
Tear Gas – Illegal in War but OK for Riot Control - zo1
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/14/tear-gas-is-a-chemical-weapon-banned-in-war-but-ferguson-police-shoot-it-at-protesters/
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elektronjunge
Its illegal in war because of a fear of miscalculation, not because of its
effects: i.e. a soldier may call in a retaliatory strike proportional to
chemical weapons because its difficult to tell the difference between tear gas
and something more lethal in the heat of battle.

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serf
the OPCW claims the convention was formed due to rapid innovation in the
chemical weapon section - leading to the realization that small countries
could own an arsenal capable of producing doomsday without much material
wealth. [0]

[0]: [http://www.opcw.org/news-
publications/publications/history-o...](http://www.opcw.org/news-
publications/publications/history-of-the-chemical-weapons-convention/)

~~~
fiatmoney
That's not really accurate. They're banned because there is no net benefit if
both sides have them, and they only serve to make wars more destructive. The
exact same logic lead to parallel bans on exploding / poisoned / expanding /
fragmenting ammunition and later land mines.

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tsotha
In war you have an alternative, though: Live ammunition. Soldiers don't _need_
tear gas, and if you took it away from cops eventually the live ammunition
would come out.

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aaron695
A really bad argument.

I thought all chemical weapons are out, just like all nukes are out.

Yes there exist nukes less destructive than conventional weapons but it's
probably best to just have a blanket ban.

> "An infant exposed to CS in a house into which police had fired CS canisters
> to subdue a mentally disturbed adult developed severe pneumonitis requiring
> therapy with steroids, oxygen, antibiotics, and 29 days of hospitalization."

Baby got sick while being saved? from a mentally disturbed adult because they
didn't put a bullet in the adults head as a matter of course.

Not a great argument either.

And if you dump enough tear gas in a truck full of adults you can asphyxiate
them......

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zo1
Would allowing tear-gas and other "chemical weapons" in war break down what we
consider war? Would it somehow lead to wars so brutal no one would want to
wage them?

How desperate does a relatively sane country have to get before it deploys
tactics we would currently reserve as "terrorism" and "weapons of mass
destruction"?

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VLM
The article tapdanced around the reasoning because it sounds so awful, but
torture of civilians is permitted and when the USA does it, its now the
greatest most ethical thing evar (although years ago only the bad guys
tortured people, at least officially, sometimes thats how you knew they were
the bad guys...). And torture in general isn't legal under rules of war. So
thats why, at least on paper, we treat enemy soldiers better than our own
people.

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justizin
I don't think there's a causal connection between torture policies and tear
gas being allowed for crowd control, I think they are both linked to the same
cause - that governments are more interested in protecting themselves than the
populous, and are perfectly willing to look at their citizens as an enemy.

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grecy
> _governments are more interested in protecting themselves than the populous_

Be careful using the plural there. The United States government is the only
government from a Developed country that does this.

If you want to compare the United States to Developing and Undeveloped
countries, go right ahead.

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xemoka
I'm sorry, it seems like you haven't been paying attention to the world stage.
America's is definitely not the only government putting itself before its
citizens. Look at Australia, Canada, the UK, and arguably, many of the TPP
nations.

