B0ycey wrote:I think many will share your sentiments Heisenberg. Noir keeps bringing up her cartoon to illustrate this point also. It is not the chemical weapons being used in this case but their potential if you take a blind eye now for the future. There potential is enormous and potent, far greater than targetted weapons of precision.
"Precision" strikes are a myth, particularly in densely-populated urban areas. High explosives do not discriminate between civilians and combatants. This has been demonstrated time and time again, in every urban conflict since WW1. The only difference is that we write civilian deaths off as "collateral damage", while assuming that every civilian death caused by people we don't like, must have been deliberate.
B0ycey wrote:So Assad was given a warning with Obama, now this case. The West was put into a corner where they either acted or not. If they didn't, then it sets out a dangerous acknowledgement that Assad could do what he likes without consequence.
The West was not "put into a corner", because every strike they have launched has been rushed, and in the absence of independently verified evidence with reliable custody chains.
B0ycey wrote:If they did, it risked conflict with Russia. So the attack was small and targetted. It was a mission to sent a message out to Assad (where I suspect he will listen as he doesn't need to be lazy as Noemon keeps pointing out) and also a small enough attack to not back Putin into a corner where he would need to act otherwise. In my opinion it was the only thing that could be done.
Why is it the "only" thing that could be done? How about waiting to verify whether this alleged attack even took place, let alone was ordered by Assad? The only source we have is Jaysh al-Islam, which has itself been accused of using chemical weapons on civilians in the past.
I also fail to see how weakening the side that is winning this bloody war will lead to fewer civilian deaths.
B0ycey wrote:So I guess it all depends on whether you think we should be allowed to use chemical weapons in warfare or not in the future. Or whether you believe this to be a white flag operation or not as well... I guess.
Western governments have proven repeatedly that their moral compass re: chemical warfare is very selective.
As I have discussed in another thread, both the USA and the UK backed the Iraqi government in the Iran-Iraq war despite knowing perfectly well that Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons - on a far, far greater scale than the Syrian war.
I am also yet to see a single western government advocate bombing against rebel groups like the aforementioned Jaysh al-Islam when they are accused of chemical weapons attacks.
Finally, this exact conflict has seen extensive use of white phosphorus munitions by the US, as part of its offensive on Mosul (an offensive which saw at least 40,000 civilian deaths by some estimates) - weapons which can cause both poisoning and severe chemical burns, and whose status under the Chemical Weapons Convention is iffy at best.
I am honestly baffled that intelligent people can so easily believe such an obviously manufactured pretext.
"Perhaps you want me to die of unrelieved boredom while you keep talking." - Martin Luther