Syria: Some Arguments for Intervention, and a Response - James Fallows - The Atlantic:
Let me respond to the main theme that runs through the "we must draw a line" / "the entire civilized world agrees" contentions. Their premise is that the use of chemical weapons is so heinous and unprecedented that, if allowed to go unpunished, it will change world relations in a disastrous way.
Minor response: If this is so clearly true, then presumably someone outside the U.S. Executive Branch will agree. Starting with: the U.S. Congress, the U.S. public, NATO, the Brits, the Australians, the Canadians, the European Union, the Arab League. Someone in the civilized world.
Major response: The United States has not acted previously as if chemical-weapons use was an end-of-history, line-drawing occasion. Study carefully, please, these recent CIA documents demonstrating -- apparently in a non-disputed way -- that during the Iran-Iraq war of the late 1980s, the U.S. knew that Saddam Hussein was using nerve gas on civilians and did nothing in response.
Nerve gas was hideous then. Chemical weapons are hideous now. America and other nations should use their enormous might and influence to deter, discourage, and punish their use anywhere.
But the idea that in Syria we face an unprecedented challenge to a previously unbroken "norm" -- and therefore have a moral duty to plow ahead regardless of Constitutional procedures, strategic prudence, or the value of assembling international support (as in the first Gulf War) -- that idea just not does stand up to historical examination. I am not introducing a view of the United States as always scheming and hypocritical. I am suggesting some caution about this moment's black/white, "where is our moral compass?" views.
I have learned to be wary of American international policy in its "we alone must teach the world a lesson" moments. Overall our country has been an enormous force for good, but it is easy to talk ourselves into an exaggerated sense of our own purity. Proceed with caution.