Vintage Stirling Newberry on Land Mines

The Blogging of the President: 2004

Stirling Newberry has a great piece up on BOP from 1997 that argues for the banning of land mines. It's a short piece. Read it, it's brilliant.

Here's a excerpt regarding the first Gulf War:

The 20th century is based on a few abilities: the ability to make endless copies of something from raw, that is undifferentiated, materials, and the ability to ascertain the probabilities of events that it cannot predict exactly. In war this means that the most technologically advanced nation on Earth can fight a war by moving thousands of people, millions of tons of equipment, destroying at least one hundred thousand soldiers of the declared enemy, and still not bring down the small group of people who the dispute was with. Which ever side of the question of war one is on, this is simply absurd. The 20th century deals with mass. None, or very few, of the ruling clique of Iraq were dethroned. That the people slaughtered were not real supporters of the regime is shown by their actions, the fled at the first opportunity, surrendered on mass, and clearly were only where they were under threat of force. And yet they died horribly in horrible numbers.

I gather that Stirling is more or less the same age as me. I'm not ashamed of what I was doing in 1997, but I certainly wasn't focused on banning land mines.

The world needs more Stirlings and fewer Jonahs, Jesses, Michelles and Maxs.

---