Jeremy at Eating Words blogs on this Christian Science Monitor story detailing the dangers posed by unexploded cluster bombs used by the Israelis in the recent conflict in Lebanon. One of the more hideous aspects of this problem is that it’s children who are disproportionately the victims. Kids have a tendency to pick up the unexploded “bomblets” from cluster bombs not realizing what they are (see also this).

The Just War criterion of discrimination should have something to say about the use of such weapons. It’s not sufficient that we simply try to use what weapons we have in as disciriminatory a way possilbe, avoiding civilian casualties when we can. The very existence of such weapons is called into question.

This is in some way a smaller scale version of the question that a lot of Just War theorists faced duing the Cold War about the use of nuclear weapons. Most mainstream JW thinkers concluded that the use of nuclear weapons against enemy populations could never be licensed. Notably, respected Catholic moral theologians John Finnis, Joseph Boyle, and Germain Grisez argued that the use of nuclear weapons even if only as a deterrent, was immoral by Just War standards. The reason is that some weapons, such as nuclear ones, are inherently incapable of being used in a way that respects the principle of discrimination.

The same could be said about cluster bombs. If the majority of their victims are non-combatants (indeed, many of them after hostilities have ceased), then I think that’s a strong prima facie case that their use is impermissible. To be committed to justice in warfare requires, among other things, that we not treat the methods used as simply given and beyond the scope of moral evaluation.