Landmines for Everyone!
President Obama, the peace monger, has just announced that the United States will not join its NATO allies and most other countries in formally banning landmines.
“This administration undertook a policy review and we decided that our landmine policy remains in effect,” spokesman Ian Kelly told a briefing five days before a review conference in Cartegena, Colombia on the 10-year-old Mine Ban Treaty.
“We determined that we would not be able to meet our national defense needs nor our security commitments to our friends and allies if we signed this convention,” he said. (Reuters)
Over the past year, landmines have been the cause close to 5200 deaths, a third of them children.
Obviously Obama can’t risk our national defense needs by allowing those damn children to continually discover and detonate those landmines with their tiny feet. The U.S. needs to retain the right to replenish those landmines that have been so thoughtlessly destroyed by children around the world.
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Damn Straight!!
I’ve been praying for this for the past year, hoping that Obama would protect the endangered species known as “landmines” from total annihilation. I will rest better tonight. Oh, and to those damn kids, rather than stepping on a landmine and blowing your leg off, why don’t you make peace with one and adopt it as a pet? Perhaps Obama will use some federal funds to institute an “Adopt-An-Explosive” program. If he does, I’ll be first in line to adopt my new pet, Sparky. :)
rofl. Honestly I thought that was better than the original. Nicely done :D
Send the parents the bill for replacements! To my utter disgust the UK has agreed to this ban!
Indeed, a shameful act of vandalism on behalf of the children, those responsible, if alive, should be made to go out and clean that which they caused to explode, refill the minefields, and check each one is well kept with warm covering earth.
superb!! :D :D :D
Where is your Nobel Peace Prize now!!!
Lol.
this is sad but horribly ironic. In South Lebanon there is a major problem with uncleared mines, these mines are still active and Both Lebanon and Israel refuse to sign the treaty. Russia, China and now evidently the USA also refuses to sign. It makes you think a weapon that costs a couple of dollars to build can cause such financial and moral damage to a Nations people.
buzzkill
It’s because of the fact that there are so many unaccounted for in those other other nations that they won’t sign. If they agree to it, then they have to go find and dig up all those land mines, which would take a ridiculous amount of time and effort. It’s just the government not wanting to spend the time, effort, or money on it. That and if they were to miss one while retrieving them, I believe they would get some kind of fine? I can’t remember. Yes, it’s sad that they won’t because the mines create a huge problem for the communities around them, but I can understand why these nations aren’t signing the treaty.
It would be extremely dangerous, time consuming, and expensive for us to do that. Do you realize how many land mines there are in the Korean DMZ? And they aren’t where they were planted; the rains move the mines around to random places, and the DMZ is dangerous enough with all the firefights and DPRK patrols going around.
On top of that, it would make infiltration a thousand times easier, and we’d have a pretty tough time trying to guard anything.
Now in places that where conflict has ended, we should pick those up, but otherwise they should stay. Take it from an Army 11B.
since we already went “buzzkill” on this issue and are now taking it seriously, i feel i should point out that although the US did not sign the Ottawa Treaty (AKA “Princess Di Accord”) of 1997 which banned the use of all anti-personnel landmines, our military has not used mines since 1991 (Desert Storm). the reason that then-President Bill Clinton pulled out of the talks in Oslo (which led to the Ottawa Treaty) was the situation in Korea. just in case anyone reading this is not aware, the war between North and South Korea never ended, there has just been a ceasefire there for over 50 years and mines are still in place for all the reasons already pointed out by TomJohn above. the US wanted an exception made for the Korean Peninsula in regard to the discontinuation of mine use and de-mining operations, however those involved failed to reach an agreement and the US pulled out of the negotiations. i don’t personally know the details of the treaty which Obama refused to sign, but i’d guess that the reasons were similar.
ideally, no one would form their opinions on these issues based on a site devoted to sarcasm, but…. yeah. here’s hoping that some people realize it’s not that simple. there are REASONs that the US has not signed these treaties, and they don’t have anything to do with hating children. the US discontinued production of anti-personnel mines in 1997 and has not used them since 1991. we are also the leader in de-mining operations worldwide and have removed and disposed of more mines around the world than any other government. personally i think those actions are more important than signing a piece of paper, but go ahead and form your own opinion.
and for those who want credentials: US Army 12B. i love my infantry grunts there, TomJohn, but if you REALLY wanna talk landmines, talk to a combat engineer. it’s what we do.
Glad you brought up the korean DMZ it’s amazing how few people still know the korean war hasn’t actually ended (not sarcasm)
I’m not korean but im amazed that no one really thinks about it
And I think they should send the mines’ bills to the parents of these kids. These things sure are expensive.
clearly his true “colours” are coming out…
Yeah, because the United States is the only country to deploy land mines.
Nice. But you FAIL.
Why are the US deploying land mines in South Lebanon? Surely “to meet our national defense needs”, the Dept. of Homeland Security would be better deploying these land mines at the arrival gates at major US International airports.
Don_70,
Where did you possibly infer that the US is laying mines in southern Lebanon – last I checked no part of Lebanon had seceded from the rest of the country.
You could have left out the South Lebanon and said “The US Department of Homeland Security has announced that ‘in the interest of national security all rescued landmines will be redeployed in vital roles. We are currently determining the best use however the leading roles are to be placed on the exterior of buildings with a high likelihood of terror attacks and/or of strategic interest. We hope that possible attacks will be thwarted when terrorist realize they have a high probability of being maimed or killed during their missions.”
Or, here’s a crazy idea.
The US doesn’t randomly lay landmines. They pretty much put the around military bases, not in the middle of random fields, which is what most of you are acting like.
Tell it to the people in Viet Nam & Afghanistan. They probably never thought it all through like you clearly have.
You’re 110% right. Mine planting record keeping is permanent & impeccable from all parties who bury them. Not only that, no amount of weather, changes in land use or anything ever changes the location of a mine once planted.
Clearly, these people who continually have their legs blown off with landmines just aren’t thinking and only have themselves to blame. They should have looked up the records to see whether where they put their foot was going to explode or not before going crazy and stepping there.
Why don`t they take all these damned squirrles from my neughborhood and unleash them on those minefiields? The way l see it, we kill 2 critters with one stone.
Lol.
(Wewt one word comment!)
I’ve got it!
Just airdrop millions of pics of landmines with captions reading “Don’t stand on this – it will kill you” on the necessary countries!
That way no-one will have to admit ownership/guilt of the sodding things, and no-one dies =D
i know you meant that as a joke… but it’s actually been done.
Oh ffs Life imitating art anyone?
lol