SYRIA thread

[Husar]

Isn't it odd that we are completely fine with thousands dying every day from starvation, ethnic cleansing, machetes, small arms. But the Red Line is as soon as it is a chemical that kills people from a chemical reaction to the body as opposed to indirectly (e.g. explosives). It is INSANE!

Yes and no.

With these small-scale attacks, the use of chemicals seems rally weird even since it's not doing a whole lot. In general, I think chemical weapons are so scary for a number of reasons. They're potentially very deadly to a whole lot of people in a relatively short amount of time. They bypass a lot and the medium they use to spread is the same air that we need to breathe, it's like an almost inescapable attack on our most fundamental and precious resource. Plus imagining people screaming in horror as they burn inside out or whatever is just terror-inflicting.

I know a bomb and a rifle and so on can also kill you slowly and painfully and turn half your organs into ground meat, but I think most people imagine them to kill more instantly due to illusions of accuracy and so on. With the gas it's more like getting killed by a ghost, something about it is scary as.....
I would assume the people who wanted it banned after WW1 did have their reasons as well and I never heard about it having been deployed against civilians there. Perhaps it is also more "thorough" as in where other weapons can be more easily evaded or the battle group retreats after some losses and surrenders later, the gas would kill all of them before anyone can retreat. I'm really just guessing though.