Fourteen of America’s Most Respected Military Figures Urge Senate to Protect U.S. Troops From Dangerous Landmine Ban

(Washington, D.C.): The U.S. Senate is expected shortly to debate an amendment to the
Fiscal
Year 1999 Defense Authorization bill that would, if adopted, unnecessarily jeopardize American
servicemen and women. This amendment will be offered by Senator Patrick
Leahy (D-VT) in
the hope of codifying a deal banning all future U.S. use of anti-personnel landmines (APLs) that
he recently struck with the Clinton Administration — over the heads and at the expense of the
U.S. military.⁽¹⁾

The Leahy-Clinton deal is all the more reprehensible for it coming just eight months after the
President refused to yield to pressure to overrule his Joint Chiefs of Staff and Unified Combatant
Commanders, who adamantly opposed such a ban. On 17 September 1997, Mr. Clinton said:

“As Commander-in-Chief, I will not send our soldiers to defend the freedom of
our people and the freedom of others without doing everything we can to make
them as secure as possible….There is a line that I simply cannot cross, and that line
is the safety and security of our men and women in uniform.”

Military Leadership

In response to the Leahy-Clinton deal, fourteen of the Nation’s most distinguished retired
military
officers — all four-star generals, all highly decorated ground combat commanders, whose numbers
include four past Marine Corps Commandants, a former Army Chief
of Staff and a previous
Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (who also served as Secretary
of State) — have written
an open letter to the Senate (see the attached) urging the
rejection of:

“Any legislative initiative that would have the effect of crossing the
line — whether
by endorsing new’operational concepts’ (read, accepting more U.S. casualties) or
other measures — that would jeopardize the safety and security of our men and women
in uniform by impinging upon the U.S. military’s ability to make responsible use
of self-destructing/self-deactivating anti-personnel landmines and long-duration
APLs in Korea.”

The fourteen signatories on the Lott letter are among the twenty-four generals who
initially
wrote President Clinton nearly a year ago in what proved to be a successful effort (albeit,
temporarily so) to impress upon him the critical role played by anti-personnel landmines in
safeguarding U.S. military forces and assuring their effectiveness on the battlefield. href=”#N_2_”>⁽²⁾

Reality Check

The generals’ letter is all the more important in light of two recent developments: First, the
ongoing use of large numbers of anti-personnel landmines by Slobodan Milosevic’s forces for the
purpose of genocidal “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo demonstrates the irrelevance of the Ottawa
APL ban to the real humanitarian problem associated with landmines:
Rogue states can and will
continue to employ them, irrespective of whether the U.S. denies itself the right responsibly
to utilize self-destructing/self-deactivating APLs that pose no such threat to
civilians.

Second, the landmine banners — including Sen. Leahy — have made clear their view that the
deal
with President Clinton is just an opening gambit. A memorandum circulated
on 27 May by
Holly Burkhalter, co-chair of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines, states that: “[The
deal]
enables ban campaigners to push the White House on the ‘when’ question, now that the
President has agreed in principle to sign.” She goes on to note that Sen. Leahy has said,
“I
think we can get [to signature of the Ottawa treaty] sooner and I and others will be pushing
them to do so.” In short, talk of creating alternatives to landmines before their use is
prohibited
is just that, talk.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy commends the fourteen general officers who signed the letter
to
Senator Lott for their willingness forthrightly to speak out once again for those still serving in the
armed forces, whose lives and missions could be jeopardized by the Clinton-Leahy APL deal. It
urges the Majority Leader and his colleagues to hold, not cross, the line that would
needlessly
endanger the “safety and security of our men and women in uniform.”

The stakes are clearly laid out by one of these formidable signatories, former Marine Corps
Commandant Carl Mundy, in a letter to the Editor he recently sent to the Milwaukee
Journal
Sentinel assailing its endorsement of the Leahy-Clinton deal:

“…It is a nice notion to get rid of defensive weapons — unless you have to do the
fighting, or have a son or daughter who is in uniform with the mission of defending the
interests of those of us back home who write and read newspapers. I have two of
those. As the Iraqi tanks massed in Kuwait and lightly armed American and allied
forces took the field defensively a few hours to their south in Saudi Arabia just a short
eight years ago, it would be interesting to see how talk of a landmine ban would have
fared.

“I weep for the innocent people being killed around the world by ‘dumb’ mines
put there by people from countries that lack the humanity and the technology of
America. However, the regrettable fact is that there are still tigers out there, and
some of them are stalking us. Our men and women in uniform must have the
means to defend themselves when the shooting starts. U.S. military, self-destructing land mines
are a technological and humane means of doing just that.
The landmine treaty may serve well the 120 nations that haven’t had to fight
many, and haven’t won many, wars in recent decades. For the United States, it’s
wrong.”

– 30 –

1. For more on this odious deal, see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Some Memorial Day:
Clinton Forgets The Military In Embracing Landmine Ban That Will Put Them At
Risk (No.
98-D 89, 23 May 1998).

2. See the Center’s Press Release entitled
Many Of Nation’s Most Respected Military Leaders
Join Forces To Oppose Bans On Use Of Self-Destructing Landmines ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-P_101″>No. 97-P 101, 21 July
1997).