The Washington Post (6/23/22) describes its opinion section as a platform for articles that “provide a diversity of voices and perspectives for our readers.” Yet as the US and its allies pour military aid into Ukraine, escalating the already bloody conflict with ever-more deadly new weapons, the paper’s opinion pages begin to look less like a platform for diverse voices and more like a cheerleading squad for the military/industrial complex.
Post opinion journalism abounds with pieces advocating the sort of “light side vs. dark side” moral rhetoric characteristic of corporate media’s war coverage (FAIR.org, 12/1/22). A consequence of this binary worldview is the tendency to present the deployment of increasingly horrific means, like President Joe Biden’s recent decision to arm Ukraine with US cluster munitions, as essentially just and necessary to achieve the West’s always-noble ends.
From war crime to ‘correct call’
Cluster munitions are a type of ordinance which can leave unexploded “bomblets” around for decades. Almost 50 years after the end of the US government’s war of aggression against Laos, unexploded cluster bombs continue to kill and maim innocent people—frequently children.
These weapons are rightly so reviled that, shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, then–White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki responded to the possibility that Russia had already begun using cluster munitions against Ukraine by calling it “potentially a war crime.” Even so, US cluster munitions have arrived in Ukraine, and are now being used by Kyiv (Washington Post, 7/20/23).
Washington Post editorial (7/8/23): “Mr. Biden made a tough but correct call this week…sending Kyiv thousands of cluster munitions, which are expected to help Ukrainian forces break through heavily entrenched Russian lines.”
Advocating for escalation, a Post editorial headlined “NATO’s Annual Summit Could Define a Decade of Western Security” (7/8/23) argued that NATO needs to “step up their game” in order to meet the threat of Putin’s regime in Moscow. It called Biden’s decision to arm Ukraine with cluster munitions a “tough but correct call.” The editorial board explained:
Their use is banned by some major NATO allies, because dud bombs left behind on the battlefield pose a threat to civilians. But Russia has used them intensively in Ukraine, and the Biden administration is legally required to export only shells that have a very low dud rate.
“Some” major allies? Out of the 31 NATO member states, the US finds company with only seven others in its refusal to join the Convention on Cluster Munitions. More than two-thirds of NATO countries, including “major” allies like Canada, Britain, Germany and France—and every European country west of Poland—have signed.
The editorial board cites the fact that the cluster munitions being sent by the US have a “very low dud rate,” and will therefore pose less of a risk to civilians. The Pentagon claims that the munitions it is sending have a dud rate of 2.35%; even if that’s accurate, it exceeds the 1% limit the Pentagon itself considers acceptable.
According to the New York Times’ John Ismay (7/7/23), a failure rate of 2.35% “would mean that for every two shells fired, about three unexploded grenades would be left scattered on the target area.” There is reason to believe that the true dud rate may be much higher—possibly exceeding 14%, by the Pentagon’s own reckoning.
Ends justify the means?
Max Boot (Washington Post, 7/11/23): Ukrainian officials have “balanced the risks of civilian casualties from unexploded ordnance against the risk of not being able to expel the Russian invaders, and they have decided that the latter is a greater concern than the former.” In other words, sometimes you have to destroy the separatists to save them.
Another Post op-ed, by columnist Max Boot (7/11/23), headlined “Why Liberals Protesting Cluster Munitions for Ukraine Are Wrong,” illustrates the “ends justify the means” rhetoric so pervasive in discourse over the war in Ukraine.
Boot acknowledged the devastating impact of cluster munitions, noting that “in Laos alone, at least 25,000 people have been killed or injured by unexploded ordnance since the US bombing ended.” He added:
Such concerns led more than 100 nations—but not the United States, Russia or Ukraine—to join the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions abolishing the use of these weapons.
Of course, the United States is notorious for isolating itself from the rest of the world when it comes to the signing of international treaties—as the Council on Foreign Relations, where Mr. Boot is a senior fellow, has shown. The US signed but failed to ratify the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (which has 178 state parties) and the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (which has 189 state parties). It refused to even sign the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty (which has 164 state parties).
Boot cited the probability that the dud rate of US cluster munitions is much higher than the given 2.35%, but immediately downplayed this fact on the basis that
Ukraine’s democratically elected leaders, whose relatives, friends and neighbors are in the line of fire, are more mindful of minimizing Ukrainian casualties than are self-appointed humanitarians in the West watching the war on television.
In other words, the Ukraine government should be allowed to decide how many Ukrainian civilians are acceptable to kill. This is a dubious principle even when you aren’t talking about a war against separatists; in the areas where the weapons are likely to be used, a large minority to a majority of the population identifies as ethnically Russian. Is the Iraqi government the best judge of how many Kurdish civilians are all right to kill?
“Using cluster munitions has the potential to save the lives of many Ukrainian soldiers,” Boot claimed, despite the fact that these same US munitions have a history of killing both civilians and US personnel alike.
Moreover, Boot argued,
cluster munitions remain a lawful instrument of warfare for countries that haven’t signed the 2008 convention, and Kyiv has shown itself a responsible steward of all the Western weaponry it has received.
Setting aside international norms, even countries who have not joined the cluster munitions convention must respect the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit indiscriminate attacks in civilian areas. That makes cluster munitions used in such areas illegal—yet “responsible steward” Ukraine has already used its own cluster munitions in the city of Izium, predictably resulting in civilian casualties (Human Rights Watch, 7/6/23).
‘Running out of options’
Josh Rogin (Washington Post, 3/2/23): Sure, cluster bombs are ” highly indiscriminate and especially dangerous to civilians,” but “those are concerns Ukrainians don’t have the time or luxury to parse.”
Meanwhile, Post columnist David Ignatius (7/8/23) approvingly quoted National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan touting the deployment of cluster munitions as giving Ukraine a “wider window” for success, with no mention of any arguments against them. Ignatius later stated in his biweekly Q&A (7/17/23) that he was compelled by the Ukrainians’ reported “moral argument” for cluster bombs.
The Post’s sole “Counterpoint” piece (7/7/23) on cluster munitions, authored by Sen. Jeff Merkley and former Sen. Patrick Leahy, justly pointed out the “unsupportable moral and political price” of supplying Kyiv with cluster munitions. Unfortunately, the Post didn’t seem to have much time for such considerations, with the only other traces of criticism within the opinion section being found amidst the letters to the editor.
This was true even months before Biden made his decision. A March piece by columnist Josh Rogin (3/2/23) framed the weapons as a sort of necessary evil as the Ukrainian forces are “running out of options.” Rogin referred to concerns from human rights groups and deemed the use of cluster munitions as “not to be taken lightly,” but did not dwell on these concerns, arguing, similar to Boot, that “more innocent lives will be saved if Ukrainian forces can kill more invading Russians faster.” Rogin concluded: “Because it is their lives on the line, it is their risk to take, and we should honor their request.”
In total, the Post has published five pieces in its opinion section (including Ignatius’ Q&A) that take a direct stance in favor of arming Ukraine with US cluster munitions, and only one opposed to it. Meanwhile, a recent poll by Quinnipiac University concluded that 51% of Americans disapprove of the president’s decision, while only 39% approve (The Hill, 7/19/23).
With so much preference for escalation and so little toward military restraint, one thing seems clear: There aren’t many Einsteins in the Washington Post op-ed section.
ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com, or via Twitter @washingtonpost.
Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.
WHY did you get into this mess, Joe Biden?????? It had seemed that Russia and Ukraine were working on something , but then America had to barge in.
I guess many forgot about what war does to land, water and air—and of course with the nightmare of HEAT imploding in so many areas on the Earth. Maybe, if anyone thinks about what WE ( America ) is doing to the planet—perhaps war is the last answer to the question of WHAT are we doing to our own planet—the only one we
have?
Back off and out , America—neither the people nor the planet can put up with this insanity.
Joe Biden was instrumental in provoking the conflict to begin with. You don’t think he’s going to let peace happen, do you?
My email to the WaPo:
Dear Editors,
I am writing to voice displeasure of your advocacy of cluster munitions in Ukraine. I’ve only just scanned Brandon Warner’s column in Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and made a hard copy to read later when I have time and leisure. I provide the link to that article below. I notice the warmonger Max Boot weighs in on the side of death and bloodshed and cluster munitions. He’s as wrong about cluster munitions for Ukraine as he was Iraq in 2003, which isn’t to single him out. There were many other distinguished pundits such as Thomas Friedman, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, George Will, ad nauseam. They paid no penalty for being 180 degrees wrong about the 2003 Iraq invasion. Most of them are still talking heads on corporate news, whose opinions are looked to and revered. Indeed, they were promoted for being on the wrong side of what Noam Chomsky calls the crime of the century.
I think Friedman has published two books since 2003. No doubt filled with as much veracity as his prognostications on Iraq. He lives in a mansion with 23 bedrooms and 16 bathrooms. Another win for capitalist propaganda.
FAIR always makes good reading and reporting, if dismal in context of the imminent collapse, so I look forward to reading Warner’s article. My major concern, and it’s safe to say it goes unmentioned in your advocacy, is that the article says nothing about NATO, which is to say the United States, provoking Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, NATO, which is to say the United States, has added 14 previously Soviet republics to its membership. Even without Ukraine membership in NATO, already countries directly adjacent to Russia’s border like Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and now Sweden and Finland.
What would be NATO’s, which is to say the United States’, reaction to a hostile alliance setting up military bases directly on the borders of the United States? With nuclear weapon capable missile batteries, able to wipe out Washington in 7 minutes of missile flight time? But we know the answer to that question: the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Nietzsche’s writes “Power makes stupid.” The United States never cease to give example after example of this axiom.
As these massive shipments of weapons transit NATO countries to reach Ukraine, why wouldn’t they be legitimate military targets? That would invoke Article 5 of the NATO pact. Does the Washington Post want an end to Mother Earth as we know Her?
Fans of Cluster Bombs Dominate WaPo’s Opinion Section – FAIR
Peace,
It is interesting to me that US elites are so conceited and arrogant that it never crosses their minds that shitting on other people’s dinning room tables might end up with the ruling class losing the popularity contest. The US has been shitting all over friend and foe alike for decades and this is not only driving other “friendly” countries to look for allies that have better hygiene habits, but also driving various perceived “foes” together. They probably have been telling themselves things like “they can’t get along without us!, and we are indispensable!” It will be a shock to them when the multipolar world ends up getting along much better without their disgusting habits.
No discussion of this topic is complete without recognition that the kiev regime is fighting a civil war against its own people in eastern ukraine. We cannot leave it to ukraine to decide whether they are willing to accept the risk of cluster munitions in order to defeat the Russians because that’s not what’s happening. It’s the eastern ukrainians – the very ones that the kiev regime is working to genocide – who will bear the consequences, which is the intent of using them.
Furthermore, in that same vein, we can’t assume that Russians have been using cluster munitions. To the extent that cluster munitions were already being used in eastern ukraine, again, it’s most likely that those munitions were being used by the kiev regime, not the Russians (who see the ethnic Russians in eastern ukraine as their allies, not their enemy).
Until this war is recognized first as a civil war in ukraine in which the u.s. props up the far-right nationalists in the kiev regime, we can’t even begin to talk about the relative morality of the use of cluster munitions.
The Washington Post is yellow journalism aka fake news. The Democrats opposing cluster munitions to Ukraine should also say Biden caused the war to occur although the US is not directly fighting in the war. The US promised Gorbachev NATO would not expand 1 inch east of Germany but it went a lot farther than that.
The US has been expanding NATO closer to Russia’s borders and Ukraine persecutes the Russian Speakers there, that’s why they want to join Russia.
The dud rate no longer matters as Ukraine has begun to fire cluster munitions at a major city to kill civilians.