Dem
47
GOP
53
Curtis LeMay is one of the biggest bastards in American history. During World War II, he sat in a comfortable office and figured out the best way to use conventional bombs and landmines to kill as many Japanese civilians as was possible. For the balance of his career, he was a hawk's hawk, and always first in line among presidential advisers to support the use of nuclear weapons. "Bombs Away" LeMay's attitude was, perhaps, most famously expressed when he warned North Vietnam, during the Vietnam War, that the U.S. would bomb them "back to the stone age." After all, all of this bombing was no skin off his nose; LeMay was never in any danger of being bombed himself, or having his family be bombed.
LeMay died in 1990 at March Air Force Base, which is right next to Riverside National Cemetery. This is one of the largest military cemeteries in the United States and the busiest military cemetery in the country (by number of burials) since 2000. Also, as we might have mentioned before, it happens to be where all four of (Z)'s grandparents are interred. Initially, the plan was to take LeMay's corpse next door for interment at Riverside. However, many family members of the veterans there pitched a fit, and did not want the site to be sullied by such a bloodthirsty warmonger. So, LeMay was taken to Colorado and buried at the Air Force Academy.
We mention this because it's hard to think of a better historical analogue to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth than Curtis LeMay. Hegseth is also a hawk's hawk who has no apparent regard for the sanctity of human life, and who actually seems to take pleasure from the thought of people being killed, particularly if those people are not white, or are not Christian. And this week, the Secretary tried to take advantage of the lack of fourth-estate oversight that he managed to fashion for himself, and to sneak under the radar a plan for the U.S. to resume the unrestricted use of landmines. However, The Washington Post, which still has a few journalists on staff, and knows a few things about getting information that people in power don't want the paper to have, caught him at it and broke the story yesterday.
Here is the thing about landmines: They are hard to... control, for lack of a better word. Armed forces today don't use the mustard gas of World War I, and the fact that it's an unusually destructive weapon is only part of the reason. The other part is that when you release mustard gas, there's much potential for the winds to shift, with the result that you've managed to gas your own troops. Every military weapon comes with some risk of catastrophic failure, of course, but that risk is just too high with mustard gas for it to be an effective weapon.
Landmines suffer from a similar sort of problem. It's dangerous business trying to lay landmines. It's dangerous business trying to traverse territory that has been mined, even if they are YOUR side's mines and you theoretically know where the mines are. Landmines have also been known to explode spontaneously, particularly when temperature change makes the ground expand and contract. And landmines are tough to remove, such that they are often left behind when no longer needed. That can mean a deadly "surprise" for civilians, often years or decades later. In 2024, for example, over 2,000 civilians were killed by landmines that had been left in the ground by one warring army or another. For all of these reasons, 160 countries signed a 1997 treaty banning the use of landmines worldwide.
The U.S., as is so often the case in these situations, chose not to sign that treaty. However, American policy has been to avoid the use of the armament, nonetheless. The challenge—the temptation, really—is that, despite their downsides, landmines do something that cannot easily be accomplished in other ways. And so, there is a longstanding exception to the U.S. ban on landmines—they've been allowed along the border between North and South Korea, without interruption, since the 1950s. The thinking, obviously, is that no human, military or civilian, is supposed to traverse that border, so the mines keep the peace while not putting innocent lives at risk.
Of course, along the lines of "I'll just have ONE cigarette" or "I'll just have ONE drink," once the door is open a crack, it's easy for it to open much more widely. On the whole, Joe Biden was the least militaristic president the U.S. has had in quite a while, either as far back as Bill Clinton, or maybe as far back as Jimmy Carter, depending on your opinion about Bill Clinton's interventions in Somalia and the Balkans. However, Biden also had to deal with the situation in Ukraine, which meant resisting Russian aggression without putting boots on the ground, and while dealing with members of Congress who were isolationist and/or pro-Russia. Consequently, Biden authorized the use of landmines in Ukraine, while Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy promptly announced that his nation would withdraw from the 1997 treaty. Just ONE MORE cigarette...
Now, with the U.S. already having slid a fair way down the slippery landmine slope, Hegseth wants to kick the door all the way open. And, in the hands of a sociopath like him, that is a frightening proposition. In particular, should the administration decide this is an OK plan, how long is it before Hegseth or some other nutter in the government (Kristi Noem? Stephen Miller?) suggests placing mines along the Mexican border?
There's already a lot of damage that's been done here, dating back to Biden and the choices he made. The U.S. may not have signed the landmine treaty, but it still had some moral authority on this subject because it was self-limiting the use of mines. That moral authority is fading by the moment, which in turn invites other nations to say "Just ONE cigarette." And once another big batch of mines is in the ground around the world, whether placed by Americans or by others, the groundwork is laid for many more decades of senseless civilian deaths.
One can only hope that, now that Hegseth's machinations have been exposed to a little sunlight, either public pressure or Congress will serve to foil his plans. Ideally, the door on landmines would be closed entirely, but that's obviously not going to happen while the Ukraine War is underway and while the Koreas are at each other's throats. The best that can be hoped for is that "Landmines Away" Pete is not able to expand things further, the way he so badly wants to. (Z)