borderline borderline land o' mine

[chunksmediocrites]

Hmmm. There sure is a big problem with those immigrants in the US. Maybe someone will come up with some solutions. You there, New Mexico Republican running for office, what do you think?

The Republican nominee for a northern New Mexico congressional seat suggested during a radio interview that the United States could place land mines along the Mexican border to secure the international boundary.

[...]

During the May 18 interview with KNMX radio in Las Vegas, N.M., Mullins said the U.S. could mine the border, install barbed wire and post signs directing would-be border jumpers to cross legally at designated checkpoints.

"We could put land mines along the border. I know it sounds crazy. We could put up signs in 23 different languages if necessary," Mullins says in the radio interview, where he also expressed concern that terrorists could carry a nuclear weapon across the Mexican border.

Extra points for connecting illegal immigrants crossing the border to terrorists sneaking nukes in.

As Digby points out,

Maybe this is why the US has refused to ban land mines.

Huffington Post link in the quote above.

While we're here, looks like the labor movement is figuring out worker solidarity. Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, in a recent speech:

And yet today I hear from working people who should know better, some in my own family – that those immigrants are taking our jobs, ruining our country. Haven't we been here before?

When I hear that kind of talk, I want to say, did an immigrant move your plant overseas? Did an immigrant take away your pension? Or cut your health care? Did an immigrant destroy American workers' right to organize? Or crash the financial system? Did immigrant workers write the trade laws that have done so much harm to Ohio?

Maybe that's demographics talking, but it is a nice counterpoint to the sentiment elsewhere in the US involving scapegoating immigrants, illegal or otherwise, that seems to be ramping up in response to the economic downturn and job insecurity.

Land mines? For fuck's sake.

[curses]

I think we should line the border with Republicans with stupid ideas about national security.

[beyelzu]

Originally Posted by curses

I think we should line the border with Republicans with stupid ideas about national security.

only if we can strap the land mines to them.

[chunksmediocrites]

Originally Posted by curses

I think we should line the border with Republicans with stupid ideas about national security.

Already tried that on a nationalist-supremacist-vigilante-volunteer basis. Not so good.

[California Tanker]

Maybe this is why the US has refused to ban land mines.

It's due to the lack of an exemption for the Korean DMZ. In practice, the US follows the ban with that one exception.

lready tried that on a nationalist-supremacist-vigilante-volunteer basis. Not so good.

Two different issues. You'll note that the perpetrator of the second link was expelled from the group of the first link long beforehand. In effect, the Minutemen had nothing to do with it, they have generally had a fairly quiet existance.

NTM

[chunksmediocrites]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

It's due to the lack of an exemption for the Korean DMZ. In practice, the US follows the ban with that one exception.

The exception being the US didn't sign the land mine ban treaty and still use land mines. I don't follow how the location of their use would justify an exemption.

Originally Posted by California Tanker

Two different issues. You'll note that the perpetrator of the second link was expelled from the group of the first link long beforehand. In effect, the Minutemen had nothing to do with it, they have generally had a fairly quiet existance.

Uh huh.

On the Minuteman Project Web site, Gilchrist continued to post press releases and Forde's dispatches detailing her Arizona border exploits.

One of the last arrived on May 31, just hours after the Arivaca killings.

Forde reported that she and her group had been in "boots on the ground" patrols of the border for eight days and had observed thousands of pounds of dope being smuggled into the country.

"A (sic) American family was murdered 2 days ago including a 9 year old girl," Forde wrote. "Territory issue's (sic) are now spilling over like fire on the US side and leaving Americans so afraid they will not even allow their names to be printed in any press releases."

In a few days Gilchrist began receiving e-mails from a Minuteman in Tucson who had previously let Forde's teenage daughter live at his home. The man asked Gilchrist why a SWAT team had shown up at his door looking for Forde.

"I called her," Gilchrist said. "She was as calm as can be."

Forde told him there was no cause for worry. The man, she said, was a disgruntled former member of her group.

At the same time, though, she was sending out a list of 17 people around the country she wanted contacted if she was arrested or killed. After her arrest, Gilchrist learned he was 10th on her list.

He and Steve Eichler, executive director of the Minuteman Project, almost certainly were among the last people Forde e-mailed before her June 12 arrest. They talked about adding her and her officers to their Web site's list of national Minutemen leaders.

"The border is going to be HOT. Good things to come my brother," Forde wrote Eichler that morning. She was in police handcuffs later that day.

Gilchrist has since scrubbed references to Forde from his Web site.

That's Jim Gilchrist, the president and co-founder of the Minuteman Project.

In a June 2008 interview with the OC Register, Jim Gilchrist stated, "Am I happy at the outcome of this whole movement? I am very, very sad, very disappointed." He also added, "There's all kinds of organizations that have spawned from the Minuteman Project and I have to say, some of the people who have gotten into this movement have sinister intentions. ...I have found, after four years in this movement...I very well may have been fighting for people with less character and less integrity than the 'open border fanatics' I have been fighting against," Gilchrist concluded. "And that is a phenomenal indictment of something I have created."

[Caligulette]

Does anyone here remember early 2001? Maybe late 2000. Whatever - but the point is - the terrorist was trying to cross the porous CANADIAN/US border.

2000: Link to a thing from way back then.

And:
Results of Googleifying "Canadian Border Terrorist" .

So bite me, fearmongrels, unless you're going to start carding people who say "Eh?".

Personally, I know one Canadian who could do with deportifying.

[California Tanker]

Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites

The exception being the US didn't sign the land mine ban treaty and still use land mines.

I'm just stating why the US has refused to sign it so far.

I don't follow how the location of their use would justify an exemption.

Two reasons. 1) They're extremely useful on the DMZ, and 2) it's not as if not planting any more is suddenly going to make the DMZ any safer: There are already enough mines out there you don't want to be going for a Sunday stroll, so failing to have the exemption simply reduces tactical capability for no practical benefit. #1 alone is arguably insufficient, but when combined with #2, the requirement for an exemption makes more sense.

Uh huh.

That same article mentions a couple of times that she was expelled from the organisation.

NTM

[Jug Pilot]

Do we really need a DMZ? If NK tried anything they would be oblitered. So what would they gain with an invasion?

[California Tanker]

If NK tried anything they would be oblitered. So what would they gain with an invasion?

The land mines help with the obliteration.

If you're asking 'why re-start the war in the first place', you can ask that question about half the wars that have ever taken place in the history of the world. We may think that re-starting it is not rational, but that doesn't stop the other guy from deciding that it's rational for reasons of his own, or from just acting irrationally anyway.

NTM

[Caligulette]

Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites

While we're here, looks like the labor movement is figuring out worker solidarity. Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, in a recent speech:

Heck no - leave it up to the union negotiators and Obama to do that! Hello, VEBA account, hello tearing up the GM workers' contracts willingly, hello two-tier wage system for the auto workers, hello embrace by the AFT of the horrendous Race To The Top education lack-of-funding! Yay union! /sarcasm, start re-organizing.

[Jug Pilot]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

The land mines help with the obliteration.

If you're asking 'why re-start the war in the first place', you can ask that question about half the wars that have ever taken place in the history of the world. We may think that re-starting it is not rational, but that doesn't stop the other guy from deciding that it's rational for reasons of his own, or from just acting irrationally anyway.

NTM

I don’t see how an area of line mines would work any better than the Maginot Line did for the French. Once you breach it, everyone goes through the hole. Assuming the North Koreans don’t have anti-landmine technology wouldn’t they just send through a few tanks to give their lives for the Motherland to breach it?

I think the F-15K’s would be the bigger threat.

I really can’t see NK invading. I can’t see China coming to their aid this time since it would give the US an excuse to not pay its debt to them.

Think about this, Kim Jong Il is living the good life. Why ruin it with an invasion which would take it all away. Besides, he has to project happy happy thoughts for his soccer team. Sure he’ll rattle his sword, and thumb his nose. They are empty threats.

There really has to be another reason why the US will not sign the Landmine treaty.

[chunksmediocrites]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

Two reasons. 1) They're extremely useful on the DMZ, and 2) it's not as if not planting any more is suddenly going to make the DMZ any safer: There are already enough mines out there you don't want to be going for a Sunday stroll, so failing to have the exemption simply reduces tactical capability for no practical benefit. #1 alone is arguably insufficient, but when combined with #2, the requirement for an exemption makes more sense.

I think North Korea could use this same rationale for building or maintaining nuclear weapons. They are extremely useful, a deterrent to invasion, failing to have them reduces tactical capability for no practical benefit. Maybe they can apply for an exemption? I mean they support nuclear non-proliferation in theory. It's just the one special case.

Originally Posted by California Tanker

That same article mentions a couple of times that she was expelled from the organisation.

I wasn't debating her membership status, rather pointing out that the Minuteman Project maintained contact and ties with her and her splinter organization, including posting her press releases on their website. I was disagreeing that the one was completely divorced from the other, at least until after Forde's arrest and murder charge. If you want to explore this further we can look at the number of volunteer border patrol organizations including the Minuteman Project, and how positive or effective that turned out. Mostly the comment was tongue-in-cheek, since it was based on Republicans patrolling borders, and I don't really think many of the participants are particularly self-identified Republicans.

Originally Posted by California Tanker

If you're [Jug Pilot] asking 'why re-start the war in the first place', you can ask that question about half the wars that have ever taken place in the history of the world. We may think that re-starting it is not rational, but that doesn't stop the other guy from deciding that it's rational for reasons of his own, or from just acting irrationally anyway.

Speaking tangentially of rational wars, I enjoyed a quote from Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador, talking in 2007 about the US air base in Manta for which Ecuador refused to renew the lease:

"We'll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami -- an Ecuadorean base," Correa said in an interview during a trip to Italy.

"If there's no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States."

[chunksmediocrites]

Originally Posted by Caligulette

Heck no - leave it up to the union negotiators and Obama to do that! Hello, VEBA account, hello tearing up the GM workers' contracts willingly, hello two-tier wage system for the auto workers, hello embrace by the AFT of the horrendous Race To The Top education lack-of-funding! Yay union! /sarcasm, start re-organizing.

Yeah, if Trumka had really laid it out he would have included in the list how the unions like AFL-CIO had failed their primary mission repeatedly and managed to instead become functionaries for the owners.

[California Tanker]

"If there's no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States."

I wonder if he's ever taken I-10...



El Paso has a hell of an Oktoberfest. The Luftwaffe have a facility by Alamogordo, the Bundeswehr have had a permanent presence in El Paso since 1946.

If he's curious as to how the Republic of Singapore Air Force got helicopters to Katrina so quickly, it's because they have a facility in Texas, so they didn't have to fly too far.


Maybe he should have just asked?

I think North Korea could use this same rationale for building or maintaining nuclear weapons. They are extremely useful, a deterrent to invasion, failing to have them reduces tactical capability for no practical benefit.

They don't have operational nukes yet. Plus it's a lot easier to ne-nukeify a few warheads than it is to demine the Korean peninsula. You can, in practice, dismantle the nukes without harming much else. De-mining the DMZ is going to take a few changes in the way the two Koreas do business.

I mean they support nuclear non-proliferation in theory. It's just the one special case.

And we have here a perfect example of perfect being the enemy of good enough. Korea already is mined. The intent behind the mine ban is not made any worse by placing mines where there's already minefields. Now, if putting signature pen to treaty paper and being 100% in accordance with the various bans is the only thing which is important, we might as well save ourselves some money and go back to issueing traditional AP mines throughout the entire rest of the world, and while we're at it, save the taxpayer a few dollars and go back to un-timed cluster munitions since the US isn't signatory to that one either.

US policy is that no traditional AP mines will be laid anywhere outside of one specific part of the world which is already well mined. I think they're pretty much meeting the intent.

Once you breach it, everyone goes through the hole. Assuming the North Koreans don’t have anti-landmine technology wouldn’t they just send through a few tanks to give their lives for the Motherland to breach it?

Problem is that there's quite a bit of terrain in Korea which is fine for infantry to cross, but which you can't get breaching equipment up to. Infantry can go most anywhere, and NK has a lot of them.

NTM

[Sauron]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

That same article mentions a couple of times that she was expelled from the organisation.

NTM

You assume her particular style of nutjobbery was somehow an anomaly for Minutewingers.

Ahem.

[fragment]

Even if the US has no current intention of laying mines anywhere but the DMZ, forgive me if I don't accept that won't change in the future. The intent of the treaty is surely to remove the capability of mining as well as just reducing the number of mines on the ground, or the number of areas mined. Relying purely on the good intentions of future US military policy doesn't do it for me.

[Jug Pilot]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

Problem is that there's quite a bit of terrain in Korea which is fine for infantry to cross, but which you can't get breaching equipment up to. Infantry can go most anywhere, and NK has a lot of them.

NTM

But in a modern battlefield, and especially the way NK would use them, aren’t infantry just squishy targets?

Landmines on the Korean DMZ, don’t seem to be much of a deterrent.

• 17 January 1968: 31 North Korean commandos crossed the border disguised as South Korean soldiers in an attempt to assassinate President Park Chung Hee at the Blue House. The failed mission resulted in 29 commandos killed, one committed suicide, and the last captured. Two South Korean policemen and five civilians were killed by the commandos. Other reports indicated as many as 68 South Koreans killed and 66 wounded, including about 24 civilians. Three Americans were killed and another three wounded in an attempt to prevent the commandos from escaping back via the DMZ[9].
• October 1968: 130 North Korean commandos entered the Ulchin and Samcheok areas in Gangwon-do. Eventually 110 of them were killed, 7 were captured and 13 escaped.
• March 1969: Six North Korean infiltrators crossed the border near Chumunjin, Gangwon-do and killed a South Korean policeman on guard duty.
• October 1969: North Korean infiltrators killed four United States soldiers near the southern boundary of the DMZ.
• April 1970: Three North Korean infiltrators were killed and five South Korean soldiers wounded at an encounter in Kumchon, Gyeonggi-do.
• November 1974: The first of what would be a series of North Korean infiltration tunnels under the DMZ was discovered.
• March 1975: The second North Korean infiltration tunnel was discovered.
• June 1976: Three North Korean infiltrators and six South Korean soldiers were killed in the eastern sector south of the DMZ. Another six South Korean soldiers were injured.
• 18 August 1976: The Axe Murder Incident results in the death of two U.S. soldiers and injuries to another four U.S. soldiers and five South Korean soldiers. The incident may not be technically considered an "infiltration" however, as it took place in a neutral zone of the Joint Security Area.
• October 1978: The third North Korean infiltration tunnel was discovered.
• October 1979: Three North Korean agents attempting to infiltrate the eastern sector of the DMZ were intercepted, killing one of the agents.
• March 1980: Three North Korean infiltrators were killed attempting to enter the south across the estuary of the Han River.
• March 1981: Three North Korean infiltrators spotted at Kumhwa, Gangwon-do, one was killed.
• July 1981: Three North Korean infiltrators were killed in the upper stream of Imjin River.
• May 1982: Two North Korean infiltrators were spotted on the east coast, one was killed.
• March 1990: The fourth North Korean infiltration tunnel was discovered, in what may be a total of 17 tunnels in all.
• May 1992: Three North Korean infiltrators dressed in South Korean uniforms were killed at Cheorwon, Gangwon-do. Three South Koreans were also wounded.
• October 1995: Two North Korean infiltrators were intercepted at Imjin River. One was killed, the other escaped.
• April 1996: Several hundred North Korean armed troops entered the Joint Security Area and elsewhere on three occasions in violation of the Korean armistice agreement.
• May 1996: Seven North Korean soldiers crossed the DMZ but withdrew when fired upon by South Korean troops.
• April 1997: Five North Korean soldiers crossed the military demarcation line's Cheorwon sector and fired at South Korean positions.
• July 1997: Fourteen North Korean soldiers crossed the military demarcation line, causing a 23-minute exchange of heavy gunfire.
• May 26, 2006: Two North Korean soldiers entered the DMZ and crossed into South Korea. They returned after South Korean soldiers fired warning shots.
• October 7, 2006: South Korean soldiers fired warning shots after North Korean soldiers crossed briefly into their side of the border.
• October 27, 2009: A South Korean pig farmer, who was wanted for assault, cut a hole in the DMZ fence and defected to North Korea. [10]

Like I said, there must be some other reason.

[California Tanker]

But in a modern battlefield, and especially the way NK would use them, aren’t infantry just squishy targets?

Never underestimate the humble footsoldier. In the right terrain, they're unbeatable. Lots of artillery deadspace in mountains, for example, and if the tanks can't get to them either, it's down to what aircraft can withstand the anti-air fire, and guys with machineguns behind fortifications, who are probably outnumbered heavily.

Landmines on the Korean DMZ, don’t seem to be much of a deterrent.

There's a difference between sneaking a couple of people through, and trying for a rapid movement of a brigade.

The intent of the treaty is surely to remove the capability of mining as well as just reducing the number of mines on the ground, or the number of areas mined. Relying purely on the good intentions of future US military policy doesn't do it for me.

There are a number of treaties in force which are followed simply by good intentions, and not capability. I can go down to my local store and buy expanding ammunition for my rifles and pistols, for example, but they are not on general issue to any santioned military that I am aware of due to the requirements of the Hague Declarations. The fact that the US (and most other countries) can at very short notice violate the treaty should it have a mind to hasn't caused any particular consternation on the matter.

Similarly, I was issued several very high-intensity lasers which are destructive to eyesight if used against personnel, though that's not what they're supposed to be used for (Usually marking and aiming). Current Chinese tanks come equipped with a laser dazzler on the turret to deal with optical tracking and guidance systems. The Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons has very clear things to say about going about trying to blind the enemy on the battlefield. But again, nobody has gone complaining about the capability given that the prohibition on use blinding personnel appears to be followed.

The intent of the treaty is surely to remove the capability of mining as well as just reducing the number of mines on the ground, or the number of areas mined.

My understanding is that the impetus behind the treaty was to try to prevent cases of people having their legs blown off years after a war is over.

NTM

[fragment]

If maintaining capabilities to use landmines becomes something that few countries do, and they are treated as international pariahs for it, then there will be fewer cases of people having their legs blown off. That would appear to be why the treaty requires the destruction of stockpiles.

That other treaties can readily be circumvented seems like an argument for strengthening those treaties more than an argument for a refusal to sign up to another.

There may well be practical considerations making anything stronger unfeasible - as in your expanding bullet example - but since those don't apply to landmines, which have no non-military use, then this exception doesn't apply.

I mean, I could use your argument to say that no-one should be concerned about, say, Iran, developing the capability of producing nuclear weapons, because relying on their good intentions to not produce any is sufficient.

[beyelzu]

I think the us does lots of things because of political inertia: the embargo on cuba, some of the support of israel, the landmines thing.

NK has a huge army and there are something like 50k us soldiers in korea iirc, its not enough of a force to actually repel an invasion, it is enough to slow it down and the landmines likewise until the us can mobilize sufficient force. There was a legitimate reason for landmines in the dmz, and there probably is one now. However the us can't ban landmines without a dmz exception because who wants to be soft on North Korea.

[California Tanker]

That other treaties can readily be circumvented seems like an argument for strengthening those treaties

That sounds very much like banning hunting rifles because they can be used for assasinations, or taping people's mouths shut in theatres because they could say something which causes panic. It's all intention, not capability based.

Indeed, the most fundamental treaty in warfare, the Geneva Conventions, is based purely on the intentions of the signatories.

However the us can't ban landmines without a dmz exception because who wants to be soft on North Korea.

It also gives the 35k Army troops on the border (as well as the ROK) a better chance of actually surviving. They're fatalistic enough about their fate already.

NTM

[beyelzu]

So my 50k was off Ct?

Did it use to be higher? or is maybe that the combined figure?

[beyelzu]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

It also gives the 35k Army troops on the border (as well as the ROK) a better chance of actually surviving. They're fatalistic enough about their fate already.

NTM

Yeah, thats why I said that there is probably still a reason to have the landmines in the dmz, I don't know ultimately how effective those troops would be though. I always figured they were there so that in the case of invasion the us would be automatically committed to a declaration of war or resuming hostilities because of the loss of us soldiers.

I know that sounds harsh as hell.

[Adam]

I think all this misses the point, though. For any hypothetical weapon A*, there are arguably legitimate reasons why a given nation might want to use it. If we're going to allow exceptions to a ban on A whenever it's expedient to use A, there's really no point to banning it at all.

* - You nerds though I was going to name my hypothetical weapon X, didn't you? , nerds!