Why do we draw the line at chemical weapons? (Details)

Because people are hypocrites. I can write a whole wall of text just how hypocritical we are, and just how much do we allow it, despite marking the notion of hypocricy as bad by default, which is all hypocritical by itself.

If another theory of mine is true, that gas probably brings some consequences for other people too. In that case, it’s “our” problem, because it can now harm us. We don’t give a crap about Syrians, but if what happened to them brings us in danger, then it is a big problem and we should be upset.

The funny thing is we don’t draw the line at chemical weapons when it’s a government/police using them on their own civilians.

I think many people cared about all if it. I think gas is terrifying to many people, because they feel like they can’t fight it. When guns get fired they feel like they can protect themselves with their own gun, and maybe get out alive. Gas isn’t like that, unless you have gas mask.

Who says we’ve drawn the line?

Gas is terrifying and horrible in many ways, and it also tends to kill everyone in an area, and particularly non-military people. So using gas weapons tends to indicate you’re someone who thinks your military objectives trump the right to not die (and/or suffer) horribly of everyone in a general area. People who do that do seem to me objectively more disgusting than people who merely are willing to use a 5,000-pound bomb, who are already generally not high on my list of compassionate people who should be chosen by society to decide whether weapons are used or not.

Because that line is the world’s conscience. It is badly drawn and much that is horrible in modern warfare is accepted as normal but while the line exists there is some hope.

It’s a feeble attempt to limit the madness of murder and war.

It’s a valid point well made, dopey humans knee jerking their way to an induced coma due to an extreme irony deficiency.

One of the criticisms of chemical weapons is how indiscriminately they kill (or maim). The military can quite specifically target an air base with a Cruise missile or even a building, but chemical weapons cannot be so selectively deployed. As @Zaku suggested, the deployment of a chemical weapon affects living creatures in a general area. Once deployed gas a change of wind can mean the gas unintentionally affects civilian rather than military targets with horrendous and unintended results.

^I completely agree that chemical weapons are terrible. That’s not my issue.

I remember reading an article several years ago where a village in Africa was raided by child soldiers. They killed dozens of men, and children (mostly by hacking them to death , with rusty old machetes.)

They killed multiple babies by boiling them alive. They gangraped most of the females, and then cut off their nipples (so they could never feed any future children,) and mutilated,or castrated them. Two baby boys were also gangraped. One was like 6 months old, the other was 11 months or so.

And of course, they killed their livestock, and burned multiple dwellings down.

I’m paraphrasing, because it’s been awhile since I read the article.

My point? Is such an act not just as reprehensible? Where was America in that situation? Where was the world? That is just one horrific incident in Africa. Genocide, torture, rape, murder, have been going on in multiple countries there, for many years. It’s still going on. It was going on before the gas attack. It’s going on today,after we bombed an airfield in Syria.

Why is one horrific act, so much worse than another?