Assad’s use of toxic gas in rebel-held Douma last week follows ceaseless outside condemnation of previous chemical bomb attacks. When, after their use last year, 59 American missiles rained down on the Syrian airbase of Shayrat, it clearly had zero impact. Regimes fighting for their existence do not care about condemnation or the niceties of international treaties. Nor do their backers, in this case Russia and Iran. They see only a cynical foreign policy coup in the offing. [...]
Inhumanity lies in the killing of any civilians in war. There is something peculiarly abhorrent in the targeting of civilian areas of suburban Damascus. But for all its denials the west does it too. Last summer, the monitor Airwars estimated that more than 8,000 civilians died in the fall of Mosul, mostly from inevitably indiscriminate Iraqi, American and British missiles. Even the Pentagon accepts that it has killed hundreds of civilians in Iraq and Syria. As the British commander Maj Gen Rupert Jones says, civilian deaths are “the price you pay” for fighting in cities. Assad would agree.
The laws of war are enveloped in hypocrisy, largely because they are written by the winners. The US has still not signed the convention against delayed-action cluster bombs, one of the most immoral weapons ever devised. They went out of production only last year. Such weapons are still being used by the west’s Saudi allies in Yemen. This whole argument is not over morality, merely degrees of obscenity.
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