Originally Posted by NewSith
So as we know, there are two points of view on the matter of who used the chem weapons:
- Assad
- Those who will benefit from US intervention which is:
- The United States themselves, since, let's be honest to ourselves, oil and presence in Europe is a sweet piece of pie for them.
- Rebels, since direct incusrsion by the States, will almost ensure their victory.
Being a left-right anti-American (not saying the people of America are bad, since borders do not define moral obligations, that's far too close to nationalism), I myself with A.1 option, however, I'm still uncertain, or, to be precise, not even close to having an opinion.
One thing that eludes me is why would Assad use the chems and why do people keep believing it so blindly. Did he ran out of lead or missiles? Did he watch too much James Bond and decided to be a classic villian and launched toxins into populace just for the fun of it? I'm being sarcastic here, definitely, but I do want to hear some opinion in favor of option A...
...since we all know what the UN investigators have to say. That's if they are still even alive. |
The rumour goes that Assad's brother, a high ranking officer in the syrian army and quite a piece of work apparantly, gave the order to deploy these weapons, I generaly do not believe that these rebels have either the means (no or very few heavy/lo,g range artillery or aircraft which can be loaded with these chemical agents) nor knowledge, or even skills (I doubt that many of the rebels have the knowledge on how to pilot military aircraft) to pull of a chemical strike, even if they did have access to one of assad's stashes of chemical weapons. It is no real secret that the UN investigators got severely hindered by hostile ofrces (rebels or Assad's troops, tough it would greatly be in the intrests of the rebels for the UN investigators to report the use of chemical weapons).
it is also highly unlikely that Assad's forces would simply abandon a stash of these weapons in terrain controlled by rebels or about to be overrun by reblels. But that is up for debate, it is certainly possible for the rebels to have their hands on a stash of these weapons but that is no certainty.
As for the target, why would rebels deploy a chemical strike in one of the territories controlled by them? This could potentialy be explained by infighting but is less likely than a strike by the official army since these posess means better suited to deploy such and attack and it is undeniably in their best intrest to strike at territory controlled by their enemies even tough there is a remote fucked up possibility that some messed up and borderline insane rebels targeted themselves in order to provoke a response from the western world.
generaly I believe that Assad's forces are to blame for this attack, and despite the distinct possibilty that the western world have multiple intrests in the region, fact remains that chemical weapons are deployed, one of the most horrible weapns know to man and a death i would rather not die if I had the choice. It is one of the few means of warfare that is enteirily illegal in the international community and it is for a bloody good reason. It is not a huge step to deploy nuclear weapons once the step is taken to use chemical and biological weapons. Once these weapons are deployed, you know things are propperly fucked up, shooting civilians or even soldiers with a rifle, tank, artillery or any other conventional weapon is already a messed up thing to do as a human being, but weapons like this? If the soldiers responsible for this are not an emotinal wreck in the knowledge of just what they have done, they are litle better than the worst of the SS during the second world war. In fact, this is little different than what Hitler and the Nazis did to the ****, blacks, handicaped, etc in the conentration camps, the only difference being that the victims are not imprissoned and a lot of them are activly fighting back.
As for the point of chemical weapons, the reasoning is that it kills organic beings over a very large area, huge when compared to conventional explosives and extremely more likely to decimate a city's population, leaves the buildings intact and utterly shatters the morale of enemy troops and civilians unfortunate enough to have to pay witness to the sheer carnage of such a weapon. The pilot that drops the bomb does not see the results first hand, the survivors do, and I do not believe I am strong enough mentaly to bear witness to such an event and ever recover my emotional ballance. It would haunt me for the rest of my life.
So I am for the invasion, Assad's regime has done some seriously fucked up things and that should come to a halt. Altough it is more than likely that Assad's successor will probably be as bad, if not worse if the rebels take power, a clear message has to go out, this cannot be tollerated, this cannot be tollerated and a world where someone gets away with this is barely more civilised than when we were bashing each others head in with stones and had barely discovered fire.
The argument goes that Syria is not Obama's juristiction, but then again so was Nazi Germany and there are few who deny that Nazi germany was pretty fucked up, even when the princple of "the victor writes the history" is taken in considderation, we are so long past that event now that we are getting a less biased view year by year but still agree than what the Nazi's did to ethnical minorities was bad and borderline evil.
So by these arguments and explainations I declare myself in favour of the invasion plans