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From Gordon Brown to Gandhi and Back Again in One Loophole

by Mikasi | June 1, 2008 at 03:15 am | 100 views | add comment | 0 recommendations

Gordon Brown has negotiated a loophole for Britain to continueusing cluster bombs, despite his declaration of a full ban.

The prime minister appeared to reinforce his humanitariancredentials when he dramatically overruled the Ministry of Defence(MoD) in talks at a 109-nation conference in Dublin on Wednesday.

While Brown announced support for “a ban on all cluster bombs,including those currently in service by the UK”, the governmentquietly excluded new anti-tank cluster shells that are not yet inservice.

The short of this story is that Britain has signed on to getrid of its two current cluster bombs, the M85 artillery shell (49bomblets) and the M73 rocket (nine bomblets). However, it let leftlanguage in the treaty allowing it to develop a new generation of"self destroying" two bomblet units due to be developed ina couple years.

The first commenter to this story on the Times website argued thatit is unfair of the world to expect Britain to follow the rules ofthis treaty while other countries may well not sign on or otherwisemay cheat. I think he missed the message the reporter was trying toconvey - that careful posturing on the part of Gordon Brown wasdesigned to make the Prime Minister look more like Gandhi than thegarden variety politician he just acted like.

I won't arguewhether or not a two bomblet should be considered a cluster bomb.However, I do maintain that trying to sneak something like this pastthe voting public in so you can manipulate your image is disingenuousand wreaks of an all-too-common political cowardice.