Who would be the eager attackers if all land mines were to vanish overnight? That's the question I had on reading Jody Williams' Dec. 5 article (from the Los Angeles Times), "Obama continues shameful land mine policy." Civilians continue to be maimed and killed by them, while China, India, Pakistan, Russia and the United States, all nuclear powers, refrain from signing the treaty that would ban land mines.
Defense needs? Security commitments? That this hogwash is accepted as fact is discouraging, but even more disheartening is that the 44th U.S. president allows the barbarous status quo to go on, depriving men, women and children of life and limb. Uncle Sam's signature on the treaty might be a futile expenditure of ink, but it would announce to the world that the U.S. still has a modicum of morality in its spine.