Over the weekend there were reports that the Qaddafi government had started using cluster bombs in civilian areas in Misurata, the only rebel stronghold in western Libya. The New York Times reported:

The use of such weapons in these ways could add urgency to the arguments by Britain and France that the alliance needs to step up attacks on the Qaddafi forces, to better fulfill the United Nations mandate to protect civilians.

The article notes that cluster bombs, because of their indiscriminate nature and the risk they pose to civilians, "have been banned by much of the world." That doesn't include Libya, whose government hasn't signed the international convention on Cluster Bomb Munitions. And, as you know if you read Tobias Winright's Commonweal article "Predictably Horrific," it doesn't include the United States either. The NYT notes, "[T]he United States has used cluster munitions itself, in battlefield situations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in a strike on suspected militants in Yemen in 2009." (The Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting blog senses a double standard in the NYT's description of the horrors of "indiscriminate weapons" and downplaying of U.S. reliance on same.)

Of course, attacking one's own people is particularly barbaric. But can we call it a humanitarian crisis when Qaddafi uses cluster bombs without calling into question our own refusal to disavow them?