Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterated today what President Obama had said earlier, announcing while in Prague that any use of chemical weapons by Bashar Assad is “a red line for the United States.” She went on to issue a not-so-veiled threat: “I’m not going to telegraph in any specifics what we would do in the event of credible evidence that the Assad regime has resorted to using chemical weapons against their own people. But suffice to say we are certainly planning to take action.”
On one level this is unobjectionable. Chemicals are a terrible weapon, a fact widely recognized since their widespread use in World War I. The Chemical Weapons Convention (to which Syria has not signed up) is intended to ban their possession. Their very awfulness–combined with their limited utility (gas, after all, has a way of wafting back to one’s own lines)–has limited their use in warfare over the past hundred years. So it makes sense that Obama and Clinton are making clear their abhorrence of this weapon and signaling stern consequences if it is employed.
But Syrian civilians under fire from their own regime must be wondering, if news of the secretary of state’s pronouncement reaches them, why it’s OK for Assad to kill them with bombs, artillery shells, and bullets–but not with chemicals. Granted, neither Obama nor Clinton has said that the killing currently being undertaken by the Syrian regime is acceptable. Quite the opposite: Both president and secretary of state have often voiced their condemnation of the regime’s tactics and called for its overthrow. But they have never threatened to respond with force even as Assad’s goons were slaughtering tens of thousands of their own people.
Perhaps one could argue that the use of chemical weapons presents a strategic threat to the United States in a way that the mere killing of innocent Syrians by lower-tech means does not. But that’s not the case. What does present a threat to us is if those chemical weapons are moved out of the country and fall into the hands of groups that may use them against us or our allies. Their use against Syrian civilians is primarily a moral issue–or perhaps more rightly an issue of moral etiquette, because we are more horrified when a child is killed by gas than by bullets. But to the dead child the difference between the two is inconsequential.
I am not objecting to the tough stance the administration is taking on chemical weapons use by the Syrian regime. I just wish its outrage–combined with the willingness to act–extended to all the other horrifying and reprehensible things that Bashar Assad is doing.
so basically they're warning a mass murder to obey international law.
Sort of the gun control theory extended to the international scale.
Just a short time ago, in the context of the United States setting a red line regarding iran's nuclear program, the united States public was told by fools like panetta, and other obama administration clowns, that the United States does not set red lines, and that red lines are only announced by politicians (meaning Netanyahu) for political purposes. n n nIt is very clear that Jewish lives only earn derision, as iran's direct, unqualified threat to murder six million Jews yields no red line from obama administration, but syria's capability, and opaque intent, to use chemical weapons against its own citizens, i.e., arabs, generates alarm in the obama administration, and now the equivocal clinton talks about a red line if such weapons are used. n n nSuch glaring hypocrisy! Clinton, panetta, and obama will go to sleep at night with the smile of a jackal upon their devious faces, while Jews in Israel lie down at night, not to fall asleep but, instead, to wonder if tomorrow will be their last day on this wretched earth.
Good points all. n nIf they are clowns, they are malignant clowns.
Many of these weapons may have been imported from Iraq during the last years of Saddam's rule. This has been widely suspected—but downplayed because Democrats were anxious to damage the presidency of Bush 43.
The same idea popped into my head. I'm really curious how true my suspicions are.
As we should all know by now, to attempt to understand the thought process of a progressive liberal is virtually impossible. It's very similar to trying to trying to grab a handful of fog. I'm not disappointed in the administration because they are only doing what they have been bred to do; I am disappointed in our media for missing so many golden opportunities to ridicule and mock this administration. It's a shame, really….
Let Obama deal with it with the clear unambiguous statement that a WMD attack on Israel will be met with ultimate force. Ultimate.
"in the event of credible evidence that the Assad regime has resorted to using chemical weapons against their own people…" n nGreat. I wonder how long THAT investigation would take to render "credible [to this administration] evidence." Could be years.
ah, c'mon…we don't need to worry about this, and I'm sure Assad isn't worried either. nothing's going to happen! Obama isn't going to do anything. he never does. (I guess the only people he feels passionate about getting revenge on are the Republicans.) n nremember the Iranian plot to kill a Saudi diplomat in Washington DC? it was going to be a bombing at an outdoor restaurant, which could also have killed innocent bystanders. that, said the administration, was "unacceptable" and promised severe consequences. have you seen any? Obama is still holding out his hand in friendship to Little Mahmoud. n nor the "unacceptable" whatever-happened at Benghazi. again, that was deemed definitely not OK by the president, and he was going to get the "folks" that did it (really, MUST he call evil jihadis "folks"?) but have we seen anyone punished? oh wait, I forgot–the guy who made the "Innocence of Muslims" movie that didn't have anything to do with Libya was sentenced to a year in jail. whew! I feel safer already.
If Arabs want to kill each other they should be encouraged to do so and the killing agent could be anything at hand as far as this commenter is concerned. An Arab who dies today can’t kill tomorrow!
Thank you Max for this excellent and humane post
It's no mystery to me why Fox News ratings are up and CNN ratings are down (as in miserable). This will continue as long as Cretans such as Morgan are hired by CNN. While it was obvious Morgan had a motive, his job is to elicit at least a reasonable dialogue. Why am I not suprised. I'll take Stuart Varney any day of the week. Morgan isn't capable of carrying his luggage to the back of his taxi cab.
The needs of hunters have no bearing on gun rights. Hunting is just something else useful that you can do with the gun that you have to protect your family. n nIn a society of decent people, hunting will perhaps be the dominant use of personal firearms, but that will not ever make it their primary purpose. n nEngland is almost completely unarmed, and last year rioters and looters ran loose for days. Here in the US we have a right to bear arms so that we can defend ourselves, both from such mobs, and more importantly, from our government which only thinks it has our best interests at heart. Consider, for example, the morons in government who would take a tragedy like the shooting of unarmed children, and think that they could improve the situation by making more of us unarmed easy victims! n nWe have the right to have semiautomatic weapons with large clips because, sometimes, when a mob attacks, it consists of more than a couple of people. Also, having more rounds available than one might need allows for the possibility of warning shots, which may defuse a situation before anyone gets hurt.