Stop messing around with WMDs... again B-/

Today or yesterday, President Barack Obama has renewed his calls for the use of force against Assad, should his regime resort to chemical weapons of mass destruction. Though it would doubtlessly mark a turn of page in this sanguinary conflict, I'm disrought to again be reminded we are past this one. Over 30,000 Syrians have died in the past eighteen months not because of WMDs, nor will the use of them make a substantial change in the death poll (though survivors will have considerable horrors to complain about, for years to come) but from Conventional Weapons, the Number 1 killer in essentially every conflict since the dawn of man (well, if you give starvation and disease a break). The prime enemy of the health and dignity of the people of Syria without any competition on the periodic table is lead, and even if the cannisters are ignominiously deployed, that fact will stand until the end (the Ba'athist regime's programme for developing nuclear weapons being abandoned long since, jolly good we might reflect as of now).

I ask the world community to stop mess around regarding the use of certain weapons considered, and not without causes, but insufficiently reasonable such's, to be particularly prepostrous. Men and women will die every day until Assad joins them, or miraculously survives detention or finds himself kicked out of the country alive, as his less sanguinary counterparts in Egypt and Tunisia respectively (I find both conclusions rather unlikely). The short route there goes through an airborne assault with sufficient forces - bases exist in Turkey and Israel - and wiping out Assad's Air Force. The shift in allegiance of the Syrian airspace would make a tremendous difference in the daily terror experienced by so many civilians, and the most important change in territorial gain as the ground conflict (between actually fighting forces) is concerned. Act now, or make clear you will not, and state the noble principles underlining your decision.

Lead, along with gunpowder, the chief torturer of the Syrian people.

See President Obama's first statement on the matter below. Unfortunately, it contained no hint of resolution for the conflict which, after all, is half a country (at best) struggling against its better half. Have we really gone so powerless as to refrain from considering a solution to this bloodletting, or are the arguments - ofttimes noble; just look at the Founding Fathers - of the anti-interventionists really prevailing? I cannot detect much a hint of the latter.

Finally, as it should be, a quote, which I wish had been in the President's statement, preferrably also in Portuguese.

"Obviamente, demito-o!"

(General and presidential candidate Humberto Delgado's answer to a journalist asking on his stance on Prime Minister Salazar in 1958. Delgado lost the election, and his life, but the words live on, though not yet professed regarding the butcher lion.)

And for my previous post, in case you haven't read it.