Bay 12 Games Forum

More it's less a matter of enforced in every case and more a matter of not enforced period, especially by this particular method, near as I can tell. And it's not like there hasn't been events where it came up since the treaties started getting signed.

... though whether it was strictly towards soldiers or civilians, well... there's a reason you have treaties that specifically address civilian protections, and as others have noted, I do believe, the rules on gassing civilians are not what they are for soldiers. And they're not more strict. So whether we think they're particularly specific in scope or not, the people signing and enforcing the treaties damn sure seem to. Or to put it a different way, whereas assad definitely violated shit with production and storage, near as I can tell his use was about as legal as our air strike. Possibly more. Fucked up as that may be. Nation states seem rather intent on having looser rules on when they can gas noncombatants. The why is even pretty obvious, since the treaties largely cover "riot suppression chemicals", too.

Well, sure, it's never been a question NK would be flattened if they actually did anything. It's just a question of how many (hundreds of) thousands precede them, because day after probably isn't quick enough.

And eh smj, if you're talking technical legalities, as near as I can recall internal conflicts have been largely exempt from anything chemical weapon wise basically forever. It's possible assad hasn't actually been really violating the geneva protocol in a technical sense, ferex, and then you get into the mentioned riot suppression stuff. There'd be a pretty definite CWC violation but there's apparently a non-negligible chance they're otherwise largely legally okay to gas their own populations, as fucked up as that sounds.

... though yeah, I'm like 60% sure it being a civil war would have some pretty substantial issues so far as intervention goes, insofar as the legal side of it. Like it or not, you'd still be dealing with a sovereign nation under most circumstances, and oddly enough a lot of people don't much like nation states attacking other ones and interfering in that sort of thing (and hell, I can see why: If you want a recent example, just look at ukraine, because that's exactly why a country would be sketchy as fuck about legitimizing interfering on any side of a civil conflict except the recognised government). UN intervention and coalition stuff mitigates a lot of that, as does being called in by the originally recognized government, but the US just kinda' blatantly rolling in and rolling over assad probably does have some pretty significant issues vis a vis international law et al. Mind you, we've probably done it before and will probably do it again, but it looks like there's got to be more gaf than we seem to have for syria before we dick whip international law in that particular manner.

Russia, meanwhile, would be getting a pass because they are backing the original (and so far as I can recall still recognized) government. Makes shit complicated, particularly when we've never really cared enough (and, let's be honest about our government, still don't) to push international relations towards being actively against the assad regime.

Could have been avoided by having a few empty seats in case of situations like that, too, for what that's worth. Kinda' seems like the comments regarding the flight being over booked is 'cause of something like that. Can't recall if I remember a bit of flex seating (or whatever it'd be called) being a normal practice or not, now that I think about it...

Better $90 million in missiles now than sitting on your hands whinging and whining that other people drew your "red line" for you even though you declared it yourself on national television and you weren't obligated to do anything after you punted to Congress and they gawked at you wondering where your balls were being kept, then shuffled 400,000 corpses under the rug until you were out of office to go windsurfing in Tahiti.

Yeah, I hear ya' man. Congress can take the time to do something else and 90 million in missiles is a lot fancier place to shuffle a half million corpses under than some rug, and you get to wave your explosive dick around and claim mission accomplished. Same results, but different people think it's okay to clap themselves on the back and think something got done, and that's got to count for something. Votes, approval ratings, more corpses to hide, who knows.

Anyone happen to be paying enough attention to keep a check on what the post-strike displays of air power managed to blow up? Hear assad and russia thought it was a good excuse to push for extra air strikes for at least a day or so, but didn't really pay attention to the details.

There's a saying, robo. "Everything can be air dropped at least once."

... what are you even going on about? Didn't say any of that, just comparing costs to something a bit more relatable to most folks than missiles.

... is that the wrong thread, or...? Didn't actually watch any of it, mind, just checked the title, thus the asking.

Not like we don't have a pretty good idea what possibility we'd be looking at. It'd be either Iraq, Libya, or Cambodia round N+1, except with a less capable commander in chief and a functionally more or less crippled executive branch. Maybe syria would luck out and someone else would build and take the head of a coalition force before we fucked things up too badly.

Sure, TBF. Everyone involved, including the US, appears to be ignoring it at the moment, though. Might as well not be there if no one intends to invoke it.