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Why Don’t We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore?

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Re: Why Don’t We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore?

#51

Post by [deleted] »

SXX wrote: post #45
swayvil wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we trust our leaders. And our leaders feed us a bunch of bullshit. And then, motivated by that bullshit, we nazi up. Does that make us bad people? This stuff has been researched deeply. Something like 96% of the population. Nice people. Not idiots. Will swallow absolutely anything that the leader feeds them. It may be unfixable. Or maybe the only way to fix it is to destroy all forms of mass media.

Sentient AI will fix it. We might not like the fix though.

[deleted]

Re: Why Don’t We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore?

#52

Post by girvo »

ceejayoz wrote: post #7
Comevius wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also because of a lack of imagination. Imagine using these puppies in large cities. The world lacks a better class of terrorists. Saudi Arabia used to do some wild stuff with planes back in 2001, prompting the United States to kill a million people in completely unrelated countries, but now we are back to car bombs and incels running with guns when we have a whole spectrum of biological, chemical and radioactive agen…

I am both baffled and relieved that most terrorists seem to lack creativity.

Typically if you’re creative and smart enough to attempt certain horrific things, that seems to be self limiting. Those who can’t, don’t want to, for various reasons, and those who want to and would, can’t. It’s fascinating.

Where that gets dangerous is when the horror under discussion becomes democratised. TATP is simple to synthesise (though incredibly dangerous when done clandestinely), and so we saw a rise of bombings and attempted bombings using it as that knowledge spread, for example.

Re: Why Don’t We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore?

#53

Post by swayvil »

nicoburns wrote: post #50
swayvil wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we trust our leaders. And our leaders feed us a bunch of bullshit. And then, motivated by that bullshit, we nazi up. Does that make us bad people? This stuff has been researched deeply. Something like 96% of the population. Nice people. Not idiots. Will swallow absolutely anything that the leader feeds them. It may be unfixable. Or maybe the only way to fix it is to destroy all forms of mass media.

> If we trust our leaders. And our leaders feed us a bunch of bullshit. And then, motivated by that bullshit, we nazi up. Does that make us bad people? Yes, absolutely. Deferring to authority is no excuse for morally abhorrent behaviour. Of course if you’re under threat that’s a different matter. But blind trust in leadership is a poor excuse. It’s not like the nazis had no detractors in Germany.

Of course it isn't blind trust. Good arguments will be made. Extremely plausible lies uttered by trustworthy authorities and echoed by your friends and peers. Don't imagine that even you are immune.

Does believing it make you a bad person? Of course not. You're only doing what's right and sensible.

Re: Why Don’t We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore?

#54

Post by bigDinosaur »

thatcat wrote: post #19
bigDinosaur wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously different laws apply to different groups. The police can also do things (arrest people) that would usually be a crime for soldiers to do. Tear gas use by police is either right or wrong, useful or not useful, justifiable or not justifiable, but it's not really related to why chemical warfare is banned in war. We also don't justify the ability and legality of police to kill based on the legality of killing e…

We can compare them and see that the police force oversteps its civilian role. Your point about the requirements to kill enemy combatants strenghtens that arguement.

My point is that we don't define what police do based on what soldiers do, so it's a red herring in terms of politics and legalities. We define whatever the limits on policing are separately, and tear gas is specially carved out for use by the police. My point isn't that that's right but that it's again not defined by the reasoning used to prevent escalatory chemical warfare in an actual war.

Re: Why Don’t We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore?

#55

Post by wormslayer666 »

Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote: post #5

We do. Probably every day some police force is gassing its own citizens with things that would be a war crime were they soldiers.

It's disingenuous to pretend that the chemical weapons of the WW's and the massive cold war stockpiles of VX or sarin are in the same class as deliberately nonlethal lachrymator agents used in riot control. The fact that chemical weapons treaties technically ban pepper spray in the same manner as nerve gas doesn't mean it's a massive evil of police overreach -- there's plenty of low-hanging fruit on that topic without needing to make ridiculous arguments.

Re: Why Don’t We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore?

#56

Post by merely-unlikely »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #14

Good to see this posted again. I see a concurring example in aerial bombardment policy of the US and the UK throughout WWII. I even wrote a paper regarding it in college. Both the US and the UK wanted to target the war making capacity of the Germans. The Americans sought to achieve this with strategic precision bombing. The UK sought to do so with mass bombing campaigns targeting industrial workers. The disparity for…

Don’t forget the firebombings of Japan that caused even more destruction than the two atomic bombs.

> The full fury of firebombing and napalm was unleashed on the night of March 9-10, 1945 when LeMay sent 334 B-29s low over Tokyo from the Marianas.5 In contrast to earlier US tactical bombing strategies emphasizing military targets, their mission was to reduce much of the city to rubble, kill its citizens, force survivors to flee, and instill terror in the survivors.

> Overall, by Sahr Conway-Lanz’s calculation, the US firebombing campaign destroyed 180 square miles of 67 cities, killed more than 300,000 people and injured an additional 400,000, figures that exclude the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which took 140,000 lives by the end of 1945.13 Cary Karacas and Bret Fisk conclude that the firebombing raids “destroyed a significant percentage of most of Japan’s cities, wiped out a quarter of all housing in the country, made nine million people homeless, and killed at least 187,000 civilians, and injured 214,000 more,” while suggesting that the actual figures are likely higher.14

https://apjjf.org/2016/23/Selden.html

Re: Why Don’t We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore?

#57

Post by nicoburns »

Comevius wrote: post #25
worthless-trash wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its funny how the modern social commentiary associates "incels" with the classes of people they disagree with. It is evident that these people do reproduce.

They are actually calling themselves incels, they are not shameful of it. I wasn't being snarky, they are really digging the identity and the subculture, along with the rape and the mass murder. Every other post on incel forums is some variation of I'm being rejected by women, thus my bloodline ends with me, but not before I end many other bloodlines, which actually makes me a winner. Incels love violence, it's their…

I don’t think incels love violence or their identities. They hate their own lives and are reacting with anger.

Re: Why Don’t We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore?

#58

Post by MichaelCollins »

EarlKing wrote: post #23
codefreeordie wrote: post #2

Because they're not really useful. It's very difficult to keep chemical weapons contained so that they only damage your target and not your own soldiers or your allies or a bunch of civilians whose gruesome deaths will not play well in the media. In general, conventional weaponry is more effective at accomplishing military objectives.

It's not even that. The purpose of mustard gas, for example, is principally to force unmasked troops to vacate the trenches. As a rule we don't do much trench warfare anymore. (Yes, yes, I know... Ukraine enters the chat ) With most warfare over the last century having been wars of maneuver, urban conflict, aerial bombardment, or artillery duels... there's just not much use for chemical weapons. They're only useful f…

Mustard isn't like tear gas; it's persistent. It's not really a gas at all; it's actually a mist of liquid droplets. The mist then condenses on everything in the area and contaminates it for weeks. Anybody who comes into contact with it without protective gear (more than a gas mask) will suffer debilitating injuries. If you get it on your skin, your skin will fall off. This makes mustard generally useful for area denial, particularly against opponents that aren't ready to suit up and decontaminate everything. Drop a lot of mustard on a supply depot, command post, etc, and all of that equipment now needs to be decontaminated before it can be used again.

Re: Why Don’t We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore?

#59

Post by dylan604 »

nautilius wrote: post #24
DubiousPusher wrote: post #14

Good to see this posted again. I see a concurring example in aerial bombardment policy of the US and the UK throughout WWII. I even wrote a paper regarding it in college. Both the US and the UK wanted to target the war making capacity of the Germans. The Americans sought to achieve this with strategic precision bombing. The UK sought to do so with mass bombing campaigns targeting industrial workers. The disparity for…

Ooh, nice! "Targeting industrial workers to target the war making capacity" sounds so much nicer than "indiscriminate mass killing of civilians". Don't get me wrong, the Germans had it coming, but let's stop lying to ourselves, shall we?

>Don't get me wrong, the Germans had it coming,

See, now there you go, giving in to the same logic you're trying to make fun of in the first sentence. Saying all Germans is like saying all Ukrainians welcome being annexed by Russia. Some probably went along because it seemed at the time the easiest way from receiving bullets into parts of their anatomy even if they didn't actually like it.

Re: Why Don’t We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore?

#60

Post by justapassenger »

FpUser wrote: post #48
justapassenger wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don’t confuse stupid political fights in media with real chemical weapons. It’s insulting to people who were killed/disabled as a result of chemical weapons.

>"It’s insulting to people who were killed/disabled as a result of chemical weapons." While those killed by conventional weapons rejoice in heavens. Hypocrisy has no bounds.

Please don’t bring bad faith whatabouthism to equal people who got sprayed with tear gas to people killed by sarin.
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