Slashdot Mirror
Syria: a Defining Moment For Chemical Weapons?
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.'"
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.
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.
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.
... 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.
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.
"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
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.
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.