which wars were fought, months or even years before.
 Indeed, the world would be a better place if
there were fewer mines. One step in this direction would
be for powerful nations to eliminate their standing
armies -- always so much more willing to conduct
aggressive operations than civilian militias -- and stop
conquering their neighbors. England could set an example
by granting independence to the sovereign nations of
Scotland, Ulster, and Wales.
In the meantime, it might indeed make sense to
sign a convention agreeing to develop land mines which
either go inert, or (probably better) automatically blow
themselves up, after a fixed period in the ground.
But attempting to ban mines entirely is not
only plain goofy (anyone with the motivation can make
them in his garage, out of tin cans, a handful of nails,
and a couple of shotgun shells), but presents the same
problems as universal victim disarmament ... another
mental aberration which seems to have incubated largely
in England.
Why were whole villages recently massacred in
Rwanda, by men with machetes? Because the private
ownership of firearms for self-defense has long been
banned in that former British colony.
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North
Korea and Red China don't give a fig for earnest
referenda adopted in Oslo or Geneva. But should the
United States Army ever be ordered -- by mentally
deficient nuevo-Chamberlains -- to remove all our land
mines from the Korean DMZ "as a good-faith
example," with the result that a desperate North
Korean Army promptly seized South Korea, would these
do-gooders now campaigning for a "land-mine
ban" take personal responsibility for all the South
Korean women raped, all the South Korean professors and
politicians and industrialists kidnapped, jailed, or
executed?
Of course not ... any more than they now
accept blame for the recent deaths of all the Rwandan
families whom they disarmed, so long ago.
They would merely wring their hands and pass
another earnest resolution, urging the Communists to
accept Red Cross inspection of their new South Korean
labor camps.
If land mines were banned, after Syria
conquered Israel, they could then put the Israeli prime
minister on trial for the "war crime" of
deploying land mines, couldn't they?
If Mrs. Windsor had wanted to make better use
of those "charity" funds, she could have built
factories in undeveloped corners of the world, where
people
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