Interesting how many are saying, if I am reading this correctly, that the US and whatever coalition it can develop, cannot act unless the United Nations says ok! Many Americans have, in other circumstances, loudly complained that the US should not in any way be restricted by the UN or any world court or any international law. The expression is often stated that our elected officials take an oath on our Constitution not the UN charter ....
Interesting comment on ethnic cleansing. If any non-UN major military intervention was a success it was the NATO action in Yugoslavia. The UN specifically did not support it as both Russia and China opposed it in the Security Council, but similarly the UN was unable to pass a resolution condemning the act. NATO acted to stop Serbian actions against Albanians in Kosovo. The theory of the legality of that military action was that instability in Yugoslavia could spill over into neighboring countries and destabilize the entire region. Couldn't that same argument be made here, that use of chemical weapons if ignored by the international community would so destabilize that the failure to respond would amount to appeasement?
That future tyrants would calculate that as long as they only use poisons on their own citizens they can do it with impunity? Remember that one of the major justifications for our Iraq war number 2 was the claim that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and would use them. Those weapons were chemical weapons, recalling Sec. Powell showing those photos of "mobile labs" to the UN. The arguments against the military action at the time was not that we shouldn't act if he had WMD's but whether our information was adequately accurate of the existence of WMD's which Saddam said he had already destroyed, admitting to past possession only. The US has at least a recent history of strong leadership in trying to prevent chemical warfare from being an option. Chemicals are, unlike nuclear weapons, easy to make and easy to use. If we don't act does that make us the Neville Chamberlain of this situation?
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