Back in the early 1800s, or what is fittingly called the Romantic era in history and art, war was a gentleman's affair. When you think of the great struggles of the Napoleonic era, your mind conjures up images of armies facing each other across a field and taking turns firing shots at each other from their slow-loading, incredibly inaccurate rifles. There were exceptions of course, but this was the "ideal." Massacring the enemy was not the objective. We have adapted the word "decimate" in modern English to mean crushing your opposition. Literally, the word means to incapacitate just 10% of the opposing force - which was considered a resounding defeat in Napoleon's day. Such gallant notions of warfare were inspired by notions of chivalry dating back to the Middle Ages - a chief inspirational period for the Romantics (and, of course, they mainly only applied to European vs. European combat).
That all began to change during the late 1800s, when advancements in technology such as machine guns, more powerful artillery, and the airplane not only made it much easier to kill the enemy but also exposed civilians to wartime dangers that they had mostly avoided since probably the Thirty Years War (1618-1648, which ravaged Germany's population). When World War I broke out in 1914, most Europeans expected a splendid little Napoleonic-style conflict that would be over by Christmas and provide many opportunities for personal honor and national glory. The horrors of the trenches declared otherwise.
Chief among these was the deployment of noxious chemicals such as mustard gas on the battlefield by both sides. This excerpt from the classic poem "Dulce Et Decorum Est" by British soldier-poet Wilfred Owen gruesomely conveys the effects of a gas attack:
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Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
The world was so revolted at the horrors of modern chemical warfare that in 1929 38 countries signed the Geneva Protocol, which outlawed the use of chemical weapons in warfare. This was the latest in a series of treaties that sought to establish principles of how war should be fought, including the treatment of prisoners. However, it should be noted that many people still considered war a legitimate instrument in a country's foreign policy toolbox, so long as it was fought for the "right" reasons and in the "right" way. There were certainly activists such as Woodrow Wilson who wanted the Great War to truly be the "war to end all wars," but any naive ideas about achieving that goal were dashed in the late 1930s, when Japan invaded China and the Nazis began their conquest of Europe. Chemical weapons weren't really used on the battlefield in World War II; Hitler, of course, saved them for the gas chambers. Still, such restraint failed to stop such battlefield horrors as the Rape of Nanking, the London Blitz, the mass slaughter of the Eastern Front, the firebombings of Tokyo and Dresden, and the dropping of the atomic bomb.
The Cold War was dominated by the struggle over nuclear weapons and guided by the principle of "mutual assured destruction" by the two superpowers. Now that the main global security threat has shifted to terrorists and small rogue states, nukes, chems, and biological weapons have been lumped together into the category of "weapons of mass destruction" made infamous by the run-up to the Iraq war. These weapons are treated differently than conventional armaments, have numerous treaties regulating or banning their use, and get much more attention from the international community than, say, mortars or rocket-propelled grenades. They have been singled out for special treatment due to their ability to inflict mass suffering (often on civilian populations) with relatively minimal effort.
Which brings us to the current conundrum. US foreign policy is generally in line with most of the world in that the use of WMDs should not go unpunished; this is a chivalric view of the "laws of war" clearly drawn from the history I've outlined before. But here's the rub - in 2013 many people have come to realize that there's not much difference between killing 1,500 people with chemical weapons and killing 1,500 people with some machine guns and mortar rounds. So they very astutely ask why the former requires intervention and the latter does not. It is up to the leaders of the countries supporting such an action to justify their reasons to the rest of us with very reasonable concerns.
As for me, I'm glad that President Obama has apparently stepped back from the brink and is seeking Congressional approval for any action in Syria (this is almost unprecedented for a post-WWII President, and I highly doubt he'll get it anyway). However, I'm really disappointed that, no matter who our leaders are, our gut reaction to any international event we don't like is to blow some shit up - it is a very outmoded way of thinking that might correspond to the foreign policy principles of previous generations, but seems ill-advised for a country that is so tired of perpetual war. It seems especially misguided to get involved in yet another Mideast conflict without a clear purpose or exit strategy, particularly because at least some of those fighting Assad are Islamic fundamentalists. Do we really want to be siding with Al Qaeda or similar groups again? Assad is a bad dude and his actions shouldn't go unpunished, but this case presents an opportunity for President Obama, the United States, and the world community to show they have learned from such mistakes as the Iraq war and forge a new 21st-century strategy for dealing with international atrocities. Unfortunately I am not exactly hopeful that will be the case.
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