Syria may have used poison gas on the population of a city controlled by rebels and killed 1,400 people.
These deaths are an atrocity. Yet, is poison gas more appalling than other methods used in human conflict?
I am trying to wrap my mind around the idea that there are acceptable and unacceptable ways of mass killing.
Of the thousands of horrible weapons out there why are chemical and biological weapons the only ones on the forbidden list?
The international ban on chemical weapons came about as a reaction to the horror experienced in World War I. The Geneva Protocol of1925, codified an international agreement to prohibit chemical and biological weapons.
Since then, human beings have devised so many other atrocious ways of killing that singling out one method as being particularly horrific seems arbitrary and dated. Yet somehow the use of chemical weapons demands swift and terrible retribution.
Is genocide without the use of chemical or biological weapons all right? Millions were killed in Cambodia and the world did nothing. Is the so-called “collateral damage” associated with chemical weapons greater than carpet-bombing or drone strikes? I refuse to recognize degrees of difference in the heinousness of weapons and terrible acts of violence.
The United States is all too selective in our outrage. We tend to confine our outrage to those with whom we disagree. The United States willingly ignored the gassing of the Kurdish city of Halabja by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein (when he was our ally) at the close of the Iran/Iraq war in 1988.
All violence is reprehensible. Laying on more death is not what needs to be done. Contributing directly to the violence that is already tearing Syria apart will not bring about a swifter, more just, or more humane resolution to this conflict.
What do we hope to accomplish by a remote air strike on Syria? Destabilize Bashar al-Assad’s regime? If so, just how much destruction are we willing to cause? Will we destroy the total infrastructure of the country as we did in Iraq?
Is the goal to punish the Syrian government for its actions? It has long been proven that corporal punishment does not work. It is a moral violation of the one being punished and debases the punisher as well.
President Obama announced that he is providing Congress with intelligence information on the use of poison gas in Syria and asking them to authorize a military response.
I applaud the president following the dictates of the Constitution, but I hope that Congress has the foresight to say no to increased U.S. involvement in the conflict in Syria. I also hope that the President respects this decision.
As is often the case, taking military action is presented as the alternative to taking no action. This is a false choice. There are diplomatic and economic sanctions, short of a military response available to us.
Firing missiles into Syria as a sanction for violating International Protocols against the use of poison gas is a mere pretext for action taken to further our own interests in the region.
In its actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, and Somalia, the United States has demonstrated the ineffectiveness of using military force in similar situations.
It is long past time to try a different approach.
Randy Best, Leader
Ethical Humanist Society of the Triangle
