From: "Oerjan Ohlson" <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com>
> If someone buys a weapon and later on uses it in a war, is the weapon
"Once the Rockets are up, who cares where they come down, that's not
my department" - said Wehner Von Braun
If they knew there was a reasonable chance the weapons were to be used that
way, then not just Yes but Hell Yes!
I refused to work on several projects at STN-Atlas simply because
of such ethical questions. I might add that the company had a deliberate
policy of not just allowing, but encouraging anyone not totally comfortable
about working on a project to leave it, with not just no penalty but with
praise. Being a German firm, they were very sensitive to the whole issue.
You and I both have blood on our hands, Oerjan, because of who we work for or
have worked for. I take personal responsibility for every weapons system I've
helped design or make, no matter how small or large my part in it may have
been.
I know of 2 Iraqi pilots whose deaths can be directly attributable to
air intercept code that I wrote - code that I designed quite
deliberately
and cold-bloodedly to have the maximum chance of success, even though
that meant the targets' pilots had essentially zero chance of ejecting. Am I
comfortable with this? No. I would have preferred for them to have baled out.
But not at the price of increasing the risk to our side by one scintilla. I
take full responsibility for this decision, and would do the same again.
There is an obverse side to this too: there are many people here in Australia
who can remember a certain Swedish firm refusing to supply us with ammo for
our Karl Gustavs when we became involved in Vietnam. Every firm has not just
the right, but the obligation to ensure its weapons aren't misused. So a buyer
should be careful to make sure he only buys from someone with the same
beliefs - or from someone who's morally Bankrupt.
> Alan Brain wrote:
> >If someone buys a weapon and later on uses it in a war, is the weapon
:-/
> If they knew there was a reasonable chance the weapons were to be used
This may be a language problem. In Swedish, "responsible for" is not the
same thing as "involved in" - you can be responsible even if you're not
involved, and it is possible (though harder) to be involved without being
responsible - but I'm not sure whether or not this is the case in
English too.
I carry part of the *responsibility* for those lives taken by our weapons,
certainly. For me this is morally acceptable only because I also know several
people personally, and am aware of many others, who owe their lives to those
same weapons.
However, I've seen and heard quite a few comments from USAmericans critizising
Sweden for not *getting involved* in the Gulf War and more recently in
Afganistan. They clearly don't count our delivering ~150,000
AT4s to the US armed forces prior to the Gulf War as getting involved (and
neither do they count the field hospital we did send there, since it didn't
take part in the actual fighting). Some of those AT4s are used in Afganistan
as I type this, but that too doesn't seem to count as "Sweden
getting involved" to those Americans. And according to my understanding of
the word "involved", they're right - even though I usually don't agree
with the sentiments behind their comments.
> There is an obverse side to this too: there are many people here in
Agreed. Though knowing both the Swedish popular opinion and politicians at the
time and several of our salesmen involved in that incident, I strongly suspect
that it was our politicians who stopped the sale rather than our
company. According to Swedish law it is forbidden to export weapons to any
country which might actually use them - *unless* the Swedish government
makes an exception for that particular sale... and unlike our salesmen, the
Swedish government at the time was heavily pro-VC/NVA :-(
Unfortunately, a company has very little power to prevent a customer from
selling or giving the weapons he has bought to someone else - or even
having them stolen by someone else. The recent US worries about Stinger
missiles in Taliban hands is one such case; similarly I know several instances
where our weapons have turned up in places where we did not
deliver them. The Swedish army is a big culprit here, BTW - it didn't
guard its mobilization weapon caches very well, so criminal elements have
broken into several such caches with the result that the MC gangs in southern
Sweden have used AT4s in their gang wars. Not exactly the purpose we
designed the AT4 for :-(
> So a buyer should be careful to make sure he only buys from someone
Agreed. And he must remember that both the firm he buys from *and* the
government of that firm's country need to have the same beliefs (or be morally
bankrupt), since either of them can stop the deliveries.
Later,
From: "Oerjan Ohlson" <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com>
> This may be a language problem. In Swedish, "responsible for" is not
"Responsible for" implies "involved in" - though not the converse. That
is you may be powerless to alter a situation, but you're still involved. But
you can easily be involved in something without being responsible for it.
Typically, innocent bystanders, people hit by drunken drivers etc.
> I carry part of the *responsibility* for those lives taken by our
Yes, there are up sides. I'm lucky in that most of what I've done is dual
use: the anti-submarine search AI will, with but a little tweaking of
parameters, do quite nicely for SAR (Search And Rescue).
> However, I've seen and heard quite a few comments from USAmericans
..and which was available to treat wounded Australians who were
de-mining
Kuwait Harbours. I don't know if they ever actually treated any, but that
doesn't matter. You sent the hospital, that's what counts. Thanks, BTW.
> and unlike our salesmen, the
..as were a lot of Americans and Australians. The Past is another country, all
we can do is learn from mistakes. But even with hindsight, it seems to me that
the Vietnam war was perhaps not worth fighting: the people we were fighting
against were every bit as bad as portrayed, but the people we were fighting
for were less than wonderful. But the Cambodian war we didn't fight was one we
should have. Pol Pot & Angka => Enemies of Humanity.
> Unfortunately, a company has very little power to prevent a customer
Yes, like the Kuwaiti Naval vessels that were taken by the Iraqis when they
did their blitzkrieg.
> The Swedish army is a big culprit here, BTW - it didn't guard
Look on the bright side: a) It proves the AT4s work b) The MC gangsters
(hopefully) tend to use them on each other, rather than on banks, civilians
etc. In which case, No Great Loss. <yes, this was supposed to be a joke>
> --- Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:
> However, I've seen and heard quite a few comments
There's different levels of involvement. There's a big difference between the
level the Brits (for instance, along with a lot of other people) were involved
as compared to a lot of other countries (Sweden, Australia, et al). Whether
that level of
involvement is right/wrong/possible for the various
contries in question is another topic.
Some of those > AT4s are used in > Afganistan as I type this, but that too
doesn't seem
Isn't the US now license-producing it's own AT-4s? I
was under the impression US policy didn't allow us to remain dependant on a
foreign nation for ammunition.
> Agreed. And he must remember that both the firm he
And that's why French and Chinese weapons are so popular...
> Alan Brain wrote:
> > The Swedish army is a big culprit here, BTW - it didn't guard
Actually, the MC gangsters were too incompetent to read the instructions
printed on the barrel (and had quite obviously never fired AT4s during
their conscription, if they had ever been conscripted) - not only did
they fire the weapons from well inside the arming distance so the grenades
didn't explode, but they also cut away the soft-plastic end caps on the
barrel to avoid having the grenade detonate in-barrel... Thanks to their
utter incompetence, they failed to kill anyone with those AT4s in spite of
firing them into houses full of people.
It looks as if the USA's 101st division gets rather more effect out of
their AT4s, though :-/
Later,
> John Atkinson wrote:
> >Some of those AT4s are used in Afganistan as I
About half of them IIRC. 51% of the original batch (~300,000 weapons) were
produced by Alliant Technologies (...or whatever they're called nowadays;
I've probably lost track :-/ ); as for the situation today... I could
tell
you, but then I'd have to kill you :-/
Later,
From: "Oerjan Ohlson" <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com>
> Actually, the MC gangsters were too incompetent to read the
It's amazing how stupid some criminals can be. Glad to hear no-one got