Reply #40: Landmines unfair?

[ieoeja]

I'm guessing you meant inhumane. The problem with landmines is that too many are left in place when the fighting moves on and civilians move in.

There is certainly nothing unfair about them in the sense of giving one side too much of an advantage over the other. They are about as cheap, lo-tech and readily available as military hardware gets.

Not that big a deal to make your own even. Communist insurgents in El Salvador used to create several concrete and dirt shells (to look like rocks), insert explosives with cap, place along both sides of a path, and run wires underground to a battery topped by a metal plate buried a half inch deep at furthest point along the path. When the soldier in front steps on the metal plate, all the landmines along the path go off at once.