Constanze, after reading post 75, I’ve come to the conclusion that you are either being willfully provocative and don’t believe any of this, or you’re 13 yrs old, in the basement using mom’s computer without her knowing, or maybe a college-age anarchist of some type.
You know nothing of what you speak, and only humiliate yourself.
I was going to refute all the ridiculous points you tried to make (our humanitarian efforts are private charities and not military/peace-keeping efforts? Were you in a fucking cave all during the recent tsunami?), but I’m too tired.
As someone said before, mines don’t have to kill people to be effective, funneling the enemy through a bottleneck is still advantageous. In this case, the bottleneck is only as wide as the number of aircraft and mine clearance vehicles available. Not only does it provide a degree of certainty regarding how the North Koreans would have to cross the border, it also limits the rate at which troops can cross. A helicopter or plane can fly people across the DMZ, but only one load at a time. Unless the entire invasion force is mechanized the army will be slowed by the inability to move freely across the border.
Heck, anything that can slow down a potential North Korean advance by a day or two is hugely significant, and since setting up a line of missionaries who just want to talk to the North Koreans for a little while about Jesus won’t work, land-mines it is.
Really now? The modern U.S. army is the cleanest fighting, most conscientious fighting force that humanity has ever seen. They go to pretty extensive lengths to minimize casualties that aren’t their targets. It’s not their fault that their civilian leadership pushed them into unjust war - when it comes to how the military actually executes plans, they’ve shown no signs of being untrustworthy or negligent in this fashion.
Actually, I think it’s much simpler than that. Goethe was a German guy who pretty smart, and we assume that had little patience for Germans who aspire to be dumb-asses. Hence, a safe assumption is that he would not be an admirer of constanze.
Oh my, a German trying to lecture about how to conduct civilized warfare. I won’t labor on for long about things like Germany starting both world wars, introducing the civilized world to the use of chemical weapons in WW1, the Holocaust or other such contributions that Germany has made towards civilizing warfare. I would, however, like to point out that both of the staple types of anti-personnel landmines were first used by - wait for it - Germany!
The S-mine, the first bounding anti-personnel mine, also popularly known as the Bouncing Betty.
The Shue-mine, a small, simple anti-personnel mine made with minimal metal components making it difficult to detect. Mines of this type are generally refered to as toe-poppers, since the small amount of explosives in them usually results in a maiming injury by blowing a foot or part of a leg off.
For the record, I think the US should have gotten on board the Ottowa treaty back in 1994.
I’ve been wondering about that. Does he come from East or West Germany? Is he so young, or I so old that it doesn’t matter?
When did the “Guilt” thing stop?
This is getting so so tired. So a German can never speak up for peace, is that your argument? Well if you ever paid attention to modern politics or had ever met any contemporary Germans, you would know that they are horrified at what happened ‘in their name’ and never want anything like that to happen again. And so they argue for peace. It’s called ‘learning from painful experience’. Pity the US hasn’t learnt the same lesson.
Give me a peace loving German over a gun-toting, flag waving american any day.
Obama is still the president of the United States, right? Why the fuck would he sign an anti-landmine treaty? Maybe we’ll get a thread asking why we’re still in Afghanistan and Iraq and torturing people. It’s so mysterious! Oh Obama, you make me swoooon.