Tag: landmines

Modern warfare: Losing ground?

Posted on by kathiemm

November 6 is International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict.

U.S. helicopter spraying Agent Orange in Vietnam
U.S. spraying Agent Orange in Vietnam. Image in public domain.

Why?

International wars and internal armed conflicts ravage environments as well as killing and maiming men, women, and children, leaving behind environments that are dangerous and unusable long after the fighting ends.

Formerly arable land and drinkable water can be polluted for decades, and abandoned munitions can continue to take lives and limbs—not only of enemies or even former enemies but of innocent civilians and wildlife.

Is there an international requirement that military leaders everywhere must lack the necessary gene for imagining tomorrow?

Must they be unable to recognize that no matter how fierce the current fighting, today’s enemies may be tomorrow’s allies? That the environment we are ruining today may limit tomorrow’s life-sustaining food, water, and air for our own children and grandchildren, not just the offspring of today’s designated enemy?

During and after destructive armed conflicts, there are people and groups that attempt to repair the damage done. We see such efforts regarding, for example,

Efforts at reconciliation with “enemies” and undoing destruction of environments are essential but we learn as children that prevention trumps cure.

Time to act. Support the bans on and destruction of:

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Star Wars off their rockers

Posted on by kathiemm

In the world of Hollywood, R2-D2 is an appealing robot who comes to the rescue in every Star Wars movie. In the real world, robots are being created to kill on their own—that is, without human direction and oversight.

Big dog military robots
Big dog military robots. Image in public domain.

Although proponents of killing without risk to one’s own side use terms like “lethal autonomous robotics” or “autonomous military robots” to describe the latest product of deadly technology, the term “killer robots” captures better what these machines are programmed to do.

The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots makes a very compelling case for why it is so risky to program robots to kill and then to turn them loose.

Concerns about killer robots are strong enough and widespread enough that the Human Rights Council of the United Nations is urging a moratorium on their development “before it is too late.”

A U.N. ban on the development of killer robots is a good idea, as was the U.N. 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction–the international agreement banning antipersonnel landmines. The U.S. is among the small number of nations that have not signed that treaty.

UNICEF estimates that in the world today there are 110 million landmines in 64 countries; many of those (e.g., in Vietnam and Afghanistan) were planted by the U.S.  Every month about 800 people–mostly innocent children and other civilians–die from landmines, and thousands more are seriously injured.

Do we really need to add killer robots to our arsenal of deadly weapons?

So many Americans cloak themselves in hatred and search for an evil empire to destroy with the latest Star Wars weaponry. They may succeed. And the empire they find and destroy may be our own.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Weapons of war: rape

Posted on by kathiemm

All weapons of war are weapons of destruction and pain. Previous posts have reminded readers of the pervasive lethal effects of, for example, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and landmines.

Another violent and devastating tactic recognized by the United Nations Security Council as a weapon of war is rape.

In its resolution calling for an end to sexual violence against women, the Security Council said, “Women and girls are particularly targeted by the use of sexual violence, including as a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instill fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group.”

A recent report from the U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights focused on the horrendously high rates of rape by warring groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, and the Dafur region of Sudan.

Unfortunately, we must add to the list of wartime horrors the rape of U.S. servicewomen by U.S. servicemen. Watch the video above; you will not easily forget.

And for a horrifying example of moral disengagement in regard to the rape of women in the U.S. military, watch Liz Trotta of Fox News blame the victims.

If you watch these and other videos, you will want to do something. Stop Rape Now, the U.N. Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict agency, provides several suggestions, including the simple action of crossing your arms. Learn what you can do to stop this weapon of war.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology