An Open Letter to the Board of Directors of Alliant Techsystems
Polly Mann
September 2007 worldwideWAMM newsletter

Daniel J. Murphy
William G. Van Dyke
Gilbert F. Decker
Martin C. Faga
Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman (Ret.)
Cynthia L. Lesher
Douglas L. Maine
Roman Martinez IV
Mark H. Ronald
Michael T. Smith
Frances D. Cook

Dear Alliant Techsystems Directors:

I am an active member of the peace community and some years ago I was arrested during a demonstration at the headquarters of the Honeywell Corporation, which morphed into Alliant Techsystems. Since then I’ve left others to protest over the issue of the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. However, a couple of days ago over my E-mail appeared an article entitled “A Million Unexploded Cluster Bomblets: The Deadly Legacy of Israel’s Assault on Lebanon.” It was a very sobering document.

I decided I should get in touch with you, for you, in the final analysis, are responsible for those bomblets which really can’t distinguish the good guys from the bad ones. Oh yes, I know all about precision bombing but the statistics I read haven’t convinced me that those bombs are reaching those who deserve to die. Who deserves to die? Why, all those who are on whatever side the military has designated the “other side"!

I’ve heard suggestions that it might be effective to hold demonstrations protesting the manufacture of cluster bombs outside your homes. It was a thought. So, I googled each of you individually and found no addresses of any kind. After fooling around I discovered that upon the payment of a small sum I possibly could get your address but I’m not sure I could garner up support for such demonstrations. Nevertheless, I looked you all up in the telephone directories of the Twin Cities and found only one of you. It’s entirely possible that many of you live elsewhere.

My action, therefore, is taking another turn. There are blogs and E-mail sites that might be willing to carry my letter as well as the WAMM newsletter. It could be compared to putting a message in a bottle and letting it float out to sea – something like that.

The report about the unexploded bomblets was written by George T. Cody, PhD, Executive Director of the American Task Force for Lebanon, who quotes the UN, saying “the cluster bomb contamination in Lebanon is the worst ever seen, worse than the contamination in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. The reason for this is the sheer volume of bombs dropped on a ‘postage stamp’ size country like Lebanon.”

The UN estimates a 30% to 40% actual failure rate for cluster bomblets in Lebanon, leaving them to kill and maim innocent Lebanese, many of them children. As of November 2006, 78,738 unexploded bomblets have been cleared—about 8% of the total. It will take 50 teams of 10-15 persons per team working 20 hours a week almost a year to clear the fields. In the meantime the economy of Lebanon, 70% of which is based on agriculture, will be brought to a halt. And there are problems about running out of money provided by pledges of many industrialized countries.

You know, good people, you could stop all this. I know it wouldn’t be easy and I don’t even know just how you’d go about doing it. The easiest way out would be to sell all your shares of stock. That would certainly relieve your conscience but that wouldn’t change the big picture. Bomblets would still go rolling off the assembly line. No, no, no. Of course, they can’t roll.

You could try to disband the company. But how? You would simply be replaced on the board. Probably the simplest thing to do would be to make some bad financial decisions and hope the company would go bankrupt. That might also be illegal. And somebody’s sure to mention the orphans and widows who depend on their stock holdings. It’s a toss-up isn’t it? Because on the other hand, you’ve got the many, many orphans and widows being created by your bomblets themselves.

You need to hear about them. There’s information in an article written by Frida Berrigan that appeared in In These Times last December. Frida says that 98% of the people killed or injured by cluster bombs are civilians. Like, for example, 11-year old Lebanese, Ramy Shibleh, who was gathering pinecones with his brother. The small cart which they were using hit something solid and Ramy tied to toss the rock-like object out of the way. But it exploded, tearing off his right arm and the back of his head, killing him instantly.

Of course, it isn’t only in Lebanon. Your product has been distributed all over the world. In Afghanistan, Nazeer Ahmad, de-miner for the Organization for Mine Clearance and Afghan Rehabilitation says, “We completely forgot about the Russian bombs and mines when we saw American cluster bombs. They are horrible things. Nobody knows how to detect them and nobody knows how to destroy them. In Herat when Americans dropped cluster bombs, there were little bomblets that were yellow color. Children thought they might be food. Thirty have been killed and 25 wounded by cluster bombs.”

Farnaz Fassihi reported for the Newhouse News Service in late December that “at the Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital in Kabul, all the beds in the children’s ward are occupied by youngsters injured by cluster bomblets.”

Without knowing, of course, I suspect that some of you have young children and probably more have young grandchildren, and you care about those children. I suspect you’re also good neighbors to those around you, responsible, and sympathetic to those in need. You simply haven’t made the connection between your children and these children damaged and killed by your product. Ultimately you have the power to do something about this. To begin with you might check the website of the Cluster Munition Coalition.

According to this coalition on June 27, 2007 the Netherlands suspended the use of cluster munitions. Funny, I didn’t know the Netherlands was involved in any current fray. But hey, that’s all for the good. Then on May 25, 2007 the Lima Conference on Cluster Munitions in Peru concluded with strong support for a new treaty. Twenty-eight new countries joined the 46 states that launched a new process in February this year to conclude a treaty by 2008.

And it’s just come to me. I know what your company could do. You could change your product. What do you think about dolls, ethnic dolls? Japanese children might really go for Raggedy Ann dolls. I once had a beautiful doll with a Japanese face and real hair.

Could we say that we people against your product are on a roll? After all, nothing about a doll could explode. Children would reach for a doll, unlike like reaching for your product, and not be blown to bits.

Editor’s note: Polly Mann was a co-founder of Woman Against Military Madness in 1982.

Copyright 2007 worldwideWAMM. All rights reserved.