Should Syria not be punished for using chemical weapons because Russia and China don't care....

[Savannahmann]

36. OK, let's discuss.

You said.

I'd like to have a honest discussion on this topic. Just to summarize my position, I believe the use of chemical weapons has to be punished, period. I'm still waiting to hear the evidence collected by the West that leads them to believe Assad did. I do not hold much hope of the UN being able to determine fault, for the reasons listed above.

So how do we punish Assad and not remove him from power? President Obama has said we are not going for Regime Change.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/27/us-syria-crisis-obama-intelligence-idUSBRE97Q0S820130827

So we aren't going to punish the man who we say issued the orders, we're going to punish him by killing the guards, technicians, and workers at chemical weapons storage and manufacturing plants.

Now, there is no doubt that when we bomb those plants, we're going to be releasing Chemical Weapons into the air, probably killing a number of people down wind.

So we're going to Punish Assad for using Chemical weapons on the Syrian People. We're going to punish him, by bombing people who work at the plants, and gassing the people who live downwind. Assad himself isn't going to be harmed one bit, and it will probably reduce, but not eliminate current stocks of weapons, and certainly won't prevent him from making more.

Obviously this isn't much of a punishment. But perhaps we can help the Rebels, who are essentially a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is an extremist group that has raped, pillaged, and murdered people who don't agree with their extremist religious ideology. MB is supported by AQ, the Terrorist Organization (if you could call it that) we have been fighting for twelve years.

So by helping rid the world of a bad guy, we put other bad guys who may be worse, in charge. Because we won't have a hand in this, we aren't going for Regime Change, we can't do much of anything to effect the outcome.

So even if Assad is punished by the Rebels who may be strengthened by our actions, we are not likely to find any improvement for the people of Syria. In fact, things may well get worse as they did in Egypt under the same Muslim Brotherhood groups.

So tell me again why we're doing this? Because from here, I don't see much sense in this. We're going to bomb a bad guy because the bad guy bombed other bad guys (allegedly) with chemical weapons. You see, there aren't any good guys involved in this fight. The MB backed Rebels have committed other atrocities on people.

So why do we have to bomb again? Oh yes, Assad who isn't going to be targeted, that would be Regime Change which we've said we're not going to do, needs to be punished. That is like your neighbor doing something to anger you, and you respond by walking past your neighbors house, to a home on the next street in which the neighbor's cousin lives, and punching the cousin to teach the neighbor a lesson.

Logically, your arguments are at best flawed. Morally, your arguments are very weak. Are you sure you want us to bomb Libya?