# Obama doesn't sign the Anti-Landmine Treaty **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 26, 2009, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987 "2009-11-26T01:51:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/41 "2009-11-27T02:18:24Z")
I have been given to understand (a friend told me) that towards the end of World War II, HItler asked whoever was running Finland, “Why don’t you send us your Jews?” and the reply was, “Why don’t you come and get them?” Is there any truth to this? In case we have a cultural misunderstanding here, “Why don’t you come and get them?” would mean “No!” 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Todderbob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e47774/32.png) [@Todderbob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Todderbob)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/42 "2009-11-27T02:47:28Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I have been given to understand (a friend told me) that towards the end of World War II, HItler asked whoever was running Finland, “Why don’t you send us your Jews?” and the reply was, “Why don’t you come and get them?” Is there any truth to this? > > In case we have a cultural misunderstanding here, “Why don’t you come and get them?” would mean “No!” > > 🙂 I don’t know about the truth of the response, but it sounds very, very similar to King Leonidas’ statement “Come and take them,” (Molōn labe) from the Battle of Thermopole. I certainly hope he did – it’d make for another interesting foot note for that phrase, one that I completely missed out on when I wrote a paper on laconic phrases oh so many years ago. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/43 "2009-11-27T02:51:21Z")
Outstanding, thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uosdwis_R.Dewoh)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/44 "2009-11-27T03:48:31Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I have been given to understand (a friend told me) that towards the end of World War II, HItler asked whoever was running Finland, “Why don’t you send us your Jews?” and the reply was, “Why don’t you come and get them?” Is there any truth to this? > > In case we have a cultural misunderstanding here, “Why don’t you come and get them?” would mean “No!” > > 🙂 Don’t think it went down quite like that. Finland and Germany were allies after all. It is said that [Mannerheim](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannerheim) intensely disliked Hitler. When Hitler visited Finland for Mannerheim’s 75th birthday in 1942, Mannerheim supposedly smoked a cigar in Hitler’s presence knowing full well how much smoking aggravated him. From [Holocaustchronicle.org](http://www.holocaustchronicle.org/StaticPages/281.html) > [@](#): > > When Heinrich Himmler broached the subject of Finnish Jews, the country’s prime minister, Johann Wilhelm Rangell, curtly replied that Finland had no “Jewish problem.” Valuing Finland’s military cooperation against the Soviet Union, the Nazis applied no further pressure. German soldiers and Finnish Jews did fight side by side. A few Finnish Jews even got awarded the Iron Cross. None accepted it. [Iron Cross on Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_cross)[sup]\*[/sup] > [@](#): > > Two Jewish officers of the Finnish army and one female Lotta Svärd member were awarded Iron Crosses, but they would not accept them Finland was also the only country during WW2 that had a field synagogue. [sup]\*[/sup]I’m sorry. I’m having a hard time finding a source in English and the link the Wikipedia article cites is dead. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/45 "2009-11-27T03:57:13Z")
Thanks for Fighting Ignorance, cool! ---
**Author:** ![armedmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@armedmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armedmonkey)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/46 "2009-11-27T05:12:54Z")
> [@Nancarrow](#): > > Well so far we’ve had sneering jingoistic explosive-loving Americacentric outdated Europhobic blather from… > > wait for it… > “A Monkey With a Gun” Oh, shut the fuck up. I wasn’t being jingoistic or Europhobic and you know it. Explosive loving… well… I’ll give you that one. BOOM! ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/47 "2009-11-27T05:23:01Z")
I don’t much like it, but I can appreciate the predicament. N Korea is nuts, for all practical purposes. For the moment, there is a kind of stability, but if Beyonce refuses to have Kim Jong Ils baby, well… When dealing with crazy people, its hard to know what will set them off, you try to avoid changing anything so long as they remain calm. I would think there would be very little chance that N Korea would start a war they cannot win, but the same reasoning applied to Japan in 1941. In such a war, the casualties would be in round numbers, very big round numbers. I might make the same decision, were I him. I wouldn’t like it, and I don’t like it. But I don’t think I can condemn him for it. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/48 "2009-11-27T09:50:13Z")
The US already uses mines in a responsible way. Dumb mines are typically confined to well-marked areas that are monitored at all times. In the event that they left these areas, they’d probably destroy the mines. We also have smart mines that can be remotely controlled - and IIRC by default, in the event that they receive no signal from their controller for 48 hours, they deactivate or explode. They won’t lay in wait for decades. There are also, as others have stated, things banned by this treaty that don’t at all fit the idea of mines as killers of random people decades after a conflict has passed. So the US already does the stuff this treaty is looking to enforce, and yet it would arbitrarily restrict what the US could do (like well marked minefields in South Korea and the use of claymores) - so there’s no real upside in signing and it real downside in it. It’s a good move. Now if they rewrote a treaty saying that you had to mark your minefields, and had to clean up your mines if you were to demilitarize an area and/or use self-deactivating mines, and didn’t affect things like claymores, we could talk. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Smashy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2bfe46/32.png) [@Mr\_Smashy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Smashy)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/49 "2009-11-27T13:23:04Z")
No offense **Gonzo** and **Squink** , but do you even know how those mines work these days? We’re a long way from the forgotten limb-takers left in Africa and Vietnam. Now they have GPS to chart where they are, they have self-destruct timers, and we can disable them through remote control when we leave an AOR. I understand that you use any post about the military to take swings at W. Whatever gets you off. But now that I’ve edumacated you about how AMERICA isn’t like those primative sub-humans who go out of their way to maim kids, do you now see that it doesn’t make sense to deny these tools that save GI lives? ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/50 "2009-11-27T13:47:29Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > they’d probably destroy the mines. And here lies the problem. The problem with dumb mines is them being abandoned. There is no guarantee that the Americans would clear up after themselves and, frankly, they’ve done little to make us trust them even if they said they would. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/51 "2009-11-27T13:54:48Z")
The US has a pretty good history of not leaving abandoned mines laying around in recent times. The mines are generally on the soil of our allies, they are in organized fields, and usually they’re of a variety that can be easily and/or remotely disabled. I don’t know how many dumb mines we still use, or in what percentage - but the newer mines developed in recent decades are made to automatically deactivate in the event that they don’t receive a signal from a transmitter for a certain amount of time. Considering that the US has not abandoned mines, so far as I’m aware, in the last few decades, and they’ve spent significant amounts of money in procuring smart mines that self-disable, and that they’ve spent a lot of money on foreign aid for minesweeper, I think your assumption that the US military is sufficiently careless to leave mines laying about is incorrect. ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/52 "2009-11-27T14:02:44Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Considering that the US has not abandoned mines, so far as I’m aware, in the last few decades, and they’ve spent significant amounts of money in procuring smart mines that self-disable, and that they’ve spent a lot of money on foreign aid for minesweeper, I think your assumption that the US military is sufficiently careless to leave mines laying about is incorrect. It is more that in the past decade we’ve really not seen much to make us trust the US military and Government full stop. Hell I don’t trust my own Government (I’m British) when it comes to these matters anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/53 "2009-11-27T14:11:55Z")
The U.S. military doesn’t buy these new mines because they’re more responsible - they buy them because they’re better mines. You may not trust the Americans to always do the right thing, but you can \*always \*trust them to buy the fanciest gadgets. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/54 "2009-11-27T14:33:58Z")
> [@Mr\_Smashy](#): > > No offense **Gonzo** and **Squink** , but do you even know how those mines work these days? Huh? I was replying to a comment about American **nukes**. You do realize that most nuclear bombs are not packaged in the form of mines these days? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/55 "2009-11-27T15:18:35Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > Huh? I was replying to a comment about American **nukes**. You do realize that most nuclear bombs are not packaged in the form of mines these days? :dubious: Please don’t give them any ideas. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/56 "2009-11-27T15:23:26Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > Please don’t give them any ideas. [Blue Peacock](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock) It wouldn’t take many of _those_ to put a crimp in Kim Jong-il’s evil plans. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/57 "2009-11-27T17:17:19Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > [Blue Peacock](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock) I’m intriuged by: > [@](#): > > In July 1957 the British Army ordered ten Blue Peacocks for use in Germany, under the cover story that they were atomic power units for troops in the field. I work in communications, so we routinely drag 5 kW or 10kW generators with us on our field exercises to power our transmitters. But if we had a trailer with a _reactor_ on it… coo-ull… ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Smashy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2bfe46/32.png) [@Mr\_Smashy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Smashy)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/58 "2009-11-27T17:32:13Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > Please don’t give them any ideas. So then you’re OK with mines. Sounds good to me. As for nukes, I agree they suck. The cost to maintain them sucks. The cost to secure them sucks. But not having them would suck more… especially if that emboldened a Soviet first strike. PS Do you give Americans any credit for their efforts to secure and clean up old Soviet nukes, mostly outside of Russia? Do we get any credit for our vast cost in treasure and lives to secure this planet, to keep whackjobs like Kim Jong Il and Beijing in check? Do we get any credit for our humanitarian response, led by the military, after earthquakes, tsunamis, etc? Or does everyone hate the rich kids on the block precisely because their standard of living is so high? (yeah, I get it, we’re not as rich as we used to be seeing as we owe so much to China, but that’s a different thread I suppose, this one is already 'jacked too much) ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/59 "2009-11-27T19:11:02Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Because the North Korean army marching south would be A Very Bad Thing. If we were having this discussion ~56 years after a peace treaty was signed, I’d agree that the mined border was useless, but a state of war still technically exists between the Koreas and I don’t see that ending anytime soon. Heck, if the Americans of 1953 had thought “Nah, let’s not place so many mines - in 20 years this’ll all be forgotten”, they’d have been dead wrong. So, we aren’t talking about the landmines of the Ottawa treaty, but some different kind, with very special properties (either magic or force field)? Because otherwise, surely you are too smart to suggest/ actually believe that the reason that keeps the North Korean army from attacking are land mines? In the 20th / 21 st century? Does intelligence tell you that North Korea has not a single tank that would crush anti-personnel mines (the type the Ottawa treaty refers to)? Not a single armored vehicle? No helicopter or plane to fly across the DMZ? No rockets to fire across and wreak havoc? What about all those rockets North Korea is testing in preparation for their atomic weapons - are they all unable to pass the DMZ because of mines? Really. Come on. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987/60 "2009-11-27T19:15:12Z")
> [@A Monkey With a Gun](#): > > The Claymore is usually used by the US military in a command detonation mode. It’s only going to go boom when the operator hits the button on the remote. If you get rid of those things, you might as well ban C4. Command detonation is permitted under the treaty, but the backers of the treaty really, _really_ don’t like it. Because the claymore is such a useful infantry weapon in both ambush and defense, any decent Commander in Chief is going to be awful wary of things that will take it away. Well, other people might consider the use of a weapon like the Claymore that explictly blasts people into tiny pieces and wounds many more with shrapnel to be agains the Geneva convention, which forbids gruesome methods of killing the enemy. But then, although technically the US signed the Geneva convention, it keeps ignoring it. Besides, the Claymore does come in a tripwire version, too.Constanze\*\*, as far as your oh so “civilized” Europe is concerned, just know that the US spends more money and exerts more effort in cleaning up _other_ nations mines than your precious Germany. [/quote] Wow, you compare the US to one nation instead to the whole of the EU, and give no relation to GNP. Yes, a fair and valid comparision. Tell me, are you refering to the US government, or private charities? > [@](#): > > Take the damn treaty and shove it up your ass. We’re the ones that are actually cleaning the damn things up. While laying more and more. Yes, that’s an effective way of not getting rid in total. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-doesnt-sign-the-anti-landmine-treaty/518987.md?page=4)