Now that Britain has rejected killing Syrians over chemical weapons use, my opinion has changed. We should not act.
A taboo should be a taboo. That is, it should be hard to conceive of before the fact, and inspire near-universal revulsion and a desire to punish afterwards.
The fact that the Chinese and Russian governments do not want to support a chemical-weapons taboo means little. After all, they are trapped by duelling desired-taboos: they would like to (for the time being, at least) create a no-interference taboo.
But the fact that neither the democratically-elected Parliament of the United Kingdom nor the not-democratically-elected governments of the Arab League countries means that the taboo is not really yet a taboo. A strike might dissuade Assad himself, but it is not looking like the effect will be the desired one. There is no taboo to uphold.
Indications are that the Obama administration will go ahead anyway. I hope those indications are wrong. Oh, this is still a low-risk operation from the U.S. point-of-view, but I no longer think it worth the cost in lives.
Comments