afterward.

Several Democrats – people from the war party – also denounced the bombs.

Everyone knows that if Russia announced they were going to use an infamous weapon famous for killing innocent people, the US would be freaking out. The US simply cannot keep up this illusion that they are somehow the “good guys.”

It’s well worth watching Glenn Greenwald’s recent interview with John Mearsheimer. He is really on the ball.

Among other astute commentary, Mearsheimer pointed out that no one is buying into the US narrative about how they are the good guys. They used to be able to sell “the American system” as good, and now they just look like unhinged bullies who want to force their will on the entire world at any cost, and will denounce anyone who disagrees with them as evil and then try to destroy them.

Everyone would rather do business with China, where people act normal, and do not claim to be the arbiters of reality.

What America thinks they look like
What America actually looks like

China doesn’t tell people they have to accept the Chinese system and Chinese values, or claim that China has solved the mystery of the universe and has an absolute ability to determine right and wrong, truth and reality, good and evil.

It is fundamentally bizarre what America does, trying to force things on people, and telling everyone they are moral for doing it.

It would be worth studying the domestic effects of this more. It seems very important to the American experience to constantly be involved in these moral crusades. Probably, people would have to think about their own lives and their own problems more if they didn’t view themselves as agents of moral good, carrying the burden of spreading that morality to the rest of the world, who they view as evil savages.