Landmines are actually good, says Defense Sec as Trump prepares to undo Obama-era landmine ban

I dunno - if they were used responsibly and in limited capacity they might be ok, but clearly that isn’t the case. So I don’t see the point in using them. Especially since we are supposed to be reducing our direct presence in the middle east.

For securing encampments and such, they have Claymore mines which wouldn’t have the same issues for civilians that land mines pose.

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This dude wouldn’t be so gleeful to endorse them if they ended up on American soil. It’s only occupied and war-torn lands where these things are used.

What a dick.

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The Falklands

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I seem to remember the penguins don’t have any problems with it as they aren’t heavy enough to set the mines off.
Which is a fucked up way to run a bird sanctuary.

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No.

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Even in an absolute best-case scenario a landmine makes no distinction whatsoever in whether the people it kills pose a military threat, or even whether the conflict they were deployed for is still ongoing.

Even a drone strike or a laser-guided bomb isn’t that callous and arbitrary.

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Weight is all that counts, so those little fuckers fat-shame too!

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While Trump would tear up any treaty, with the permission of the Senate, it wasn’t necessary in this case. America never signed it, because of Korea. It was just a policy.

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No. Some mines are set with trip wires. Anything that moves the wire enough sets off the mines. There are some that have optical sensors.

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So Trump and co. obviously now have some hitherto unknown magic that makes land mines differentiate between military personnel and civilians. Worth patenting something like that. As we say in the UK - that man doesn’t give a toss about anyone else, providing he can ditch just about everything that Obama stood for.

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The Constitution doesn’t say much about breaking treaties

Basically Trump can just do whatever

Unfortunately, due to decades of executive aggrandizement and congressional acquiescence — coupled with judicial timidity — the ability to unilaterally withdraw the United States from every last treaty the Senate has ever ratified has been left solely in the hands of President Donald Trump.

So one of these mornings, Trump could well get up very early, issue a series of angry tweets and then proceed to issue an order withdrawing the United States from the United Nations. And, though it took a 1945 vote in the Senate to allow President Harry Truman to ratify the U.N. Charter, the current weight of legal opinion holds that President Donald Trump has the power to withdraw the U.S. from this or any treaty without similar consultation with the legislative branch of government.

Donald Trump can unilaterally withdraw from treaties because Congress abdicated responsibility

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Another day, another assault on reason and human decency. It hurts my heart that anyone in our country, and especially our government officials, enable and assist the constant barrage of callous acts against humanity, our allies, and the USA.

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No such use case exists or can exist. So, NO!

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So then Landmine is the New Wall ? Is he going to mine our borders ?

In common with many other treaties.

IIRC, the USA is also one of the only countries that refused to sign the treaty prohibiting saturation bombing of civilian targets.

EDIT: yup.

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Probably has sick ideas about mining the southern border.

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Carter signed it, butthe Senate didn’t ratify it.

Russia withdrew from the Treaty (or putin submitted a bill to the duma to do so. Considering putin’s power, this may amount to the same thing…)

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/10/17/putin-seeks-to-abandon-geneva-conventions-victim-protection-clause-a67781

But the official denunciation procedure requires a one year waiting period, which hasn’t yet expired.

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/Article.xsp?action=openDocument&documentId=1C8C4EFD00532703C12563CD0051E35D

(The soviet union signed in 1989. It was going through a rough patch, having lost its german colony.)

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In a better timeline, Obama would have spent his last day in office signing executive orders that were pro-landmines, pro-tax cuts for the wealthy, pro-Russia, anti-choice, anti-healthcare, etc. so that Trump would overturn them all out of spite.

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And every freeze-thaw cycle heaves more of them out of the ground. Back in the late 1990’s we would do foot patrols, usually over the same paths, and one day you would come across an AT mine poking out of the path you had walked the day before.

Driving around, the locals usually knew where the mines were in their neighborhood (partly because anti-personnel mines were protecting mass graves). In the winter while snow was on the ground you could assume which fields and trails were mined becausr they were were being actively avoided, even if crossing that field would be an obvious shortcut.

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