Dud cluster bomblets become de facto landmines that wreck civilian life
Evidence
It is at this point, after the initial civilian toll, that the dud bomblets are reincarnated as landmines in all but name. Their passive-aggressive presence has the power to rend a community’s social, agricultural, economic, and environmental fabric. Generals like to refer to cluster bombs euphemistically as “situational obstacles,” meaning they can be used to impede the progress of enemy troops by boxing them in. But when, in defiance of the Geneva Conventions, American, British, Israeli, and Russian forces have fired cluster bombs into populated areas, the failed offspring of those bombs become, long term and en masse, “situational obstacles” to life itself. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 683
Categorization
- XREF: Builds on ch48’s ‘landmines kill by weight,’ and ties to Nixon’s overall euphemism-unmasking thesis from ch1. — connects to: Counting cluster bombs as single weapons conceals their true dispersal scale — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 674; Landmines kill by weight, making peasants permanent indistinct enemies after wars end — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 672; Cluster bombs effectively disperses millions of lethal fragments across war zones — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 678 (+3 more)
- SEED: Euphemism-to-harm reversal — ‘situational obstacles to life itself’ — could anchor an essay on the rhetoric that converts failed weapons into civilian landmines.
Broader Connections
- Cluster bombs are landmines under a cover pseudonym.
#expands(0.95) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 703 - Unexploded ordnance contaminates thousands of U.S. military sites worldwide.
#expands(0.75) — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 394