Quote:
Originally Posted by Orruar
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Yes, my points were simple and easy to understand, and yet you failed and continue to fail to understand them. Which is why I pull out the "cow goes moo" level analogies in hopes of helping you relate my points to something you may be more familiar with.
And I stand by everything I said. I still suspect we have an aversion to chemical weapons because of how easy it is to kill a bunch of people with them. Keep in mind when I say "we", I'm speaking about our military and civilian leaders, who are in positions of power to condemn/use weapons and wage war. I'm sure if you speak to all 300 million Americans, you can get a wide range of views on why they dislike chemical weapons. And I don't think there's a whole lot of difference between the Pak/Afgh population that is scared shitless about death from the sky and New Yorkers who are scared shitless about death from the sky. You may think our drones dropping bombs is much different than the 9/11 hijackers, but the effects are pretty much the same. A bunch of people die, and many more than that get to live in fear.
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we're almost there... now that you've repeated yourself, i can repeat myself, and you can respond
the difference is that chemical weapons are inherently uncontrollable and unusually cruel. you can control the damage a bomb does by using it responsibly and ethically. obviously bombs are often misused, and that becomes a new debate. but they are controllable. you can't control a chemical weapon. it's untargeted and harms civilians as readily as combatants. a shift in wind can mean thousands of extra civilian deaths. the other side of the coin is cruelty. it may seem unnecessary to differentiate death from death, but it's something human civilization has done for millennia now. dying by metal or fire is typical of war. dying by unthinkably horrific illness is not, and most nations agreed that they didn't want to see that expansion of the norms of war.
terrorism is another matter entirely. terrorism, as it's come to be understood, is decried because it intentionally targets civilians, often in as large numbers as possible. that is flatly unacceptable from a moral standpoint. there is a significant difference between collateral damage and intentionally targeting civilians. your 9/11 comparison is disingenuous. the US has far greater capabilities. american civilian casualties are limited by the capabilities of al qaeda, et al. civilian casualties in iraq/afghanistan are limited only by american restraint. consider an alternate reality where terrorism and, more generally, intentionally targeting civilians is not internationally unacceptable. which side of this conflict would benefit more? the moral and international implications of civilian casualties are the only reasons the US didn't decisively end this conflict a decade ago.