September
28, 2023
Democrats
and Republicans turned down the chance to stop the export of weapons that harm
and kill civilians long after military campaigns are over.
The
U.S. House of Representatives this week rejected a bipartisan amendment to the
2024 military spending bill that would have prohibited the transfer of cluster
munitions — which are banned under a treaty ratified by more than 100 nations
but not the United States — to any country.
The
House voted 160-269 on the amendment to next year’s National Defense
Authorization Act co-sponsored by Reps. Sarah Jacobs (D-CA), Matt Gaetz (R-FL),
Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Jim McGovern (D-MA). Seventy-five
Democrats voted for the measure, while 137 voted “no”; 85 GOP lawmakers
approved the amendment while 132 opposed it.
The
vote took place less than a week after U.S. President Joe Biden said the United
States would send more cluster munitions to Ukraine.
“Many
of us have this idea of American exceptionalism, that America is set apart from
the rest of the world. Well, that’s certainly true when it comes to cluster
munitions and not in the way that we want,” Jacobs said on the House floor
before Wednesday’s vote.
“America
is an outlier. We are one of the few countries that hasn’t become party to the
Convention on Cluster Munitions, and that is a grave mistake,” she asserted,
referring to a landmark 2008 treaty, to which 112 nations are parties.
Jacobs
continued:
“These weapons maim and kill
indiscriminately. In 2021, the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor found that
over 97% of casualties from cluster bomb remnants were civilians, and
two-thirds of those were children. That’s because these bomblets are small,
colorful, and interesting shapes, so to children they look like toys. So when
kids find these unexploded bomblets stuck in trees, or in the water, or simply
on the ground and try to pick them up and play with them, they could lose a
limb or their life in the blink of an eye…. These weapons are unpredictable,
and the human cost is far too high to justify.”
Since
the end of the Vietnam War half a century ago, unexploded cluster munitions
have killed approximately 20,000 civilians in Laos, where the U.S. dropped more
bombs than all sides in World War II combined. The U.S. rained as many as 270
million cluster bombs on Laos, and less than 1 percent of the unexploded
bomblets have been cleared since. They are still killing civilians today.
“These
cluster bombs are indiscriminate,” Gaetz said on the House floor Wednesday.
“They’ve killed tens of thousands of people… and when this is all done, we’ll
be right back here on the floor appropriating money to de-mine the cluster
bombs that we’re now sending, which seems ludicrous to me.”
Since
Vietnam, the U.S. has used cluster bombs in wars including the 1999 NATO air
campaign against Yugoslavia; the 1991 Desert Storm war in Iraq and Kuwait; and
in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen during the so-called War on Terror. U.S.
cluster munitions have been linked to birth defects, miscarriages, cancers and
other ailments.
Earlier
this year, the U.S. began sending artillery-fired cluster munitions to Ukraine.
Russian and Ukrainian forces have both killed and wounded soldiers and
civilians with cluster bombs during the war.
“The
decision by the Biden administration to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine
in my opinion was unnecessary and a sad mistake,” U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum told
her House colleagues Wednesday.
“The legacy of U.S. cluster munitions…
undermines our moral authority and places the U.S. in a position that directly
contradicts 23 of our NATO allies who have joined the Convention on Cluster
Munitions.”
“The
legacy of cluster bombs is misery, death, and expensive cleanup after
generations of use,” McCollum added. “These weapons should be eliminated from
our stockpiles.”
Last
week, Biden informed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that the United
States will provide Kyiv with long-range missiles with cluster munition
warheads.
“Let’s
be clear,” Jacobs added. “This isn’t about one country, this is not about
Ukraine. This is about protecting civilian lives and ensuring our national
security all over the world. Because sending these weapons anywhere makes us
complicit in unavoidable civilian harm and creates blowback that undermines our
national security.”
No comments:
Post a Comment