Somebody’s using chemical weapons in Syria:
“Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated,” Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television.
“This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities,” she added, speaking in Italian.
The rumors that Assad was using chemical weapons, which haven’t yet been shown to be accurate, already have Grandpa McCain all over the teevee calling Obama a pussy:
Appearing on Fox News, the Republican senator John McCain suggested that to most minds such a line had been crossed. Referring to Israeli air strikes on targets close to Damascus over the weekend, McCain said: “Apparently the Syrians and Iranians have crossed a red line with the Israelis.”
Somebody needs to give McCain the 411 on vassal states: they are supposed to do your dirty work for you. Does he think the billions of dollars in military aid we give Israel is just to buy them shiny new weapons to put on parade? And since Israel, not the US, is within striking distance of the weapons they’re bombing in Syria, it makes sense that their red lines are a lot tighter than ours.
The question that McCain and the rest of the warmongers have yet to answer is how it benefits our strategic interests to pick a side in this shitshow. Assad is clearly an evil dictator, but chances are that whatever government emerges from this mess isn’t going to be our ally, and it’s an open question whether the people of Syria will be better off once the dust settles. It might just be the wussy isolationist in me, but I don’t see the downside in the current US strategy.
El Cid
Still, better to bomb first and let posterity sort it out.
After all, if there’s one thing we’ve learned from history, and in fact there are two things, one is that saying that you have good intentions guarantees good foreign policy results, and two is that it is absolutely, completely and utterly impossible to make a terrible situation get any worse.
Professor
Why do we listen to this incontinent old fool?
Suffern ACE
So which of our lovely allies is supplying sarin gas? Perhaps they would be so kind as to retrieve it.
oldster
Hey, and Bill Keller today wants us to know that although we totally screwed up in Iraq, with a lot of help from the New York Times, now this time is different, and not at all like Iraq, and so we should get involved in a new war in Syria, because the New York Times says so!
Jesus. Anyone who takes advice from the NYT about going to war might as well hire Lucy as their holder.
debbie
I would like someone in the administration to call McCain out on this, to remind him that he was the one who said Quadaffi was a man he could work with, and to point out the track record of rushing into situations without all the facts.
El Cid
The New York Times‘ Chevron’s Bill Keller says “we” need to act now, because Syria is not Iraq, and he would rather we not be so “gun-shy” — his words, because, you know, he has spent so much of his life carrying and using a gun to defend the interests of Chevron, America, the New York Times, and sophisticated classes every where.
debbie
@oldster:
That’s the problem. It is never different.
El Cid
@oldster: Stereo!
El Cid
@debbie: Qaddafi was a man ‘we’ could work with. He did in fact get rid of his nuclear and chemical weapons etc. programs, which was crucial when it came to military intervening against his regime as it fought its own population.
Bill E Pilgrim
@oldster: When I read that this morning I couldn’t believe at first that it wasn’t someone doing a parody of Bill Keller. But I checked and it really was the NYT, and really him.
True to form. Almost too true.
El Cid
@oldster: It’s both predictable and astounding that…people who know nothing of what they speak in the first place who have proven themselves to be unreliable and vainglorious liars, liar-protectors, and dupes get to lead the public debate on significant issues.
[Edited for grammatarizationizing.]
JR
I’m still leaning towards thinking that air strikes against Assad are appropriate–I can’t think of a realistic scenario where his staying in power doesn’t lead to a constant, brutal war in Syria, complete with thousands more human rights abuses and atrocities–but I see the argument for just letting it play out without direct US involvement. Go after Assad, and you risk empowering al Qaeda and provoking retaliation by Hezbollah. Stay out of the fight itself, and you get the two most powerful terror movements pissed at each other and openly fighting.
beltane
One doesn’t have to be a strict isolationist to see that the US should stay as far away from the conflict in Syria as is humanely possible. Only the most powerful of neocon happy pills can blind someone to the fact that there are no good possible outcomes here, even in a theoretical sense, and only the potential for some really bad consequences to any US involvement. BooMan has a nice piece up on John McCain and Syria with the catchy title “When the Dog Catches the Car.” http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/5/5/21412/40670
I’m not sure most Americans relish the prospect of being that dog right now.
red dog
Mistermix, you hit the nail on the head, well said. Use Israel for a change instead of the reverse and they are much better at this kind of action. No big show, just “sic em”.
aimai
Isn’t the point of benghazibenghazibenghazi11111!!!! that when you do actually intervene on the side of the rebels, and protect an entire city from destruction, that the new government that arises is helpless to side with you against a forgetful and divided populace and that your ambassadors and spies will get slaughtered? What’s the logic of intervening in Syria in nearly identical circumstances, propping up a set of rebels, or one set of rebels, and then having them turn on us in the post war period?
Schlemizel
2 things:
Earlier in the week Grandpa Walnuts went on the record as being against every option available to deal wit Syria. Then over the weekend he went around demanding that Obama do something. As a result he is covered. SHould we do something & if ends up badly he can replay the clips of him saying all the things we shouldn’t do. If it turns out well (AS IF!) he can claim Obama didn’t act fast enough or follow the advice he gave over the weekend that contradicted his earlier advice.
How do we know it was Assad that used the gas?If I were in charge of some rebel group I might like the idea of picking a competing (or will be competing once the big issue is resolved) group & dumping the gas on them. Its a two-fer. I damage my little opponent and make my major opponent look like the bad guy. But that is all to subtle for the fire-breathing war lovers on the right.
Jen
It’s a good thing that no one took action against us when we used chemicals in Fallujah.
El Cid
@JR: I haven’t yet even seen anyone make a strong coherent argument for how some intervention actually improves the situation.
I’d like to see such an argument before we arrive at policy by sleepwalking through summarized fantasies, analogies, and metaphors.
El Cid
@aimai: No, the only lesson of Benghazi is that Hillary Clinton and Barry Hussein Islamic Jihad ACORN Obama will deliberately allow our embassy heroes to be slaughtered because they love Al Qa’ida and hate gold. I don’t know how you came to that crazy generalization you did.
chris
If Israel is supposed to be the vassal state, why are we the ones paying the tribute?
ISTM that the relationship is much better understood as running the other way. The Israelis decide what the agenda is and we implement it, or provide the means to implement it.
The one calling the shots is probably not the vassal.
Linda Featheringill
@Professor:
Hey. Don’t diss folks who are old and incontinent.
He is a fool, though. And there’s no need for us to have to listen to him.
Riccardo Cabeza
Lawrence Wilkerson says it was Israel trying to provoke the US into military action in Syria
beltane
@Schlemizel: It is not at all certain that it was Assad, and not one of the rebel groups, who used the gas http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/06/1207188/-U-N-Investigator-Obtained-Testimony-Claiming-Syria-s-Rebels-Used-Sarin-Gas-NOT-the-Assad-Regime
In any case, this is really a lose-lose situation. Unlike Libya, Syria is a seething cauldron of various ethnic groups and religious minorities. While Assad’s government continues to perpetrate large-scale atrocities on the civilian population, it is also very likely that whoever comes next will be guilty of some genocide-ing of their own. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the Christianists in the US were the ones largely responsible for the extermination of the ancient Christian community of Syria?
El Cid
If the potential use by the regime of chemical weaponry was to be a clear impulse for the U.S. to use military force in some sort of intervention, is there a significant policy implication if indeed chemical weaponry was used by anti-regime armed groups? Or since that’s not the reality desired by the anti-“gun shy” types such as hero civilian-saver Bill Keller, does that issue now just go into the waste-bin like all other basic questions regarding the realities of these matters?
raven
@aimai: ” nearly identical circumstances” Except that their military is WAY WAY WAY more capable than Libya’s.
Schlemizel
@beltane:
Yes, that was my point & I hadn’t even read KOS on it.
We have (with a lot of help true but still we have been the main actors) turned the entire Middle East into a flaming hot mess of seething resentment and misery. An ideal breeding ground for future terrorist attacks.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
FSM, someone needs to punch John McCain in the neck.
raven
@Schlemizel: The middle east didn’t need us to do that.
El Cid
@raven: They didn’t, but we did it anyway; yes, we (i.e., our government in our name) made the situation worse, did so over decades and decades and then did so much more sharply in the past decade. It isn’t just some screwed-up area that ensnared passive ol’ us.
raven
@El Cid: “i.e., our government in our name” Ooo, a surgical strike that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
My favorite McCain observation:
“obviously”? What’s obvious to Senator McPalin? After all this time, after Iraq, Egypt, Libya and how many other cases does this old nitwit still buy in to some puerile notion of “Freedom Fighters”? And why do the NBC (et al) producers continue to treat him as a foreign policy sage? He’s wrong about pretty much every foreign policy issue, where at least on domestic policy he’ll flip-flop according to long term advantage or personal resentment.
El Cid
@raven: Elite craptacularists like Bill Keller speak in terms of ‘we’ in foreign policy matters as if ‘we’ all sit around the table planning what ‘we’ are to do.
In fairness, Bill Keller is close to ruling elites as he is their volunteer town crier whenever a ramp-up to war against foreign powers they hate is desired.
But at some point the ordinary summary use of the term ‘we’ becomes a propagandistic barrier rather than a convenience; ‘we’ aren’t coming up with policy options in Syria, and ‘we’ aren’t part of the calculations. That is literally not how foreign policy is generated.
But when it’s time to generate war hype, all of a sudden it’s all ‘we’ and ‘us’ and ‘together’ etc.
liberal
@JR:
What “terror movements”? The US murdered over a hundred thousand people in Iraq and created millions of refugees.
I guess when it’s wholesale liquidation of others, it’s not “terror”. That label is only to be applied to people of swarthy complexion who murder first world folks.
raven
@El Cid: Roger that.
liberal
@aimai:
The logic is that we side with those wonders of democracy like Saudi Arabia in these things. Quadafi was much, much worse; I mean, SA only has 50% of its population effectively enslaved, which is irrelevant to any sane discussion of human rights, correct?
AxelFoley
@El Cid:
I lol’d hard.
liberal
@beltane:
I agree with most of what you’ve said on this thread, but please don’t repeat the slur that non-interventionist = isolationist.
liberal
@El Cid:
The sad thing is that even people who comment here are under the apparent delusion that states intervene for humanitarian reasons.
gogol's wife
@oldster:
This morning’s reason for blood-pressure spike. They are so shameless!
raven
And now, Mr Know it All.
beltane
@liberal: Point taken, but I was responding to a line in Mistermix’s post “It might just be the wussy isolationist in me, but I don’t see the downside in the current US strategy.”
Redshirt
Well, I’d rather fight them over there then over here.
Who’s “them”? I don’t know. Don’t matter. ‘MURICA!
geg6
Before even addressing who may have used sarin or why Israel is trying to provoke the US into another useless war, can someone please explain to me why poison gas is worse than bombing and is thus so much more of a provocation? You aren’t more dead with one than the other, so what’s the difference? Seriously?
Maude
@gogol’s wife:
Maybe the NYT could bring back Judith Miller.
Patricia Kayden
Thank God, McCain is nowhere near the Presidency (along with Palin, the airheard). We’d have already invaded Iran and most of the Middle East by now.
beltane
Was John McCain asked about his opinion of the kidnapping by rebels of two high level prelates of the Syrian Orthodox Church? Or does the GOP’s concern regarding the oppression of Christians only extend to people saying mean things about Tim Tebow?
raven
@geg6: The Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, usually called the Geneva Protocol, is a treaty prohibiting the first use of chemical and biological weapons. It was signed at Geneva on 17 June 1925 and entered into force on 8 February 1928. It was registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on 7 September 1929.[1]
Patricia Kayden
@beltane: Amen. I can see no reasons whatsoever for the US to get involved in yet another unnecessary and costly war. Let’s get out of Afghanistan before we start warmongering again. Sheesh!
geg6
@raven:
Yeah, I’m aware of that. But it still doesn’t answer the question. Why is poison worse than bombs? As far as I can tell, it’s even worse than nuclear bombs. I’d like an explanation as to why that is.
Maude
@raven:
Thank you. I don’t have it me to explain chemical warfare.
Maude
@geg6:
You have to do a lot of reading about WWI. No one can give you an easy answer.
Cassidy
@Jen: Citation please? I’m pretty sure we didn’t use chemical weapons.
Schlemizel
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/05/us-syria-crisis-un-idUSBRE94409Z20130505
Seems Reuters is reporting it was rebels & not the government forces that used poison gas
HOOKOODANOED
Redshirt
@Schlemizel: That’s OK though, cuz it’s our kinda of poison gas. “Freedom Gas”, if you will.
Svensker
@red dog:
Why do we need to “sic em”? What are the ramifications of Assad falling and Syria being taken over by al-Queda and fundamentalists?
Perhaps some humility in the face of the intricacy of another region’s cultural and historical dynamics is in order. As in, keep our snouts out and tell the little doggie to back off, too.
This is not going to end well. But, hell, what we need is another war in the Middle East. Those have been so helpful to the U.S. in the past.
Bulworth
Bill Keller at the NYT sez bombing/invading Syria is totally kewl because SYRIA IS NOT IRAQ.
One thing he says that I find peculiar: we have a “national interest” in making sure Syria doesn’t become a “failed state” and “haven for terrorists”. If that’s true, why intervene? Why not “let” Assad win?
Tokyokie
@geg6: Nuclear weapons produce fallout that result in long-term contamination. Chemical weapons usually disperse into the atmosphere fairly quickly (which is one reason they’re not especially suitable as military weapons). So I’d say nuclear weapons are worse. But in the larger sense, sure, either way, the victims wind up dead.
fuzz
I thought that with the air bases they’ve captured and besieged that the rebels might be in control of some of the chemical weapons depots. I’m not sure though. I know they’ve captured a few long range missile sites and a lot of bases but much of the equipment they’ve found is destroyed or they don’t know how to use it anyway.
joes527
@Cassidy: Let me google that for you
Cassidy
@geg6: Because bombs, while incorporating collateral damage, are still considered a focused weapon to be used on military targets. Chemical agents are indiscriminate and uncontrollable once released.
aimai
@geg6:
The real question is why are military poisons used in a military situation classified as “worse” than, say, Bhopal or the melt down of the nuclear reactor in Japan or the release of toxins from our factories or fracking. Fracking is going to poison and kill a heck of a lot of people but as a people we don’t see it as an attack on our communities.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
al Qaeda couldn’t take over Syria as a governing body, that’s beyond ridiculous (and the drones would be buzzing if they established a pocket for themselves). I’m not sure any one organziation will be able to for years to come.
But given just the right sequence of events, I wonder if Hezbollah could take over at least part of Damascus the way they did Beirut. Somebody will get to Assad eventually. Enough motivated and armed assassins will try their hand at it, and somebody will get him. It might even be Hezbollah that decides he’s no longer useful, if they get enough buy in from others in the regime that includes materiel and political support. I don’t think it will be us or the Israelis. Israel stands to lose a lot of certainty without Assad in the picture. They had a grumpy cease-fire with that government, that it could enforce. Now not so much.
And dumping weapons in there is supposed to fix any of this how, again? Factions change direction and leadership, alliances are made and broken, anybody we arm today could bomb embassies tomorrow and worse the day after. After watching our entire national security apparatus let itself get rolled by second rate con men like Chalabi, I have no faith in our government’s ability to pick winners. All that aside from the blowback that comes from picking horses that lose. Winners with dead relatives and missing limbs carry grudges.
And Keller is a fucking moron. That he isn’t laughed out of any room where people decide what gets printed on these matters just shows how stubborn the dysfunction is.
RobertDSC-iPhone 4
If we were to intervene, how would we pay for it?
Would the Teabagger traitors veto a war tax?
fuzz
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink:
The Iranians are, along with Hezbollah, training a lot of the Alawites, mainstream Shia and even Christians and forming militias out of them. The idea is to hold the coastal regions and the “Alawite Mts” even after Assad falls or loses Damascus. They’re basically doing what you’re saying.
nemesis
If this isnt obvious to you, then you arent paying attention.
In the US, we receive a non-stop barrage of anti-Syrian propoganda. Assad is a danger, sure. But an even larger problem is Israel wants to start some serious shit with Iran. bebe keeps antagonizing Obama.
With the Israeli air stikes in Syria over the weekend and the realization that the chemical weapons used were from the rebels, well, we have ourselves yet another clusterfuck brewing in the ME being egged on by Israel.
Rick Taylor
@oldster:
Daniel Larison wrote a post on Bill Keller’s article.
gene108
I wish people would call these Republican douchebags out, because they know they cannot put boots on the ground anywhere in the world, because Americans – both Democrats, Republicans and Independents – hate the idea of more Americans getting killed in foreign wars.
They can talk all they want about U.S. intervention, but they’d lose the next election they had to contest, if they got us into another shooting war.
Why they are given the ability to broadcast their bullshit is frustrating, because everyone knows they can’t do anything to carry through on their talk about the U.S. “getting tough”.
They have nothing besides repeating the hollow trope that “Obama is weak” or “Obama isn’t keeping us safe”.
magurakurin
@Cassidy:
a reference to the use of Whiskey Pete, white phosphorus, in questionable ways. The Israelis did the same in Lebanon. White phosphorus is allowed in warfare as a smoke screen, but not as a direct weapon against enemy soldiers.
And while there is a clear logic that says it’s ridiculous that chemical weapons should be banned but high-explosive artillery shells are not, does anyone really think things would be better if chemical weapons were just consider A-okay and used routinely in warfare? Seriously, do you? War is infinitely fucked up. A total failure of human politics and relations. But the fact that somehow people agreed not to spray each other with mustard gas has to be seen as an improvement, however small it may be.
Having read a lot about World War I, I for one am very glad that, for the most part, few uses of poison gas have occurred in warfare since that time.
jonas
@beltane: Wouldn’t it be ironic if the Christianists in the US were the ones largely responsible for the extermination of the ancient Christian community of Syria?
Well, they pretty much succeeded in wiping out what was left of the Chaldean Christian community in Iraq.
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane:
No, not really, because those Syrian Christians aren’t REAL “Christians”, they don’t worship Mammon and Moloch like proper gun totin’ Randians.
Cassidy
@joes527: Oh! You guys mean white phosphorous…not like, actual chemical weapons. Got it. This must be embarrassing for you.
Cassidy
@magurakurin: I knew what they meant. I just think its funny how far people will stretch.
Villago Delenda Est
@magurakurin:
The reason chemical weapons aren’t routinely used is that they’re not terribly efficacious for precise strikes. Also, the wind can shift and they come back in your face.
They were somewhat effective in WWI when they were first used because no one knew how to deal with them. People, especially soldiers, learn from experience, and find ways to counter them and survive, and the effectiveness declines to where the drawbacks outweigh the advantages of using them.
Omnes Omnibus
I tend to be interventionist in orientation, but I currently see no upside to intervening in Syria. At the same time, I see a lot of downside risks. Getting involved in something with no identifiable upside and a shitload of downsides is pretty much the textbook definition of a foreign policy fuck-up.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bulworth:
Well, the example of Iraq, where in 2005 people were openly saying that what was needed to bring that political unit together was a secular Sunni strongman…
Yes, Assad sucks. So did Saddam. But they were strongmen who could hold things together, for the most part. Which is the best you can usually hope for when you’ve got these cobbled together by dumbass European diplomats states.
Villago Delenda Est
And please, it’s Willie Pete.
jonas
The question that McCain and the rest of the warmongers have yet to answer is how it benefits our strategic interests to pick a side in this shitshow.
This x1000. The rebels in Syria are *not* democrats fighting a tyranny, they are (now thoroughly radicalized) Sunni Muslims fighting an autocratic minority (Alawite/Shiite-Christian)regime in order to establish an Islamic state. Now, Israel’s tickled pink about this because the Assad regime was basically a client state of Iran and both governments are heavily invested in supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon, which Israel views as a major threat. Having a bunch of Salafis running Damascus may not be ideal, but it would split Syria from Iran and cause major headaches for Hezbollah. Advantage: Israel.
If these rebels succeed in toppling Assad, they’re going to turn Syria into a failed state and go after secular governments in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan next. That’s not an argument for supporting Assad — he’s clearly a ruthless SOB — but the alternatives may very well be much, much worse and definitely not in America’s interests.
Villago Delenda Est
BTW Sarin is something that could have been obtained on the international weapons black market, source most likely former Soviet stocks. So rebels using it isn’t out of the question.
geg6
@Maude:
I’m well aware of the history of chemical weapons during WWI. And in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. And during the Iran/Iraq War. None of that answers my question. Why is chemical warfare worse than any other? Why is it, and not other types if warfare, considered to be over the line? I posit that it is not worse or different and should not be some sort of triggering mechanism for intervention any more than bombing or shooting is. Dead is dead. Doesn’t matter if you’re blown to bits or your skin melts off, you’re still dead. Why are chemical weapons being portrayed as worse?
greenergood
Interesting links in the comments here:
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/05/killing-syrians-a-game-anyone-can-play/#comments
Omnes Omnibus
@geg6:
If that is the case, then consider that the people who were okay with creeping artillery barrages and the like found chemicals to be so far beyond the pale that they wanted them banned.
Yutsano
@geg6: Your skin could melt off and you could still live. Your lungs could be seared but you could still live. And chemical weapons have longer-term effects than just their initial usage. See: agent orange.
Roy G.
As bad as using chemical weapons may be, Uncle Sam is worse than hypocritical on this issue, given that ‘we’ have been spraying swaths of the region with Depleted Uranium shells for the past 20 years. Oh, but of course, that’s different, yadda yadda yadda…
Omnes Omnibus
@geg6: This little piece from the Canadian Red Cross is a good primer on the issue.
Villago Delenda Est
@geg6:
Don’t ask me why they’re worse. I imagine that the high-explosives merchants of death managed to somehow portray their weapons as “less icky” than the nuclear, biological, and chemical merchants of death. Bottom line is dead is dead. If a conventional high-explosive artillery shell impacts in a crowded market, that sure looks like “mass destruction” to me.
This sort of thing (the consideration of one particular weapon or class of weapons as “worse” than others) has been going on for centuries. The crossbow was considered a tool of Satan, for example.
magurakurin
@geg6:
I imagine the answer to your question is that, it’s not worse. But it still seems good that they aren’t used regularly.
And you are absolutely right, the use of chemical agents shouldn’t be some sort of automatic crossing of the line which calls for intervention. If shelling a city for weeks on end isn’t enough, I also don’t see how a one off use of chemical agents suddenly calls for an invasion force.
The fact remains that chemical weapons are viewed very negatively. And if the rebels did use it, they have made a very large mistake. It will be hard for them to find much sympathy now. Most folks will be content to just let them murder each other till the end of time, I reckon.
Mnemosyne
@geg6:
Because a lot of the time, chemical weapons don’t kill you, they just horribly cripple you for the rest of your life. Mustard gas, for one, is both mutagenic and carcinogenic, so if you survive the initial exposure, you will almost certainly get cancer.
magurakurin
artillery shells do that as well. I’m glad chemical weapons have the (deservedly) bad rap that they do. It’s just too bad we can’t get such an image to form around all the other creative ways we have found to murder each other with.
Like AR-15’s for example. Also known to cripple for life.
Villago Delenda Est
@magurakurin:
Making the other guy militarily ineffective is what you’re looking at. Dead or wounded, doesn’t matter. Long term consequences? Please. The victory parades will push those out of your pretty little heads.
geg6
All of you trying to give me technical reasons that chemical weapons are somehow “worse” than conventional weapons have bought into the reasoning of the death merchants. All weapons of war are awful and none are “better” than another. They all are meant to kill and maim, indescriminately. They all leave afteraffects on humans and the environment that can kill months or years or decades later. They all leave those who don’t die immediately damaged for what life they have left. There is no logical reason to consider chemical or nuclear or conventional weapons as better or worse. The idea that so many here are attempting to do so just shows how much even the smartest and most cynical people buy into the rhetoric of the merchants of war. It’s ludicrous. But fascinating to see it happen in real time with real people.
Bendal
@Tokyokie: Not always. Many nerve gases are persistent; they hang around on surfaces for days, even weeks, contaminating anyone who comes into contact with them. Mustard gas is also persistent and can injure someone contacting it weeks after it was used.
JoyfulA
@beltane: We already destroyed the ancient Christian community of Iraq, several hundred thousand of whom fled to Syria and have been living there as refugees.
Bruce S
FWIW here’s what one of our allies bordering on Syria thinks about that country’s civil war:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/02/201322812730766202.html
That judgement from the government that Lindsey McCain assured us was the key to freedom in the Middle East. Personally I would love to see Assad overthrown because I read a lot of terrible things about him in the newspaper, but I have nothing to lose, no idea what would come after and virtually no information on what’s actually happening on the ground. Which suggests that I am the perfect person for David Gregory to invite onto Meet the Press to bloviate.
Villago Delenda Est
@geg6:
Agree. But the reality is, these differentiations have been made ever since warfare began. Some weapons were “honorable”, others were the weapons of cowards. It’s funny that a bunch of Muslim guys flying planes into buildings are “terrorists” while our brave boys in blue dropping bombs from 30,000 feet are “warriors”.
Omnes Omnibus
@geg6: Okay. War is bad, so let’s not have any rules. Amirite? I didn’t realize at the time you posted that you weren’t asking a question.
Look, people have been trying to limit the damage that war causes for years. That is the whole point of the laws of war. Unless you get rid of war entirely (a rather utopian thought), the best one can do is to try to limit the number of wars and that damage that can be done by them. Making chemical weapons illegal won’t stop bombings, but it will prevent other additional harms.
JoyfulA
@fuzz: Citation please? Not a challenge to you, but a desire to read further.
Linnaeus
@Omnes Omnibus:
You got there just before I did. One problem I have with the “dead is dead” argument is that it can be taken in the opposite direction, i.e., all death is the same, so there’s no reason to have any limits on any weapons used once war is initiated.
Omnes Omnibus
@Linnaeus: One can even argue that one should use the most horrific weapons possible in order to win quickly and limit the damage. I can’t buy the argument; I am basically a Just War Theory person.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bruce S:
Hmm…there’s something disquieting about this assurance. Can’t put my finger on it, precisely, but there’s something there…
magurakurin
Isn’t that basically how the use of the atomic bomb was justified? Not trying to argue right or wrong, just mentioning that that argument as already been used.
I am glad that people have agreed that at least some forms of organized killing (chemical weapons) are taboo. It may be a small step, but it is a step. And thankfully the above argument hasn’t been used since to justify another use of nuclear weapons. Not that I have any doubt that it was suggested more than once in the war rooms of various nations at various times in history.
Bruce S
What did The Great and Powerful Reagan do when Iraq invaded Iran and started using chemical weapons? I can’t remember…
Cassidy
@geg6: Nice condescension, fuck you very much. As someone who is educated on the employment of the weapons of war, and has used them to various degrees, I will happily tell you that you have no clue what you’re talking about.
But please, don’t let facts or experience stop you from feeling so much better than the rest of us for not “bought into the reasoning of the death merchants”. Obviously, you need that.
Mnemosyne
@magurakurin:
Like it or not, most people would prefer to lose a limb or be otherwise seriously injured and know the extent of the damage immediately than be injured on the spot and also wonder for years when the incurable cancer will finally show up or whether the children they have will have birth defects because of their chemical weapon exposure.
I do think that there’s something uniquely horrible about the idea that your exposure to chemical weapons will affect not only you, but any children you might have afterwards. Generally speaking, someone who loses their legs to an artillery shell does not also have deformed children after the injury as an additional result. Your views can certainly differ on what’s worse.
IMO, one of the reasons there have only been two uses of the nuclear bomb is not the way it killed people immediately, but the slow-rolling aftermath that caused the drawn-out deaths and birth defects of civilians for decades afterwards. People are willing to accept immediate death and injury in war, but not lingering physical aftereffects that are also transmitted to children. Again, YMMV, but that’s how most people seem to think.
geg6
@Cassidy:
So death by a nuclear strike is different from death by a mortar strike? Death by suffocation from chemicals is somehow different from death by suffocation from fire bombing? What experiences have you had that differentiates them that I can’t possibly understand?
And don’t get me wrong…I’m not condemning anyone here nor am I some utopian who thinks all war can be avoided. I just don’t understand all this moralization about the methods. They are all equally lethal and evil. Refusing to use one method but eagerly using another does not make one a better person. I accept that we are, rarely, forced to kill others but claiming the higher moral ground because you choose one method over another is only fooling yourself. A higher moral ground may possibly be claimed for one’s purpose in using weapons of war, but the methods by which you kill are all equally morally repugnant.
El Cid
It’s not necessary to agree with the rationale in order to be aware of the historially significant different treatment of chemical versus conventional weapons.
The political effect of the nations’ power structures’ on chemical weapons post-WW1 is what’s conditioning the particular nature of these claims in the Syrian context.
The idea that there *are* laws of War, i.e., that we humans are still stupid enough to have to sort of regulate how exactly we’re allowed to blow each other up, that’s what is bizarre to me, much more so than the minor craziness of the chemical weapons question.
geg6
@El Cid:
Yes, this is pretty much my point exactly.
Mnemosyne
@geg6:
Is death by nuclear strike 15 years after the war ended different than death by a mortar strike during the war?
Is death from incurable cancer 20 years after the war ended different from death by firebombing during the war?
It’s the same reason that cluster bombs are worse than other kinds of bombs — they continue killing and injuring people long after the war ended. Or are we not supposed to count the war as having ended until all of its victims have died, including the children born with birth defects due to their parents’ chemical exposure during a war that ended long before those children were even born?