A world of nuclear giants and ethical infants

Since land mines cost as little as $3 to manufacture and can be spread at rates of over 1,000 per minute, even the poorest of Banana Republics can produce and use them as weapons of destruction and terror. Like death, land mines are the great equalizer.

Land mines are indiscriminate killers. Years after the fighting has ceased and people have forgotten what they were even fighting over, land mines remain hidden, ready to kill or maim innocent children and civilians. While at the beginning of the 20th century, nearly 80% of land mine victims were military personnel, today, 90% of victims are civilians. Land mines are stupid; they cannot distinguish between the footsteps of a soldier (who knowingly goes into harm's way) and those of a child playing in a field. Nearly 30-40% of land mine victims are children under the age of 15.

To add to this travesty, most guerillas, in a frantic attempt to terrorize enemy armies, don't pay much attention to where they plant the mines, so that years later, no one has a clue where they were buried. Acres and acres of land can't be cultivated and remains barren while people die of malnutrition.

The ultimate irony? While quick to install, mines are painstakingly slow to remove. It can take a skilled expert an entire day to clear a mere 20-50 square metres of mine-contaminated land. The original bargain basement price of $3 per mine costs anywhere from $300 to $1,000 to detect, remove and destroy; which explains why, decades later, they still litter the countryside of poor countries like Cambodia.

"Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants"U.S. General Omar N. Bradley once said, and we have been proving him right ever since. We have the technical means to maim, annihilate and kill, but we lack the moral fortitude to resist the temptation to do so. "When you know better, you do better" writes Maya Angelou, and yet, we seem unable to do so.

Despite all the indisputable facts listed above there are still 13 countries worldwide today that continue to produce anti-personnel land mines and refuse to sign an unconditional ban on their production, sale and use, among them India, North Korea, Pakistan, and sadly, the U.S., the "Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free."

Why aren't we all standing up horrified, screaming from the rooftops that such barbaric means are still being used as legitimate means of warfare? What justification could possibly make them ok?

The likelihood of you and me stumbling across a land mine while walking our dog, playing in the park or taking our kids to school is as high as Bush one day winning the Nobel Peace Prize, which is to say non-existent, but that doesn't mean this isn't our problem. Are we going to remain "ethical infants" or rise up to the best part of human nature and eradicate this stain on our collective history? This is our problem; the solution is ours as well.

For information on what you can do, log on to: www.canadianlandmine.org.