The Politics Thread

Well the lesson is out there now. Kill 50 people with chemical weapons and face international retribution, but kills as many as you like with other weapons and that's no problem. I know I keep going on about this but the war crime is killing civilians - thousands of them, and it's only a matter of opinion about what is a "worse" way to die. There are plenty of horrible ways to die without using chemicals.

Other concerns include acting without parliamentary authority (even Cameron went to parliament for a vote), and acting before the inspectors have reported.

 

Civilians die en-masse because :

1. land armies no longer select "killing fields" far away
from the general populace in order to settle matters.

2. a weaker army reduces its weaknesses / opponents'
strengths precisely by making the battleground
densely populated civilian areas.

 

The use of chemical weapons takes the power away from the nations who can afford to spend billions on weapons and levels the killing playing field. I suspect that is their main objection..

 

They've been banned since 1925.

Another Russian journalist makes an unfortunate move:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43781351

 

What turns the Putin's,Assad's and even the Trump's into budding dictators?

 

That's not really an answer to my point PNP. I was suggesting a reason for their ban long before cluster bombs, land mines. Research and development of such weapons is still carried on.

 

Aren't they just banned because they intentionally cause unnecessary pain and suffering?
A small country that wanted to use them could just opt out of signing up to the convention. Egypt has, for example.

 

In some nations, ostensibly for countermeasure
efforts (lest an aggressor uses them on you) .

 

There you are cynical about Russia but accepting the good intentions of the West. Perfectly reasonable to be cynical about Russia but also reasonable to be cynical about the USA and the UK who together have been responsible for affecting much much more in the world than Russia has managed.

 

You sound like the NRA

 

I'm cynical about Russia because they just threw a journalist out a 5th floor window!
Also, this:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/...bout_Russian_online_meddling_in_independence/
https://stv.tv/news/politics/1406051-russia-reversed-position-on-independence-post-brexit/

I'm cynical about the UK and US too, but the reasoning that you're describing just doesn't add up.
I don't see how chemical weapons are an equaliser for less financially strong nations and the laws have been around for nearly 100 years.
You can opt out of them too, so I'm struggling to see how it adds up.

 

I don't have a phial of botulin in my grasp
while shouting "From my cold, dead hands" .

 

They're not.

In the century of military air power, tank warfare etc,
we are far from the days of mustard gas drifting over
trenches.

 

Ok I am not going to force this argument too far, my daughter who is an international lawyer would probably agree with you. The infrastructure required to maintain chemical weapons is a lot less than maintaining conventional or nuclear weapons and one person could in theory deliver a huge blow to a city with them. I therefore maintain that they are not banned for humanitarian reasons. How is getting ripped apart by a bomb or filled with holes by a gun kinder than being gassed? People do not all conveniently die instantly from such attacks some take hours to die in agony.

I am a member of the SNP and if anything, in my experience, the Russians were supportive of Scottish Independence. I am sure they would be delighted to see England's power reduced, as it would be, by such a move. But you just dropped that in to wind me up PNP

 

Bring on the empty horses

 

The richer countries could develop better chemical weapons though, couldn't they?
As for the cruelty factor, it's about it being inherent in chemical weapons, IIRC.
You may die slowly and painfully from bullets and bombs. You will die slowly and painfully from chemical weapons, plus they linger.

I did drop the SNP thing to wind you up, in part!
The second article says it all, though. They were pro-independence pre-Brexit. Now they're anti-independence.
It's all about being divisive. If Scotland was independent, then it would join the EU.
That also may accelerate any rUK return to the union. That doesn't suit Putin.

 

How much chemical weapon content can I put in them ??

 

And far better weapon payload delivery systems.
But this is all moot.

In the grey and grey world of what is the most
'clean and humane' military killing weapon,
nations have decided that bio/chem weapons
are far from it.

 

Chemical agents are classified (among other things) as persistent and non-persistent, so they may not linger at all. Perhaps surprisingly, they are not necessarily a very effective form of attack - and have virtually no effect on well equipped soldiers other than making it inconvenient for them to fight (protective equipment is very effective). Chemical weapons are certainly not the devastating weapons they are made out to be - and I'm not trying to be disrespectful to those who are killed - but you need to catch unprotected people in the open. There are many conventional weapons that are as deadly and as cruel. See things like thermobaric weapons and fuel air explosive. And indeed anything else that does massive damage before killing sometime later, or leaves someone disabled.

But of course now we've made our token protest the Syrians can go back to killing civilians in any other (non-chemical) way they want. And in bigger quantities.

 

Just a thought: if we want to attack an unelected tyrant who gained power by underhanded means and continues to act without the support of their government at the cost of their own citizens' lives...shouldn't we be launching missiles in the direction of Downing Street?