The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.44           December 15, 1997 
 
 
Land Mines, A Weapon Of Poor  
The Militant fully agrees with the revolutionary leadership in Cuba in opposing the land mines treaty recently signed by government officials of 120 countries. "Land mines are the weapon of the poor," said Cuban Brig. Gen. Luis Pérez Róspide, director of the Union of Military Industries. His agency is responsible for ensuring each Cuban citizen has a rifle, a land mine, and a grenade to defend the country in face of Washington's nearly 40-year campaign of aggression. While liberals are congratulating each other about the "victory for humanity" of the treaty ban on land mines, no one discussed this issue with those who are threatened with nuclear weapons and have none of their own, Róspide pointed out.

The land mines treaty has nothing to do with humanitarian concerns or stopping military slaughter. Like all other "arms control" agreements, it can and will be violated as needed, and even includes a loophole for participants who "are engaged in a war." In practice, the treaty will be used as a club against those who stand up and fight or aren't compliant enough with imperialist dictates, the same way Washington uses the pretext of concern over chemical and biological weapons to justify its war threats against Iraq and Libya.

The world's biggest holder of weapons of mass destruction is Washington. It's only the U.S. government that has ever used nuclear weapons against human beings - twice against the people of Japan. Washington, with 37,000 U.S. troops occupying south Korea four decades after its military invasion divided the Korean peninsula, refused to sign the treaty because it did not include a clause allowing its 1 million land mines in Korea. What arrogance!

Even now the U.S. government has thousands of troops and a massive arsenal of warplanes in the Persian Gulf threatening to bomb the people of Iraq. Will a ban on land mines make Iraqi lives more secure? More likely they could use some land mines to halt any invasion of U.S. ground troops.

The heroic Vietnamese people made ample use of land mines to defend their country's sovereignty, which helped defeat Washington's war and finally ended the brutal slaughter of millions of people in Indochina. Malcolm X praised the Vietnamese brothers who had "nothing but sneakers on and a rifle and a bowl of rice," who chased out the French occupation forces. "The French aren't there anymore," he said. "We don't care how they did it; they're not there any more." That's the attitude working people should have when fighters use the "weapon of the poor" to defend themselves against imperialist aggression.  
 
 
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