War without thought

… military officers from the UK, Australia, Canada and Germany participated in the project to study the risk of DU weapons and I was directed by the Army to direct the team ...we submitted recommendations which were completely ignored … the US army has not taken any measures to protect soldiers. Although we made a proposal that clean-up is essential, complete clean up is impossible. Therefore we proposed not to use DU weapons any longer. However our proposal was ignored by the upper level of the government and completely ignored by NATO, UK, Australia and others.

Is that true?

Late last year Senator Ludlam asked a Senate Standing Committee “Have any of our coalition partners used Depleted Uranium munitions to Afghanistan at the time or since their deployment in the country?

The response:

There is no specific prohibition in international law on the use of Depleted Uranium munitions. There is considerable international controversy over the alleged health effects of Depleted Uranium. Therefore, as with any weapon system the intended use of Depleted Uranium munitions must be assessed by the State proposing to use them in accordance with its obligations under the laws of armed conflict and other international law.

Use of Depleted Uranium in Afghanistan is at the discretion of other nations, after considering the implications under international law. It is understood that some foreign defence forces may use or reserve the right to use, Depleted Uranium ammunition in Afghanistan, however others do not, based on their own National policies and international agreements.

Coalition partners have not provided any information on their use of depleted uranium munitions.

I think we can take it that’s a “yes”.

Are the same governments that permit the use of depleted uranium going to accept responsibility for the long term health consequences exposed civilians and service personnel are likely to suffer? Not if the denials and “defences” that were trotted out against calls for compensation by victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam are any guide.

There are many other disturbing similarities. The war in Vietnam produced search and destroy, which saw civilians killed, while the Vietcong and North Vietnamese regular troops went underground or in other ways made themselves scarce only to re-emerge once US troops had moved on. The US troops were able to hold towns and villages for as long as they could be supplied, but they were unable to hold the countryside. The best they could do was patrol.

The democratic regime in South Vietnam was corrupt, so corrupt it was rotten. Young men did not want to fight for it. Torture of prisoners was common.

Afghanistan’s the same.

The US and its reluctant allies are locked into a war with no exit strategy. After 9-11 the US decided to go to war against global terrorism of the kind driven by radical and fundamental Islam. It is a rebirth of the mindset that fought radical and fundamental communism: America, the knight in white armour, freed the world from the evils of the Kaiser, the Third Reich and Japanese militarism, and with those not inconsiderable successes it took on world communism. The Soviet Empire collapsed, but Vietnam was a disaster and China lives on and prospers. Even so America has opened another front by taking up arms against international terrorism. Maybe it can win that war, but Afghanistan is not the place it’s likely to do it.

Afghanistan’s topography, lack of infrastructure, climate and tenacious people defeated the British and the Russians: they were reduced to living in forts, which is what the US forces, NATO and other friends are forced to do now in Afghanistan. That also was an aspect of the war in Vietnam.