ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 18, 1996 TAG: 9601180034
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
AFTER THE commitment of U.S. troops to Bosnian peacekeeping, the first American injury resulted, predictably, not from hostile arms fire but from a land mine.
Feared more than artillery or snipers, some 5 million mines lurk hidden in the frozen earth of Bosnia. U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont calls the things, which cost about $2 apiece, ``the Saturday Night Special of civil wars.''
So what's holding back U.S. leadership in support of a worldwide ban on the future use of land mines?
After all, one-third of America's casualties in Vietnam were caused by them. Today, an estimated 100 million mines lie shallowly buried across the globe. Most victims of these anti-personnel weapons - Leahy calls Cambodia, for example, ``a land of amputees'' - are not soldiers, but civilians.
One thing holding back U.S. leadership is Pentagon ambivalence, even opposition - in spite of the danger that land mines pose now, and surely in the future, to American soldiers.
Some military officials are interested in a higher-tech version of land mines, and don't want legislators telling them which weapons are acceptable and which are not. Some defense contractors don't want to lose the business of producing and exporting land mines.
Meantime, many people the world over - children especially - will continue to be killed and maimed indiscriminately, in places like Bosnia that are full of easy hate and cheap horror; in cruel places, where vengeance is mines.
LENGTH: Short : 36 linesby CNB