Inexcusable.

[cali]

This makes me so sad.


Obama administration will not sign land mine ban

By DESMOND BUTLER, Associated Press Writer

(11-24) 15:06 PST WASHINGTON (AP) --

The Obama administration has decided not to sign an international convention banning land mines.
More News

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Tuesday that the administration recently completed a review and decided not to change the Bush-era policy.

"We decided that our land mine policy remains in effect," he said.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/11/24/national/w135403S69.DTL#ixzz0XpQ3JKDr

[peacebird]

1. apparently our "excuse" is the landmines we placed in the DMZ between North & South Korea

:eyes:
because we have them there we refuse to sign the ban.. :grr:

it is So disappointing, even on EASY calls like this Obama sides with Bush.

very disappointing.

[tritsofme]

3. Why spend political capital on a treaty that would be DOA in the Senate?

Not to mention of the practical problem, of well, all those mines at the DMZ.

[peacebird]

8. is "doing the right thing" worth the political capital in your view?

It is in mine.

[Hippo_Tron]

23. Signing a treaty that won't be ratified doesn't make any quantifiable difference

So I don't see how it's "doing the right thing". Better to spend the political capital on something that could actually get passed like the comprehensive test ban treaty.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

34. Please take a long hard look --

at the man in your avatar, and then try to convince me why it isn't important to at least attempt do the right thing.

[tekisui]

2. This is a sad mistake.

:(

[liberalmuse]

4. Yeah, well...

I'm waiting on more information before I go for Obama's throat. Some people don't need much.

[cali]

6. I'm not going for his throat, but this is just wrong.

[Aramchek]

7. sure you're not

[peacebird]

10. :eyes:

rolling in disgust

[sudopod]

32. PROTIP

You're barking up the wrong tree.

[Captain Hilts]

5. For us it's all about the border between the Koreas. Long-term policy, unfortunately. nt

[mike_c]

9. it's all about refusing to acknowledge the mistakes we've already made....

It's like refusing to stop killing innocent people because you did it once half a century ago. Much of the rest of the world is ready to enter into a treaty that will make the world a better place for everyone, and especially for children, but the U.S. won't sign because doing so would require us to pony up and correct past injustices.

[inna]

13. i think your post just about sums it up. thank you. nt

[jillan]

11. I need to stay away from DU, my approval rating of Obama is going down.

:(

[asdjrocky]

12. Sadly, I'm not a bit surprised.

I'm waiting them to quietly announce drilling in Anwar.

[Hutzpa]

14. .

:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

15. You would have our boys bringing a bazooka to a land-mine fight!

Besides... we cannot afford to build that wall on the Mexican border. We might need those land-mines some day.

[roody]

16. Welcome to Bush's third term.

[uponit7771]

17. yes obama is soooooooooo like him,,,rolleyes

[ej510]

18. If you don't like that you will hate this!

US builds up its bases in oil-rich South America

From the Caribbean to Brazil, political opposition to US plans for 'full-spectrum operations' is escalating rapidly

By Hugh O'Shaughnessy

Sunday, 22 November 2009

The United States is massively building up its potential for nuclear and non-nuclear strikes in Latin America and the Caribbean by acquiring unprecedented freedom of action in seven new military, naval and air bases in Colombia. The development – and the reaction of Latin American leaders to it – is further exacerbating America's already fractured relationship with much of the continent.

The new US push is part of an effort to counter the loss of influence it has suffered recently at the hands of a new generation of Latin American leaders no longer willing to accept Washington's political and economic tutelage. President Rafael Correa, for instance, has refused to prolong the US armed presence in Ecuador, and US forces have to quit their base at the port of Manta by the end of next month.

So Washington turned to Colombia, which has not gone down well in the region. The country has received military aid worth $4.6bn (£2.8bn) from the US since 2000, despite its poor human rights record. Colombian forces regularly kill the country's indigenous people and other civilians, and last year raided the territory of its southern neighbour, Ecuador, causing at least 17 deaths.

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who has not forgotten that US officers were present in government offices in Caracas in 2002 when he was briefly overthrown in a military putsch, warned this month that the bases agreement could mean the possibility of war with Colombia.

In August, President Evo Morales of Bolivia called for the outlawing of foreign military bases in the region. President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, overthrown in a military coup d'état in June and initially exiled, has complained that US forces stationed at the Honduran base of Palmerola collaborated with Roberto Micheletti, the leader of the plotters and the man who claims to be president.

And, this being US foreign policy, a tell-tale trail of oil is evident. Brazil had already expressed its unhappiness at the presence of US naval vessels in its massive new offshore oilfields off Rio de Janeiro, destined soon to make Brazil a giant oil producer eligible for membership in Opec.

The fact that the US gets half its oil from Latin America was one of the reasons the US Fourth Fleet was re-established in the region's waters in 2008. The fleet's vessels can include Polaris nuclear-armed submarines – a deployment seen by some experts as a violation of the 1967 Tlatelolco Treaty, which bans nuclear weapons from the continent.

Cont'd at the link:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-builds-up-its-bases-in-oilrich-south-america-1825398.html

[VMI Dem]

19. Once again, this is chess people.

Stop playing checkers.

[Lilith Velkor]

20. Chess. With landmines.

Isn't that Battleship?

[VMI Dem]

21. Maybe its more reverse psychology.

People will realize that landmines are bad or something.

[Lilith Velkor]

22. It's tough to turn a cruise ship around when people are playing shuffleboard with landmines.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

28. .

:thumbsup:

[OneBlueSky]

24. you don't play chess OR checkers with kids' lives and limbs . . . n/t

[DCBob]

25. I have given the Obama admin the benefit of the doubt on everything else but this one is wrong.

These weapons are a scourge on mankind and have especially affected the young who have accidentally stepped on these stupid devices years and decades after being placed somewhere. I do not understand this decision. Surely there are better, safer ways to "protect" the DMZ in Korea.

[DonkeyHoTay]

26. Princess Diana was right on this issue; the President is wrong

I am so very sad that we are still condoning these horrorific WMMs (Weapons of Mass Mutilation).

[PVnRT]

27. Disappointing

I suppose his defenders, however, will perform plenty of mental gymnastics to somehow justify this as "strategic" or whatever.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

29. Agreed.

[LWolf]

30. Correct. It's inexusable. nt

[sudopod]

31. Cali, much props and respect to you.

You've been here far longer, internet wise, and it's clear you've spent way more time in the IRL trenches than me by a long shot too.

However, I think this article that's circulating is designed to push our buttons. This is exactly the sort of thing that would get under our skin. What sort of double-faced bastard would like landmines, after all? I propose that stirring hard feelings toward the President and discord in our ranks is the point of this article.

Look at how this is being delivered to us though. It's linked to SFGate. SF is our our kind of town, right? SF Gate, as far as I am aware here in the deep south, is a decent paper. The article, though, is just another AP article written by some guy named Desmond Butler. Not much info about the guy from the Google, except that the "Bush-era" designation probably came from him. His affection for the term can be seen in another article picked up by National Review by the same author that denigrates the President's dismantling of Bush's missile defense strategy in eastern Europe. (http://nrinstitute.org/mediamalpractice/?p=454)

Writing the article to tie the President to the former Resident is nasty in and of itself, and I admit that it got my dander up to think that we're just brainlessly keeping "Bush-era" policies afloat. The article goes on to list a number of disappointed quotes from various people who's opinions (well, maybe not Reid's) we take seriously about how lamentable it is that we won't do something about landmines.

What's missing? The reasoning behind the decision, for one. There are no quotes from administration officials outlining their thought process. All we got was the news that we're not signing the treaty, just like Bush, the obvious implication being "more of the same" and a sense that we folks who are concerned about kids trying to get around without feet are being arrogantly ignored.

Is this fair, though? The US currently does not mine anything. There are weapons companies (defense contractors, lol) in the US that manufacture land mines, but I have a feeling (which may be wrong) that compared to stealth bombers and cruise missiles, landmine sales are small potatoes. Moreover, was the administration's reasoning provided to Mr. Butler, who then chose not to include it in the AP article? I don't know. Are there good reasons not to sign the treaty which may have been omitted by a writer out to stir shit among a bunch of bleeding hearts (excuse me, people who aren't fucked up enough to think long-lived, indiscriminate maiming machines buried underground in civilian areas are a valid foreign policy tool)? Well, there are two that occur to me.

The first is, of course, the Korean Peninsula. As has been thoroughly described by other posters, the point of the DMZ is to slow down NK for a few days in order to move a substantial force into position to fight. The ROK army and our forces in Korea could not hold back the NKPA for more than a few days, and this would buy valuable time. Moreover, the NK war machine has no independent access to fuel, and would likely only have reserves for a few weeks of full-on conflict, so any sort of successful holding action would allow the ROK to survive. I hesitate to say call anything a "win" that entails the utter devestation of everything within a hundred miles of the DMZ, though.

Second is the fact that it wouldn't make it though the Senate, again for reasons we are all familiar with. Same for the Kyoto Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty, or any number of things you'd think a "free" people could get behind. It would be nice to see a push on these fronts, but apparently the President is one of those people who would rather not engage in futile fights, whether it's just or not. Personally, I think I'd say fuck em and push it anyway, but that's me.

In conclusion, let's look carefully at what the article's author, and some of those who are spamming the board with it, are trying to do. We have buttons that are easy to push, and there are those who want to sow discord by mashing them, and this is just the sort of thing I'd write to do so, were I so inclined. I could be wrong, maybe we did elect a guy who sees nothing wrong with indiscriminate landmine usage, but I've got my skeptic filter up just in case.

[azmouse]

33. Excellent, well thought out post!

I hope you'll post more just like this.