Syria and Thoughts on Things We are Decreed to Hate

Don't get angry with me over this post. Don't start citing international law to counter my thoughts. I am just thinking out loud, engaging in a bit of modern blogger angst of the existentialist sort, "analysis of individual existence in an unfathomable universe and the plight of the individual who must assume ultimate responsibility for acts of free will without any certain knowledge of what is right or wrong or good or bad."

I watched what I could stand of SecState John "Xmas in Cambodia" Kerry's presentation of "evidence" on Assad's use of chemical weapons. I kept thinking, "Where is the President? Why is some appointed flunkey doing this?" On Bengahzi, the SecState disappeared and left the heavy lifting and big lying to Hackmistress Susan "YouTube did it" Rice. On Syria, Obama disappears and leaves the heavy lifting and, well, is Kerry lying? I don't know. Could the AQ-allied rebels have used or misused gas weapons in Syria? Yes, of course, well, maybe, oh, who knows? Could the President of Syria have used chemical weapons on the people of Syria? Sure, why not, I guess. Saddam certainly did it in 1988. Have others used gas weapons? They were widely used in the First World War, and Mussolini used mustard gas in Ethiopia. There were lots of ultimately unproven allegations of Soviet use of gas in Afghanistan. I know. I used to run around the Pak-Afghan border interviewing "survivors" of these gas attacks, but never became fully convinced that the story was not just anti-Soviet propaganda. Kerry's presentation, likewise, had lots of assertions but was remarkably content free.

Gas. It provokes a revulsion among most people. We, for example, no longer use the gas chamber for executions to dispatch murderers on their journey to their maker, or, at least, to His rival below. Instead we use a cocktail of drugs in a lethal injection, something I find even more repellant than gas given the elaborate quasi-medical procedure that surrounds that cocktail's use . . . but, back to history and international politics. Despite the temptation, the US did not use gas against well-entrenched Japanese troops in the Pacific, even when gas likely could have saved many American lives. FDR did not want to be known as the President who used gas--he, of course, was developing an atomic bomb, but, more on that later. There are all sorts of international treaties, conventions, protocols, and such banning the use of chemical (and biological) weapons.

We didn't use gas in WWII either in the European or the Pacific theaters. No. Instead we used atomic bombs to obliterate two Japanese cities. I think the decision to use those bombs was the right one, as I have stated before. Those bombs saved millions of lives and shortened the war considerably. No sooner had we used these two "miracle" weapons, but that we were repulsed by them and spent the next seventy years bad mouthing them, trying to design bureaucratic and legal structures to make sure they got never used again, while simultaneously building a huge arsenal of them and molding our national security strategy around them. We, of course, also never felt the same repulsion over the conventional bombing of Japan and Germany which killed many more people than those two A-bombs. We never used nukes again, even when we fought two major wars in Asia, i.e., Korea and Vietnam, where their use or threatened use probably would have assured victory and saved lots of American lives. Instead, we bombed and napalmed. I guess death by daisy cutters or flaming gelled gasoline is less of a death than one by gas or nukes. We, likewise, have some amazing thermobaric weapons which do a real number on personnel in enclosed structures. Those deaths, too, I guess, are lesser deaths compared to the ones caused by gas. I leave that debate to the philosophers and lawyers who enjoy arguing whether a tree falling makes noise if nobody is around to hear it.

Back to Syria and gas weapons. For the sake of argument assume Assad used them; for the further sake of argument, and this is a stretch, assume the Obama misadministration knows and is telling the truth. Does use of gas in Syria, resulting in some 1400 dead, present a danger to US national interests? Is it more of a danger than the death of 1400 Syrians, say, by an intense bombing campaign? What if those people, including the 400 or so children, had been killed when a building collapsed on them after an artillery round crashed into the structure? Would Kerry be there filling in for the President trying to make a case for war on behalf of a group of jihadi organizations? Are these 1400 deaths more important than the alleged 100,000 that have preceded them in Syria?

Back to gas: Is there evidence that these weapons will be used against the US or an ally, e.g., Turkey, Israel, or even another country, e.g., Cyprus? Saddam killed thousands with gas, as well as with more conventional weapons, posed a continuos threat to his neighbors, provoked a massive war with Iran, openly abetted terrorism, and according to all the intel organizations of the world, sought a nuclear weapons' capability. He was an avowed enemy, yet Senator Kerry and many of the Democrats now baying for war just couldn't see the reason to attack.

Now, of course, things are different. The liberals are in charge, and they know what's best. The liberals are doing what they always do. They drive their agenda with emotion, with emotion-laden words, e.g., gas, racism, poverty. As I will write elsewhere, they do that because it's easy; it's easy to be a liberal. Throw out some words and reality is expected to conform to them. The word "gas" is supposed to make us stop thinking, and stop asking our "leaders" to explain the US interest in attacking Syria in what seems will be a half-baked manner that will do nothing except make Obama and Kerry look macho and appear as guardians of humanity.

We have been Pavlovian conditioned to respond to "gas."

Just wondering about it all.

WLA