USA: Cluster bomb decision puts blood of future civilian victims on Biden's hands: Common Dreams

Cluster bomb

NEW YORK, July 14 (Xinhua) -- For entrenched elites in Washington, using taxpayer money to shred the bodies of children and other civilians isn't a big deal when there's serious geopolitical work to be done, said an article published by U.S.-based news website Common Dreams on Thursday.

U.S. President Joe Biden has approved sending cluster munitions to Ukraine, and the White House, which put cluster munitions in the category of a war crime in the past, now says it is just fine to provide such U.S. supplies to an ally, according to the opinion article.

"Biden's 'very difficult decision' was based on convenient abstractions and, ultimately, a willingness to sacrifice the lives of countless others, while claiming pristine virtue," it noted.

The Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill who've been trying for the last week to justify shipping cluster weapons to Ukraine are evading a basic truth that in May 1999, the U.S.-led NATO forces dropped cluster bombs onto the streets of Nis, Serbia's third-largest city, it said.

"In a street leading from the market, dismembered bodies were strewn among carrots and other vegetables in pools of blood. A dead woman, her body covered with a sheet, was still clutching a shopping bag filled with carrots," the San Francisco Chronicle was cited as reporting at that time.

"Today, with political fashion treating 'diplomacy' as a dirty word, the resolute militarism of the U.S. government is bipartisan," and "we should be under no illusions about the moral character of U.S. foreign policy," it added.