Well lets just see if the "Helpful" Russians are willing to pass a UN Sec Council Resulution requireing them to hand them over with any consequences if they don't.
Back to square one: if military intervention in retaliation for the use of WMD is not a good idea, then military intervention in retaliation for not relinquishing them is not a good idea.
10 year ass kicking, lmao!!!!! The most inaccurate statement I've heard this year. I would love to see your claim to this.
Retaliation wasn't where it was at particularly if they'd gassed Americans (or Frenchmen) I guess that might have been part of it. More deterrence of repetition. If he hands over the Chemical Weapons for destruction would that be square one?
It's a punitive measure, hence retaliation. It's all ********. If he doesn't hand over the WMD, it would be another line that was crossed, and still the same ineffectual response. If he does hand over the WMD, it changes absolutely nothing. Assad happily carries on massacring his civilians by UN-approved humane ways of massacring them. Shelling? Fine. Cluster bombs? Go ahead. Mines? No problem. Napalm? Be my guest. But hey, at least we stopped bad ol' Assad from using Sarin, which is a much more reprehensible way of killing children than firebombing their school, say. This is just the West's token display of power and morality at work: one that is well known across the world (and particularly in the Middle East) for having double standards. It can now prance about the moral stage bragging how it stands up for human rights and democracy, while Assad happily carries on firebombing children.
So the West shouldn't call for them to stop using chemical weapons because we're not stopping them committing atrocities with other wepons and we shouldn't intervene to stop with in general becuase the rebals aren't very nice either. You seem mainly concerned about double standards not standards. Well you must be please with the Russian line as there's no hypocracy there. Assad is their man and they back him straight up. Similarly you should approve of China's stance that what a country does to it's own citizens is nothing to do with anyone else. Nice consistent stances. Much better than the the "hypocritical" West that trying to balance it's own safety, strategic interest, notions of human rights and morality and naturally has to compromise and muddle. Iran, too. Not much double standards there. Shame on us for our inconsistency!
I am entirely ignorant to the entire situation in Syria. I shouldn't be, but I am. We have a long record of sticking our oar into something, getting it stuck, and then doing sweet fanny adams about it (Cough, Gulf War, cough) because we lacked the foresight to just not get involved. With Syria, as far as I'm concerned, we should keep our honking great noses out of it. War crimes or not, for once we should just stop being interfering assholes and leave them to sort their own damned mess out. Not to mention, we're in debt up to our eyeballs, are already involved in one unwinnable money sinkhole, and apparently can't seem to earn enough to cover that.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...g-sarin-gas-attacks-blamed-Assads-troops.html theres also video of chemical weapons being fired from heavy mortars by the rebels
Oh that. She is part on the UN commission that is investigating but that was her speaking,her opinion, not in any of the official reports as yet http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/IICISyria/Pages/IndependentInternationalCommission.aspx
How this is being framed in the media is a sick joke, both obama and putin have a gigantic nuke collection that could destroy the world dozens of times over, Obama & the us administration has killed 10s/100s of thousands of civilians & counting with drone strikes and other actions, what obomer & cameltoe have done is pick something about Assad they cant be accused of, as if it make a difference whether your killed by a chemical or being torched by a drone strike, the us still has chemical weapons anyway, not to mention all the depleted uranium they have spreading around the middle east & use of phosphorus etc ...no other regime has killed more civilians than the USA over the last 13 years, uncle sam is the biggest terrorist on the planet.
Double standards are worse than no standards. They create the illusion of standards where there are none, because they are arbitrarily applied. Which kind of makes them non-standards. You seem to be more concerned with standards than with outcomes. Let's go through the scenarios, shall we? We hit Assad with a "limited military action". He ignores it. Nothing changes; people keep getting killed. We hit Assad with a "limited military action". He takes note and hands over his WMD, and sticks to conventional weapons; people keep getting killed. We hit Assad with a "limited military action". It weakens him and the rebels win. Competing factions fight for the throne and the 50% of people who supported Assad try to reclaim it; people keep getting killed. This is assuming, of course, that Assad was the one using WMD. If he wasn't, then of course the rebels, encouraged by Western military action against Assad up the ante and gas some more people. The West now has to really show it means business and we arrive at scenario 3. Understand this: we cannot stop this civil war. Look at the situation in Iraq, FFS. Ten years after regime change, and we still do not have a stable democracy. We still have sectarian violence bordering on civil war. This is a situation of primum non nocere: first, do no harm. Given an existing problem, it may be better not to do something, or even to do nothing, than to risk causing more harm than good. The price of being the good guy is that you have to be the good guy, all the time. It is not a part-time position. There is no compromise. Moral standards that are subject to compromise are not moral standards, they are hypocricy. I never stated that it was. I stated that if Assad was made to hand over his chemical weapons, it would not change a thing. And it doesn't, whether it was him who used them or not.
As I've stated before there isn't any hope of making peace in Syria. Would be nice if we could but in this case there isn't any route there. You seem so hung up that if we can't turn Syria into Belgium, we shouldn't have any policy on it. My view is that if we can make the "Red Line" stick it would be a good thing going forward. If Chemical Weapons are something that make you less likely to lhold onto power then having them isn't a good idea. And if these regimes don't have them there is less chance of them falling into the wrong hands. As you said in your 1-2-3 either way the war goes on. But just because we don't plan to change the outcome of the war doesn't mean we can take action on one element of it. As I said the Russians, Chinese or Iranians have no double standards. So you must think their foreign policy is much more benign than the western, compromised, variable conflicted aprroach.
First, do no harm: this is an important principle taught to medical students who have to deal with some pretty complicated ethical dilemmas on a daily basis. The possible benefit of each intervention has to be weighed against its possible harm. At the moment Syrian rebels and the army are shooting at each other, and civilians are getting killed in the crossfire. If we intervene: 1. We add to the crossfire, thus adding to the risk of civilians getting killed. Substantial possibility of increased harm. 2. We may get Assad to hand over his Sarin stockpile, but we have no way of knowing or checking whether he will hand over all of it, and we sure don't know what the rebels have. And what is the benefit? We, in the West may possibly be safer from terrorists using Sarin if they got their hands on it. Syrian civilians get killed as usual. Remote possibility of benefit --for us, not the Syrian civilians. So you are proposing a "policy", the outcome of which is a substantial likelihood of increased harm to Syrian civilians, and a remote likelihood of benefit for us. Ethical much? But if you are genuinely concerned about WMD falling in terrorist hands and harming us, you should be supporting Assad. After all, a firmly established government is able to keep its WMD safe better than a bunch of sectarian factions squabbling over control of Syria. Hell, it's the only reason we support the Pakistan government. If we have to measure ourselves against totalitarian regimes to come out looking good, we have problems.
The last decade would support such a conclusion, as non "PC" as the statement may be. For the record. I'm neither a fan of totalitarian regimes or anti-constitutional warmongering..
Why are the USA now supporting the islamofacists? kinda spits on the graves of all the UK soldiers who died fighting them. Assad is actually standing up to muslim extemists - and the USA wants to help them??
