Help me. What is this "own people" line in the sand?

[lapislzi]

Please let me go on record as saying I don't support military action by the U.S. in Syria. I know I am not as well informed as many, but it strikes me as another horrible misadventure in our (the U.S.'s) continuing series of opportunistic imperial exercises. As I was with previous runups to earlier conflicts, I want to hear the UN (United Nations...get the "united" part?) reach a resolution on this matter. Yes, I know it's an utterly flawed body, but it's better than nothing.

But, since the first Gulf War, I'm hearing this phrase bandied about: "he used xxxxx ON HIS OWN PEOPLE." Is that worse than using xxxxx on someone else's people? Why isn't the use of xxxxxx heinous enough to cause shock, horror, condemnation of the action by an international body? Would it have been less awful, OK even, if Assad had somehow managed to gas a bunch of Iranians (because we hate Iran, right?)

Why should these artificial distinctions make one bit of difference? Isn't the act of using a chemical weapon simply beyond the pale on the face of it, and worthy of condemnation? And, by extension, an unified international response?

I guess I just don't get the whole "own people" angle and why that somehow makes it more worthy of a military response.

Help me, friends, and try not to eviscerate each other (or me) in the process. And please don't ask me what I would "do" in this situation. That's way above my pay grade. My job here is to listen and learn, and maybe form an opinion based on what I've learned.

Thank you.

Edited for spelling because I'm a morning dumbass.

[Bonobo]

1. "They can't do that to our pledges!"

"Only WE can do that to our pledges!"

[lapislzi]

3. I like to remind people what happened to Niedermeyer.

Sadly, the people who should absorb the lesson are the ones least likely to.

[arcane1]

2. It's especially tricky in a civil war situation

Which, by definition, involves at least two sides killing their own people.

[MNBrewer]

4. It's a rhetorical, emotional hook to draw you in

It's the same reason that Kerry emphasized that even *gasp* Women... and CHILDREN!!! were among those killed in the gas attack.

As though women and children haven't been dying right along side the men throughout this conflict all along.

[KG]

5. what if a country just started shooting down protesters?

[lapislzi]

6. That would, of course, be terrible. It is terrible.

Much like a country executing a few dozen cultural figures and musical performers for no apparent reason.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-singer-the-xrated-movies-and-the-dictator-kim-jonguns-former-lover-executed-by-machinegun-for-appearing-in-porn-films-8789322.html

Are some massacres more acceptable than others?

[enlightenment]

7. In the case of most "xxxxxx"

stuff, it has to be parsed that way because the nation doing the parsing (the US, for instance) has stockpiles of xxxxxx itself.

Obviously, xxxxxx is "war crime" material, because that's how it is presented - which begs the question of why the nations rattling the biggest sabres are also the ones who keep their own supply of xxxxxx in their closets. It's kind of like finding out that the prosecutor who wages war against pedophiles keeps a supply of kiddy porn in their study for private viewing. Undermines their authority just a tad . . .

Pointing to women and children - the traditional non-combatants in war - is a way of deflecting attention away from the larger point of why the hell any nation with a conscience, which presumably the sabre rattlers have, since they're making the noise, would also keep that stuff.

You're right, it's no better to use xxxxxx on someone else's people than one's own - but if you're holding the stuff for . . . what? Exactly? To keep xxxxxx makers employed?
If you're holding it, you don't want people thinking about that. You only want them to see how awful it is when people actually use it and try and make them forget that you have the capability of using xxxxxx, too.

[99Forever]

8. A very good question.

Another is, how is the killing this time, supposedly with "chemical weapons," so much worse than the killing of a hundred times as many people before, by "non-chemicak weapons." Is one more dead than the other? Is it ok to vaporize people and blow off body parts with impunity?

And just what positive effect can our nation getting involved have? I see absolutely no upside to this insanity. None. But I can damn sure see a thousand ways this this will turn out horribly.

[sibelian]

9. It's emo flub.

Gassing other people's people is presumably just fine...

[gulliver]

10. It implies a lot of things.

If he would do xxxxx to his own people, imagine what he would do to others. — Threatens us.

He is an unfit leader, because he does xxxxx to his own people. — Does not belong in the community of leaders.

He reminds us of other leaders we attacked, and look what happened to them. — Threatens Assad.

[lapislzi]

11. Not sure I buy any of your arguments.

Except for the "does not belong in the community of leaders" part. But I can name dozens of so-called leaders who don't belong there either--own people harming or not.

I don't understand how one war crime carries a greater moral weight than others. Or how this is determined.

Actually, the cynical side of me understands exactly how these equations are calculated, and that's what makes me sick to my stomach.

[gulliver]

13. I'm not actually making any arguments.

Just interpreting.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. These are regional problems with waaay too much international interference.

The best, and only, thing that the rest of the world should do is facilitate or broker discussion and negotiations between the regional states. And, withdraw military support from all those nations. America should stop trying to be the leader in all this.