Posted by Benjamin on: 12.19.2007 /
I don’t know if any of you follow the recent deaths roundup over at Iraq body count, but I noticed that this last Saturday two children were killed in Iraq, in Karbala, by an unexploded cluster bomblet left over from the illegal 2003 invasion.
It didn’t, of course, make any ripple at all in any U.S. news sources. Here’s the story from Voices in Iraq
So for the uninformed, cluster weapons are bombs which are delivered by airplanes or artillery which have from several to thousands of smaller bomblets inside. The larger bomb opens at a certain height dispersing the smaller bomblets over a wide area. When the bomblets hit the ground, they are supposed to explode. Each bomblet contains dozens to hundreds of smaller bits–shrapnel, inside, and when the bombet explodes, these tiny projectiles speed outward as fast as bullets. You can imagine the devastation this causes to living flesh.
The problem with these weapons is that as many as 30-40% of the bomblets don’t explode when the fall. So they sit around for years, even for decades, until something eventually causes them to explode. And often that something is a person–a farmer cultivating his land, or a construction worker preparing a site for construction, or a child exploring who finds a new “toy”.
An international conference working toward reducing or abolishing the use of these weapons just finished on December 7th. The U.S., one of the world’s leading producers, users, and sellers of these indiscriminate weapons, chose not to send a delegation.
My question is about responsibility.
In light of the fact that unexploded bomblets continue to kill hundreds of civilians every year in Laos and Vietnam some 4 decades after the hot war there ended, and also that knowing this we choose to continue to produce and deploy these weapons, my question is this:
I’d love to hear your general reactions/any actions you have taken or plan to take
Leave a Reply
Comment by: Ron
1 12/19/07 11:32 AM | Comment Link |Something inside me fell when I read that part. And the mental image of a small child finding a new toy…
I’ve been doing a lot of reading in Isaiah lately about this expanding kingdom of God’s that is evolving and being birthed within this one, and this morning I’m reminded of the phrase, “…and a little child shall lead them.”
Unless, of course, he or she has been ripped apart by countless bits of shrapnel.
Comment by: Benjamin
2 12/19/07 12:25 PM | Comment Link |Ron,
thankyou for reminding me of how I used to feel before I became a bit hardened to all this stuff. You rock.
Comment by: consuming blob
3 12/20/07 1:14 AM | Comment Link |just wait Ben, after you get hardened, eventually you get apathetic too. God have mercy on us all
Comment by: Benjamin
4 12/20/07 2:25 AM | Comment Link |consuming,
thank you for the warning. Hopefully this isn’t inevitable. I was speaking to some friends tonite about the very question of how to keep this real and honest and connective in light of the sheer magnitude of it. The brilliant Jeremy reminded me of what I already knew–the key is stories. For me, part of fighting the apathy is attempting to remain open, alert, listening, for *true* stories–true in the best sense of the word–stories that grab me and won’t let go–stories that touch on the big, terrifying, overwhelming, winsome truth in a personal, here and now, see it in their eyes kind of way. I mean alert for these stories in the people I interact with–cause we all have such stories–mostly we either keep ‘em secret, or don’t know ‘em, or both. These 4 children in Karbala have such stories, and their friends and siblings and mums and dads have such stories. How to connect with those? That is a question that difficult to get at.
Comment by: Rachel
5 12/20/07 7:16 PM | Comment Link |Benjamin, thank you for speaking out about this terrible evil. Yes, I believe that the death of these children absolutely was murder and that our government and our military, and to some extent all citizens who did not speak out against this war, are morally responsible. I want to say “may God have mercy on us” but since we haven’t shown much mercy, I’m not sure we can expect to receive it.
Comment by: Justice and Compassion
6 02/8/08 12:58 AM | Comment Link |[...] I wrote about it on this blog. [...]