President Obama: Put down your hoe and pick up a pen!

The following article was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on September 22, 2009. Titus Peachey, Director of Peace Education, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) wrote this article in commemoration of the 15th Anniversary of MAG's (Mining Advisory Group)arrival in Lao PDR in 1994. At that time Titus was the MCC Coordinator for the Cluster Bomb Removal Project in Laos and was instrumental in MAG coming to Laos. He had previously been the Co-director of MCC programs in Laos from 1980-1985.


Dear President Obama,

I love your family’s White House garden. It’s a great way to promote the value of fresh, home-grown food. I hope many will follow the example that you and the First Lady have set. But just for today I am urging you, Mr. President, to put down your garden hoe and pick up a pen. Because hidden somewhere between your onions and tomatoes is a connection to international humanitarian law that deserves your immediate attention.

Today, September 22, 2009, villagers in Laos are celebrating the 15- year anniversary of an effort to remove U.S. bombs from their soil. In 1964, the U.S. began a bombing campaign in Laos that dropped 260 million cluster bomblets over a period of nine years. Nearly half the arable land is Laos is still littered with unexploded cluster munitions. With 80% of the population surviving through subsistence agriculture, gardening has become a necessary exercise in overcoming fear.

Cluster munitions are small bomblets that are dropped from a large shell or bomb casing. Since many of these bomblets did not blow up as designed, they turned large areas of Laos into a vast unmapped mine field. Even today, some 35 years after the bombing has ended, an average of 300 Lao villagers are injured and killed each year.

So today there will be speeches and photo exhibits that detail the history of the effort to make the gardens, fields and village paths of Laos safe for daily living. The project was launched by Mennonite Central Committee, the Mines Advisory Group and the Lao government in 1994. There is truly much to celebrate, as 1,000 workers now destroy ordnance and lead education programs throughout the country. Even so, at the current rate of clearance, villagers will be finding bomblets midst their tomatoes and onions for many decades to come.

During the past 45 years, the use of these indiscriminate weapons has extended to more than 25 countries. While millions of dollars are spent each year to find and safely destroy these weapons, their repeated use has created an economic and humanitarian disaster. In response many government leaders have decided to pick up a pen.

In December of 2008, ninety-four countries gathered in Norway to sign a treaty (Convention on Cluster Munitions) banning the production, transfer, stockpiling and use of cluster munitions. Many U.S. allies that have cluster munitions signed the treaty. Regrettably, the U.S. joins Russia, China, Israel, Pakistan and India in refusing to sign.

This effort to ban cluster munitions parallels a similar effort that resulted in a treaty to ban landmines in 1997. While 156 nations have now signed this treaty (Mine Ban Treaty), the U.S. continues to resist, joining other major military powers in refusing to sign the landmine ban.

President Obama, we can only imagine the outrage we would all feel if you found an unexploded bomb or landmine midst your tomatoes. And the outrage would only be compounded if we learned that the ordnance had come from another nation. Yet this is precisely what happens in places as diverse as Lebanon and Vietnam, Laos and Afghanistan, Iraq and Cambodia.

Our national failure to sign both of these international treaties not only contributes to humanitarian harm, it also breeds resentment and anger among people whom we desperately need as friends. Whatever military advantage might be gained on the battlefield is quickly lost in the hearts and minds of the world’s gardeners. When tillers of the soil in Afghanistan, Iraq or southern Lebanon watch their children die from U.S. bombs, we become less secure.

So Mr. President, if you should happen to be working in the White House garden today, enjoy the rich soil and a good harvest of fresh vegetables. Then please put down your garden hoe, pick up a pen, and sign the landmine and cluster munition treaties. Help ensure that all the world’s gardeners can plant and harvest in peace.


For more information, see: mcc.org/clusterbombs