Senate Foreign Relations Committee votes to give President Obama the power to launch

[Ahldagor]

Originally Posted by Kagatob [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You should probably look up the Geneva conventions before you try pretending they don't apply here.

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[Vaildez]

Originally Posted by Orruar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Since you're an expert, why don't you list the convention(s) that apply here.

http://www.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/INTRO/375

[Orruar]

Originally Posted by Vaildez [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

http://www.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/INTRO/375

Only applies to international conflicts. Hell, that one has to do with POW treatment, which has barely been discussed at all in the media. Certainly POW treatment is not the impetus for this latest push by the government to go to war.

Care to try again?

[Ajkuhuun]

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[Orruar]

It's so strange that a political discussion would start in a thread with the title that this one has.

[aowen]

'International norms/laws' have a long history of conflicting with each other. Sovereignty vs. human rights. When is it okay to step in? Are rights universal or do they emanate from one's community (nation, state, globe, or otherwise). All things to think about.

Next, is consistency important? How many people have died in other countries by the hands of despots? What have we done about that? Does it matter if they are killed by chemical weapons or by regular bombs, guns, artillery, etc.

Is international law constituted and recognized by all, is it a post-colonial imperial force to coerce the 'periphery' to conform to standards set by the 'powerful', or does it have other dynamics. Is international law even enforceable? Do the Geneva Conventions matter when the UN is impotent from underfunding and corruption?

I guess what I'm getting at is when considering foreign policy, what underlying norms/values/morals, historical selections, and theories are going to inform your viewpoint.

In the case of Syria, I'd have to say that due to any lack of commitment to real change, bombing a stone-age country into the stone-age will be an echo of the same misguided tautologies that have plagued our past policies in the Middle East. It will further disrupt and anger the region, feed a force of rebels liable to commit further atrocities equal in stature.

Put more neutrally, the biggest problem with this notion, at this stage at least, is the failure to consider a) the consequences of support for rebel forces, b) whether it's actually reasonable to expect a short operation, c) whether constituents have the appetite for more war in this region, d) any kind of exit plan once the job, whatever the job may be. I think the lack of intervention so far can be pinned down to the difficulties in adequately assessing these considerations. This is such a volatile situation that it's very difficult to be sure we won't just make the situation worse in the long-term, or at least end up being culpable in the total collapse of the state.

[Estolcles]

We need to just leave the middle east to fuck themselves into oblivion.

Syria's shit. Let them extinct themselves.

Then again, I really have no love for any of the middle eastern countries. I'm a supporter of the "Glass Project".

[Orruar]

Can anyone explain what makes chemical weapons so special? Is there really a big difference between being killed by sarin gas and being killed by little pieces of metal tearing through your body?

I suspect our aversion to chemical weapons is due to similar reasons for our aversion to terrorism. It's a way for a relatively poor person/people to exert much greater power than they otherwise could. It would take many millions of dollars worth of cruise missiles to do the same damage done by 19 men on 9/11 for a fraction of that. 19 box cutters + 19 plane tickets = ~6k. We want other countries to follow certain rules of war because those rules benefit us. You may be saying that terrorism is qualitatively different because it targets civilians. If you are thinking this, please consider the massive amounts of collateral damage that our bombs cause. We have avenged 9/11 many times over in terms of civilian body count.

Put another way, I wonder if the following is true: The British hated the colonial soldiers that used guerrilla warfare in the same way we hate those that use chemical weapons, and for the same reasons.

[Stinkum]

Originally Posted by Estolcles [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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[Estolcles]

Da fuq? ^^^