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

[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.