http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/25/world/meast/syria-civil-war/index.html?hpt=hp_t1(CNN) -- The United States has evidence that the chemical weapon sarin has been used in Syria on a small scale, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday.
But numerous questions
remain about the origins of the chemicals and what impact their apparent
use could have on the ongoing Syrian civil war and international
involvement in it.
When asked if the
intelligence community's conclusion pushed the situation across
President Barack Obama's "red line" that could potentially trigger more
U.S. involvement in the Syrian civil war, Hagel said U.S. officials are
still assessing the situation and need all the facts.
In a letter to lawmakers,
the White House cautioned that given "the stakes involved and what we
have learned from our own recent experience, intelligence assessments
alone are not sufficient. Only credible and corroborated facts that
provide us with some degree of certainty will guide our decision
making."
The letter, sent to U.S.
Sens. Carl Levin and John McCain, said that intelligence analysts have
concluded "with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has
used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the
chemical agent sarin."
Hagel said that U.S.
officials have not been able to confirm the origins of the sarin, but
that they believe it originated with the regime of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad, which has been battling a rebellion for more than two
years.
"The chain of custody is
not clear, so we cannot confirm how the exposure occurred and under what
conditions," the White House said in the letter.
What rights remain to those who live in conflict zones? Their rights have been placed under martial law, which means that they are subject to whatever restrictions the military (rebels, whatever) wishes to impose in order to achieve their objectives. Can we then say that the coup against the right to life is justified? How does one determine which side is more justified in their commandeering of rights? How does one determine which action taken by a military/rebel/whatever group is justified and which is not?
And what of the children born into conflict - what of their rights? How does one justify the permanent scarring of a child - emotionally, physically or both - because of conflicts that they were unlucky enough to be born into? Shall we blame the parents for allowing the pregnancy to come to term - even if there is no option to abort? What do we tell these lost children of war - how do we give voice to the reasons for their torn lives?
Some of us in comfortably safe countries may feel guilty enough to donate funds to some charity proclaiming to be acting to stop some conflict somewhere. How, exactly, do these charities stop conflict? Oh right, they don't.
I am curious as to the shape our lives will take in the future, after we have poisoned the Earth past its saturation point. Chemical warfare will mean nothing. Rights will mean nothing. Survival will mean nothing. We will be living in permanent chemical warfare environments, but it won't be a simple conflict of interests between peoples, oh no, it will be our past catching up to us. It will be every choice we made, every choice we didn't make, every declaration and proclamation that money and profit is more important than life rights.
How do we restore the Life Rights to those who have been raped, pillaged, beaten and broken by conflict? How do we end conflicts forever more so that there is no chance for such conflict to rob even one living being of their Equal Life Rights? How do we teach our brothers and sisters to live in harmony and acceptance? Is such a thing even possible? If it is - what is holding us back from achieving it? Are we really investigating our own natures enought to be able to even answer that question? Are we aware enough
of the way that our economic and societal system functions to be able to make any significant changes?
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