The moral acceptability of cluster bombs apparently depends on who’s using them. From Ted Galen Carpenter at fff.org:
The U.S. elite’s alleged commitment to human rights and opposition to war crimes was just put to the test in an especially clear fashion. Not surprisingly, both Congress and the American news media failed that test. On September 27, 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives voted down an amendment to the appropriations bill funding the Pentagon that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) had introduced. His amendment would have barred the transfer of cluster bombs in the U.S. arsenal to other countries.
A favorable vote on that measure was an opportunity for Congress to make an important moral statement about such weapons. As I pointed out in an earlier article, cluster bombs are especially evil weapons, since the multiple tiny bomblets get distributed over a wide area in a war zone, automatically impacting civilians. Worse, some of those bomblets, perhaps as much as 14 percent, do not explode on impact, thereby creating a hazard that lasts for years or even decades. U.S. cluster bombs dropped in Laos in the early 1970s are still inflicting casualties. Children are especially vulnerable because they are attracted by the shiny surface of such an item and think that it is someone’s lost toy.
Although the United States is not a signatory to the international treaty banning such weapons, more than 100 countries, including most European members of NATO, have endorsed that document. Moreover, during the early phases of the war in Ukraine, U.S. officials, including Washington’s ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, sharply condemned Russia for using cluster munitions.
