- 4 Oct 2012
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As I am very hard core opposed to war and very down on soldiers in anything but a clearly defensive role. I was also very hard core against chemical weapons.
Then I watched a documentary about WWI, which mentioned Fritz Haber, and his work developing chemical weapons for Germany, and his wife's suicide, which is widely believed to have been in shame of her husband's work.
Anyway, he said that death is death. And he had a point. And I started thinking from there. What is the real difference between all the commonly accepted weapons of war and chemical weapons?
They both kill. Yes. That's obvious.
But some will say that chemical weapons are hard to control on a battlefield and so innocent people will be killed. But innocent people are killed in droves by the commonly accepted conventional weapons. Bombing the crap out of cities has done it. U.S. predator drones do it.
Some will say chemical weapons often fail to kill and leave victims scarred, damaged, in pain etc. Well so do commonly accepted weapons. Is having an arm blown off by a grenade better than having one amputated because of chemical weapons damage? A patently ridiculous question. Of course its not! And lots of soldiers are blinded by explosions, lost internal organs, and suffer various debilitating problems for the rest of their lives by both bullets and explosions.
Some will say chemical weapons often kill slowly and tortuously. How is bleeding out on a battlefield with a belly full of lead better?
Fritz Haber has been much maligned by history, but on rethinking his position, I think he was right. I think that trying to separate chemical weapons from other weapons with some sort of moral argument is logically impossible, even if people have been conditioned to think there is one.
Have I missed something? Can anyone make a logical distinction between chemical and conventional weapons that makes one more or less "moral" than the other?
Then I watched a documentary about WWI, which mentioned Fritz Haber, and his work developing chemical weapons for Germany, and his wife's suicide, which is widely believed to have been in shame of her husband's work.
Anyway, he said that death is death. And he had a point. And I started thinking from there. What is the real difference between all the commonly accepted weapons of war and chemical weapons?
They both kill. Yes. That's obvious.
But some will say that chemical weapons are hard to control on a battlefield and so innocent people will be killed. But innocent people are killed in droves by the commonly accepted conventional weapons. Bombing the crap out of cities has done it. U.S. predator drones do it.
Some will say chemical weapons often fail to kill and leave victims scarred, damaged, in pain etc. Well so do commonly accepted weapons. Is having an arm blown off by a grenade better than having one amputated because of chemical weapons damage? A patently ridiculous question. Of course its not! And lots of soldiers are blinded by explosions, lost internal organs, and suffer various debilitating problems for the rest of their lives by both bullets and explosions.
Some will say chemical weapons often kill slowly and tortuously. How is bleeding out on a battlefield with a belly full of lead better?
Fritz Haber has been much maligned by history, but on rethinking his position, I think he was right. I think that trying to separate chemical weapons from other weapons with some sort of moral argument is logically impossible, even if people have been conditioned to think there is one.
Have I missed something? Can anyone make a logical distinction between chemical and conventional weapons that makes one more or less "moral" than the other?