More Good Reasons To Reject A Landmine Ban: Radical Scheme Won’t Reduce Existing Menace, Prevent New Ones

(Washington, D.C.): Today’s Wall
Street Journal and Washington
Times feature op.ed.
articles that might be considered
bookends on the subject of the
international campaign to ban
anti-personnel landmines (APLs). The
former, entitled “A
Political Minefield,” (see href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-P_154at1″>the attached)
is authored by Paul A.S.
Jefferson, and addresses the
irrelevance — indeed, the
counterproductive nature — of the
proposed ban for the immediate
humanitarian problem: accurately
identifying and eliminating currently
deployed long-duration APLs, the mines
that daily inflict casualties on innocent
civilians around the world. Mr. Jefferson
has intimate personal experience with
landmines, both by virtue of his service
as a bomb disposal officer in the British
army and while working on behalf of
various humanitarian organizations.

The latter, entitled “An
Aging Flower Child’s Crusade,”
(see the
attached) appears in the weekly
column written for the Times by
the Center for Security Policy’s
director, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
It emphasizes the truly radical and
surreal nature of the idea promoted by
Nobel Peace Prize-winner Jody Williams,
namely the proposition that future
landmine production and deployment will
be prevented because such activities have
been “stigmatized” by an
international agreement.

Mr. Jefferson, himself a victim of the
carnage inflicted by landmines, makes the
powerful declaration that:

“I am typical of
most mine-clearers — as opposed
to anti-mine lobbyists, charity
spokesman and journalists — in
that I do not believe that a
landmine ban would do anything
to solve the problem of
landmine devastation.
Such a ban would not work because
the major producer and user
nations would not subscribe to
it; and even if they did, they
would ignore its provisions if
faced with the extreme
circumstances of war.”
(Emphasis added.)

If Ms. Williams’ treaty will not help
with the landmines already in the ground
— estimates of whose number Mr.
Jefferson says have been wildly
exaggerated — neither will they prevent
more APLs from being introduced in the
future. As Mr. Gaffney observes:

“The truth is, of course,
that any weapon as capable of
being universally and cheaply
made as long-duration landmines,
and as useful for terrorizing or
laying waste to civilian
populations, will never be
abolished. To think
otherwise is to believe that the
relatively rudimentary technology
involved can be disinvented by
international fiat. It can’t and
won’t.” (Emphasis
added.)

The Center for Security Policy believes
that these articles (copies of which are
attached) should be carefully considered
by legislators now being asked to support
legislation endorsed by the likes of Ms.
Williams — but staunchly opposed by the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, by every one of
the regional Commanders-in-Chief,
by twenty-four of the
most distinguished four-star former
ground combat commanders, by the
Secretary of Defense and, not
least, by the President of the
United States.