Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Syria: a Defining Moment For Chemical Weapons?

Posted by Soulskill on from the every-use-of-weapons-is-a-defining-moment-for-the-targets dept.

Lasrick writes "Oliver Meier describes the long-term significance (even beyond the incredible human suffering) of Syria's alleged use of chemical weapons on August 21, and outlines six major steps for response. Quoting: 'The attack in August is a historic event with wider implications. Its impact on the role of chemical weapons in international security in general will depend primarily on the responses. Looking beyond the current crisis, failure to respond to the attacks could undermine the taboo against chemical weapons. ... First, a unified response by the international community is essential. The strength of international norms depends primarily on great-power support. So far, such a unified response is sorely lacking. Judgments about how to react to the use of chemical weapons appear to be tainted by preferences about the shape of a post-war Syria. This has already damaged the international chemical weapons legal regime.'"

22 of 454 comments (clear)

  1. I never understood the principle. by nospam007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    weapons that deliver a chemical reaction causing eye, skin and lung damage are bad.

    weapons that deliver a chemical reaction causing bits of metal flying through your eye, skin and lung are good.

    1. Re:I never understood the principle. by LMariachi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I thought depleted uranium was used for its mass, not specifically for its long-term toxic effects. Lead is toxic also, after all. And white phosphorus just burns you up faster than conventional incendiaries, what’s the problem there? It’s preferable for people to burn more slowly?

    2. Re:I never understood the principle. by lxs · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm sure that the victims are comforted by the fact that their exposure to deadly chemicals was purely incidental..

    3. Re:I never understood the principle. by khallow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, if Bush does it, then it must be ok. I however can't help but not a key difference between those attacks and Benghazi. Namely, that those attacks were much smaller in scale, were over quickly, and for which the US has considerable local protection.

      For example, the most similar of the Bush-era attacks involved five gunmen breaking into the consulate at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and were quickly counterattacked by Saudi "security forces". The Benghazi consulate attacks reported involved hundreds of attackers with no support for US staff from local authorities for about seven hours. And that outcome turned out as uneventful as it did, because someone in Tripoli apparently decided on their own initiative to commandeer an airplane and fly into Benghazi and organize a rescue effort.

      Afterward, the Obama administration took it upon itself to blame the Benghazi attacks on a rather offensive YouTube video, but one nobody had heard of before. That was probably because the attacks occurred before the upcoming November elections in the US.

      So what makes Benghazi special is the weak tactical situation, the large scale of the attack, and most importantly, the tepid and politically self-serving response of the Obama administration to the attack.

    4. Re:I never understood the principle. by khallow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      12-fold increase in child cancers, lots of other symptoms remarkably similar to those in Hiroshima

      Any population would exhibit similar effects just from the increased medical scrutiny. Ie, if you start with a population for which no one is looking for such ailments, and then you start looking in great detail, you will find greatly increased numbers of those ailments. Observation bias is a powerful thing.

    5. Re:I never understood the principle. by cervesaebraciator · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The sad thing is that there's so much to criticize in this administration's foreign policy (e.g. illegal wars in Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, parts of Africa and the destabilization these wars cause, scandalous spying on our allies, etc.). The problem is that, with exceedingly few exceptions, prominent Republicans have no credibility to criticize the President on these issues. If anything, the old Republican establishment's complaint tends to be that the President was not aggressive enough in involving us in illegal wars. Because of this, they like their former presidential nominee have to inflate or even fabricate scandals (see the so-called apology tour in Egypt or the return of the Churchill bust).

      I say this as a lifelong Republican: the GOP is currently dominated by short-sighted fools who are completely out of touch with the people, with what it means to govern, and with the real costs of violence. They've forgotten what it means to defend the Constitution, the country, and the people. They recall well, however, the support they receive as faithful supporters of the Military-Congressional-Industrial Complex. Therefore, when the same complaints can be made against Obama (and they can--he was a real coup for the MCI Complex, whether or not the administration sees it in their interests to define a coup), there's no opposition with the credibility to make them.

    6. Re:I never understood the principle. by Jessified · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Not to mention, we don't seem to have any problem shedding the taboos against torture and killing first responders (Guantanamo and US drone double tap strikes).

      Both are war crimes and both are carried out knowingly and intentionally. At this point it would make more sense for Russia to be the human rights watch dog of the world.

    7. Re:I never understood the principle. by Peristaltic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You're missing the point; the US uses these weapons for good, Syria uses it on their own people.

      Normally, I can spot the implied /irony tag. Tell me that you're being ironic.

    8. Re:I never understood the principle. by inhuman_4 · · Score: 4, Informative

      White phosphorous is not illegal, and it is not a chemical weapon.

      White phosphorous (WP) is a chemical that burns very hot, very bright, and produces a lot of smoke. This gives WP a number of military uses including incendiary, illumination, and creating smoke screens.

      There is nothing illegal about using WP for illumination or smoke screens. In fact it is quite common. In fact it is not even illegal to use it as an incendiary. What is illegal is to use any incendiary on a civilian centre.

      It is illegal to use incendiary (fire causing) weapons in urban areas, so no napalm, WP, petroleum jelly, or equivalents. This is because incendiary weapons start fires which kill indiscriminately and can easily create fires too large for firefighting efforts to control. The firebombing of Tokyo (100,000 dead) and Hamburg (42,000 dead) are examples of using incendiary weapons in an urban area on a large scale.

      The problem is that the media dumbs everything down to WP == incendiary == war crime. Which is like claiming laser guided bombs = lasers = blinding = war crime. Next time you see someone in the media talking about WP war crimes take a look at the evidence. If the WP didn't start a fire it wasn't being used an an incendiary.

    9. Re:I never understood the principle. by jfengel · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The problem with white phosphorus is that it doesn't kill people, it maims them. The overall gist of the rules of war is that it's OK to kill people but not to leave them suffering. It's tantamount to torture or terrorism, using fear and pain rather than force to achieve your goals. Ostensibly killing soldiers is part of a just war (making them stop doing whatever it is that justifies your war), while simply scaring people isn't, even though it leaves them alive.

      It took me a long time to write that in as neutral a fashion as I could. I'm sure that a great many people would find it a silly distinction. But it really is a key underlying principle for why we have rules of war at all. I personally find the concept kind of odd.

  2. How about no. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Lets just stay out of this fight. For once. Just once. let the rest of the world deal with it.

    We have nothing to gain. And trillions to lose. again. and too many dead soldiers already.
    No matter how it turns out this country will continue to hate our guts. Rightfully so maybe.

    Lets just stay out of it. Time to watch a war on CNN we don't have a stake in at all.

    Sometimes the only winning move is not to play.

    1. Re:How about no. by johanw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You're NOT supposed to be the worlds police force. Especially not when there seems to be no proof Assad used those weapons. Kerry's speach was even worse than that of Colin Powell about WMD in Iraq, at least Powell tried to show the falsified "evidence".

      Everyone outside the US, and some Americans too, understand that attacking Syria has much to do with oil, pipelines, Israel and scoring orders for American companies who donate to election campaigns. It has nothing to do with moral standards.

  3. War should Suck by craigminah · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If we make war clean and tidy then where is the motivation to avoid it? The Star Trek episode, "A Taste of Armegeddon" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon) portrays two planets who've been at war for centuries. It was really "modern" where planets would launch simulated attacks which caused no collateral damage and computers would calculate the death toll. "Victims" were then calculated and selected via lottery. They'd report to the disintegrators for a painless death. It was so "humane" that the planets never had any motivation to end the war.

    My point is that we should allow anything in war with the knowledge that the more horrific the weapon the more prompt and determined the response to it by the rest of the world.

    1. Re:War should Suck by Kilo+Kilo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The first machine guns were thought to be so awful that they would act as peace-preservers." That didn't work out so well. It might seem ironic trying to impose rules in warfare, but anything that can lessen the damages should be encouraged.

    2. Re:War should Suck by Nidi62 · · Score: 5, Informative

      "It is good that war should be so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it." -Robert E Lee

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  4. bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There has never been a treaty, or International Law, that says there must be a military response by otherwise uninvolved nations whenever there is a chemical weapons attack. This should be handled just like any other war crime. Someday we will get you, and we will put you on trial. We're not going to launch a weak-ass cruise missile campaign that will last for a measly two days and accomplish nothing but unnecessary civilian casualties.

    People aren't dumb. What's going on in Syria sucks. Our involvement will not make things better.

    1. Re:bullshit by johanw · · Score: 5, Interesting

      No it's not, the US sees itself as the world police. Most other nations wished you didn't and minded your own buisiness.

  5. failure to respond... by dnaumov · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... against whom? the rebels or the saudis?

    Noone with half a brain believes Assad is behind the chemical attack because

    1) He has nothing to gain by doing so
    2) He has everything to lose by doing so
    3) He is not a retard

    Not to mention that the past 6 months have shown that Assad isn't exactly cornered, on the contrary, he has been pushing further and further back against the rebels.

  6. Re:Stagerring hypocrisy by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, if you want to invade Syria, at least be honest about your reasons for it. Don't hide behind false morals.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  7. Atrocity is Counter-Productive by cervesaebraciator · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It matters little who started what. Dresden remains an example of moral and practical failure. The moral failure came in the form of the massive civilian casualties knowingly inflicted. (That military men are guilty of atrocities does not mean unarmed non-combatants deserve punishment for those atrocities.)

    The practical failure is often ignored, however, and the British should have been well aware of it. The Germans bombed London for months, operating under the belief that attacking the city would break the civilian will to fight. It turned out that attacking civilian populations only increases their will to fight, increases enlistment of willing soldiers beyond anything conscription can do, and makes any suggestion of acquiescence a political impossibility for those attacked. If you defeat an enemy military in the field, civilian support for the war effort will wane. Yet you cannot easily secure a surrender once you've committed atrocities against civilians.

    This is directly comparable to the treatment of POWs. Some Germans were told by their fathers who'd fought in WWI to fight bravely even to the death against Russians but surrender to the first Americans you find. They said this because American had a policy of treating POWs humanely in WWI. Thus, American units in the European front could sometimes welcome a reduction in the fighting strength of the Germans due to surrender--an option which is always preferable because those who surrender do not shoot back. Contrast this with Americans after the Bataan Death March or, better still, Soviet defectors early in the war. Many Ukranians welcomed the Nazis, thinking them liberators from the evils of Stalin. They soon learned that the racist bastards could be even worse than Stalin. Consequently, Soviet soldiers fought for the state more fervently and many would refuse to surrender, knowing that death in battle would be preferable to being a Slavic POW in Nazi hands.

    Atrocity can seem to give the one who commits it a brief surge of power, partly because of the fear it inflicts. But in the long run, atrocity and the killing of civilians is always counter-productive to a war effort. For more information, see Section V of this monograph.

  8. Re:Get involved but on a limited scale. by johanw · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And what if the Syrian rebels were using those chemical weapons? The US government seems unwilling to investigate that option, even unwilling to let the UN investigate this. They have only one prefered outcome. Judging from Kerry's speech they don't even to bother to produce fake evidence like in Iraq.

  9. what the fuck? by magical+liopleurodon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    what the fuck is this bullshit?

    We don't even know that Assad did it. Given that we know that the rebels have sarin (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXzyS9eUVgs), this could be a false flag. And yet the post reads like it's a foregone conclusion that Assad did it.