The U.S. may soon be launching its annual war, this time in Syria. And this time because the president has drawn a moral “red line” in the sand, condemning the use of chemical weapons.
But let’s examine whether the U.S. can seriously play the role of the world’s arbiter of chemically-related morality.
Roosevelt launched the nation’s first biological weapons program in 1941. From 1943 to 1969, the U.S. developed weaponized anthrax, Q fever, Malta fever, botulinum, cholera, dengue fever, and various dysentery agents.
Our chemical weapons program began earlier, in 1918, with mustard and phosgene gases, Lewisite, hydrogen cyanide, and cyanogen chloride. After WWII, the U.S. developed sarin, VX nerve agents, and Agent Orange. When it signed the Geneva Protocol, the U.S. specifically exempted itself from defoliants like Agent Orange and gases for riot control. In 1997, the U.S. signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, committing to destroy its 30,000 tons of such weapons. But then it dragged its heels for decades, not destroying very much.
A chemical weapons depot in Tooele, Utah once hosted the largest stockpile of chemical weapons in the world. Tooele stored 14 million tons of chemical agents, blistering agents, and nerve gas – almost half the U.S. total – and was closed only last April. Depots in Alabama and Maryland are still operational. A facility in Colorado is not expected to complete destruction of its stockpiles before 2019. Another one in Kentucky won’t be done before 2023.
The United States is the world’s leading arms dealer. Not individuals or corporations – but the government itself. 78% of the world’s arms come from U.S. government sales to foreign nations. In 2008, when Israel used phosphorus against civilians in Gaza, it came from a U.S. stockpile stored in that country. When Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Kurds, they were stamped “Made in the USA.” As old archives are opened and foreign policy documents leaked, U.S. culpability in historical atrocities is revealed. The German press recently reported that Chile’s dictator, General Pinochet, had stockpiles of U.S. botulinum toxins.
From Havana harbor (“Remember the Maine!”), Laos and Cambodia, to fake yellowcake and invented WMD’s in Iraq, the U.S. has seized on many pretexts to bomb, blast, incinerate, and shoot people in faraway lands – as always, most of them civilians.
At this point, no one knows for sure where the gas used against civilians in Syria originated, or who used it. Or even why the Assad regime would be using it at a time it seems to be regaining the upper-hand. But if history is any kind of a guide, “red lines” are never used as moral guides. They are usually just cynical pretexts to justify yet another war.
This was published in the Standard Times on August 26, 2013
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20130826/opinion/308260303
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