Police also regularly use tear gas against US citizens. These are weapons that would violate the Geneva convention, but we're okay with them to disperse a crowd.
Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) (a follow-on to the 1925 "Geneva Convention") allows for the use of riot control agents (like tear gas) for law enforcement purposes.
I think that's inline with what the point the GP was trying to make. Tear gas would otherwise fall into the definition of a weapon that would violate the Geneva Convention if not for the specific earmark that its okay for law enforcement to use it.
Its a bit of a logical loop based only on definitions. Its not against the convention because the law includes the exception, but the exception otherwise goes against the principles of the convention.
> As explained in the military manual of the Netherlands, the prohibition of the use of riot control agents as a method of warfare is inspired by the fact that use of tear gas, for example, in armed conflict “runs the danger of provoking the use of other more dangerous chemicals”. A party which is being attacked by riot control agents may think it is being attacked by deadly chemical weapons and resort to the use of chemical weapons. It is this danger of escalation that States sought to avert by agreeing to prohibit the use of riot control agents as a method of warfare in armed conflict. This motivation is equally valid in international and non-international armed conflicts.
I’m not making an argument, rather an observation.
A saying I’ve heard from many folks I know who have been in the US military is ‘fair fights are for idiots’. I think it’s a common mindset in any (successful) military.
It's acceptable only because the authorities know the masses will accept it. And what could the masses do otherwise, gather signatures? So yes, it is how it is, until the masses somehow decide it's not - and then will get gassed again. Because the masses wishing for a change are rarely in a majority and authorities usually listen to majorities.
Well, by definition yes. The job of the masses is to resist by any means available. If it starts using terrorist tactics it stops being the masses. Of course besides gathering signatures there's many other peaceful adjacent things that can be done (leftist types love the meme of a general strike, but of course civil disobedience, road blockades, and so on are all on the table), and somewhere between guerilla warfare and spray painting stencils in the night there's a fuzzy ethical line. On one side it's Taliban style "we will wait until they leave" and on the other side it's again Taliban style, but the bad things.
Mostly the masses ought to be proactive, educate itself, and so on to avoid signing conventions that have these exceptions.
I think this discussion is missing a significant issue: why would a democratic government, of the people, by the people, and for the people, use tear gas? Why do British Bobbies carry batons?
The simplest answer, which is the basis of all police powers of the state: to prevent crimes against persons and crimes against property. Riotous mobs get people hurt, often killed. The businesses proximate to a protest, often small businesses, often under-insured due to cost constraints, are very likely to be severely affected by protests that turn violent. Major corporate storefronts can absorb the cost of damages, but the same damages to a mom-and-pop grocery could be the end of the business, no matter how much they sympathize with the community that is outraged. And let me reiterate what I started with: riotous mobs get people hurt, often killed.
Tear gas vs the baton is a lesser version of the observation by James B. Conant, president of Harvard University, in his autobiography: "To me the development of new and more effective gases seemed no more immoral than the manufacture of explosives and guns. . . I did not see in 1917, and do not see in 1968, why tearing a man's guts out by a high-explosive shell is to be preferred to maiming him by attacking his lungs or skin."
This would be all well and good except that society is not actually constructed by neutral arbiters outside the world, as much as certain parties have their pretensions to that -- they are created by the interactions of interested parties. In other words: class struggle.
Can you elaborate on your point here? It seems that you're linking to documentation of where the exception was made, but I don't think the existence of that exception was in question here.
I don't have a dog in this fight as it were, but the GGP comment was taking issue with the exception allowing a tool that would violate the Geneva Convention in war being used against civilians in a context where law enforcement considers it crowd or riot control.
> A party which is being attacked by riot control agents may think it is being attacked by deadly chemical weapons and resort to the use of chemical weapons. It is this danger of escalation that States sought to avert by agreeing to prohibit the use of riot control agents as a method of warfare in armed conflict.
The implication of the statement “These are weapons that would violate the Geneva convention, but we're okay with them to disperse a crowd.” is that riot agents are considered too barbaric to be deployed even in war, which is not the reason these agents are prohibited in wartime use. Instead, there was a worry that it would be too difficult to differentiate riot agents from chemical weapons (e.g. chlorine or mustard gas), which could lead the party attacked with riot agents to retaliate with chemical weapons.
Is your argument, or would you agree with governments making the argument, that the use of force should be acceptable as long as you/they know its asymmetric?
I made no such argument. My argument is that the claim
> These are weapons that would violate the Geneva convention, but we're okay with them to disperse a crowd.
is misleading because it implies that riot agents are comparable to chemical weapons. Riot agents are intended to disperse crowds while keeping casualties to a minimum. Chemical weapons are intended to kill people.
In the case of the Bonus Army, it was Herbert Hoover's intent to deny a means of existence with bullets to deny existence of vets and their families even sooner. History really wants to rhyme again soon, which is unfortunate.
The Geneva Convention bans all chemical weapons. Part of the rationale for a total ban is to avoid escalating to more dangerous chemical agents. Helpful r/AskHistorians thread:
Chemical weapons are tactically useless to the American combat doctrine, as described in that article. As we have seen, the Russian doctrine (and Ukraine's doctrine) relies on much more brute force to push a meter at a time and much more indiscriminate damage. It's hard to imagine chemical weapons being useless.
He makes the mistake of looking at how the US military fights and thinking that is the only way to fight a war. Incidentally, if you looked at how the Roman army used short swords and concluded that "long swords are useless for fighting a war," I bet he would have something to say about it.
> He makes the mistake of looking at how the US military fights and thinking that is the only way to fight a war
Keep reading.
"And, so, where do we still see chemical weapons used? In static-system vs. static-system warfare. Thus, in Syria – where the Syrian Civil War has been waged as a series of starve-or-surrender urban sieges, a hallmark of static vs. static fighting – you see significant use of chemical weapons, especially as a terror tactic against besieged civilians. The limited manpower and capabilities of regime forces have caused the war to deteriorate into a series of sieges, sometimes stretching out years (fighting in Aleppo lasted for four years, for instance; the final siege itself ran from February 2014 to its conclusion in December 2016). Anti-regime forces are often poorly equipped (often completely unable, for instance, to engage regime air-assets) and the civilian populace was completely unprotected against chemical munitions, making them far more vulnerable targets.
But a major factor here is actually weakness, in the Syrian regime forces. Assad simply didn’t have a lot of modern air-to-ground munitions; chemical munitions weren’t being compared for cost- and mission-effectiveness against such modern weapons, but against barrels loaded with explosives, nails and scrap – weapons which would have been primitive by the standards of the 1940s, much less now. And – let’s be honest here – his ground forces lack manpower, but also perform quite poorly. Remember: the question for the effectiveness of chemical weapons is value-over-replacement – while the vulnerability of anti-regime forces increased the value, we also must note that Assad’s heavily weakened, static system forces also substantially reduced the value of the replacement. In a fight between what are, in the last analysis, two weak forces, the calculation on the effectiveness of chemical weapons changes."
I read the analysis. I think he's being far too dismissive of the doctrinal considerations in his analysis. Frankly, he is also not an expert on modern warfare in any way, too.
There is a good book called "eating soup with a knife" (and the author has given talks on this) that talks about the importance of doctrine and culture in constructing a fighting force (in this case, the book is mostly about counterinsurgency doctrine and how the American and British militaries are uniquely unsuited to it). An American-style doctrine simply does not work in Russia, even given unlimited resources, because of how the culture and the military work. The weapons are then built to fit the doctrine, not the other way around.
In other words, the "static system" actually is the way to get the Russian military (and the Ukrainian military) to work. That difference in doctrine, by the way, caused a lot of headaches because US weapons are not made for it.
> the "static system" actually is the way to get the Russian military (and the Ukrainian military) to work
Well, yes. They've been unable to launch combined-arms maneouvres. They failed to establish even air supremacy against decades-old NATO air defence kit. Russia has to fight the way it does because it's unable to fight more effectively.
The author's core point stands: we didn't outlaw chemical weapons because of any moral reasons, we outlawed them because the world's leading militaries don't need them. In cases where they have tactical value, lo and behold, they get used.
On that point we agree, that the world's leading militaries don't need them. However, they are a tool that increases the effectiveness of other militaries.
I disagree with him that the specific combined arms shock doctrine is what make those militaries the world's leading ones. Those militaries are leading because they have the best people, weapons, and training, and a combined arms shock doctrine fits with their culture.
> they are a tool that increases the effectiveness of other militaries
Sure. Which is why the world's leading militaries banned them. OP said we banned chemical weapons "to avoid escalating to more dangerous chemical agents." There is simply no evidence we were that high minded.
That very much depends on what you mean by "worked". And it's not like Western militaries are lacking the physical means to engage in heavier and more damaging attacks; they just have viable alternatives that they prefer.
1) Putin has conquered more population than he lost (even just counting fighting age men)
2) Putin has conquered more money/value/resources than he lost due to the conflict (by a factor of 10, maybe 100)
3) Even Ukraine's European allies seem to agree that Putin will get a ceasefire and sanctions relief where he gets to keep what he conquered
It's true that Russia did not achieve it's war goals (destruction or total control of Ukraine, and let's just not talk about the outright embarrassing "in 3 days" part), but they got quite a bit. Perhaps even more important, they got more than enough to make the conflict, at least potentially, a net positive for Putin.
Putin has conquered more population than he lost (even just counting fighting age men)
What a weird metric. More civilians subjugated than soldiers lost?
it's war goals (destruction or total control of Ukraine
Russia wants to destroy the Ukrainian cultural identity. It's cultural genocide, and it's been a goal of theirs for hundreds of years. This is why they steal Ukrainian children and ship them off to be adopted in Russia.
I agree it's weird. But it's the metric, I think, that most determines if Putin can just start another war in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years. That's my reason for why it's important. It determines the next phase of the war.
Why would e.g. sarin be useful for indiscriminate damage when A) you could drop a conventional or thermobaric bomb instead, and B) you can circumvent sarin by wearing a $200 suit from AliExpress? I'm not seeing how it's meant to fit into Russian military doctrine other than in niche circumstances.
If you give me a specific quote from the book I'll be able to understand what you mean a bit better.
I know there's a quote floating around which gives the figure of $2000/km^2 for conventional weapons, $800 for sarin etc., $600 for nuclear, and $1 for biological. I'll respond to that.
The problem is, those numbers are for attacking civilians. You can of course make the argument that Russian military doctrine includes massacring civilians, but I would respond that not only is sarin more expensive against modern military targets, it's outright ineffective against them if they're prepared.
> Chemical weapons are tactically useless for modern militaries [1]. You’re pretty much always better off pounding with high explosives.
Maybe you know something I don't but in country we were always MOPP Ready:
MOPP Ready – Protective mask is carried. First set of suit, gloves, and boots are available within two hours, second set within six hours.
My mask was usually in the truck or in my pack. We qualify with our masks on a yearly basis. It could be argued that the chance of chemical deterrents that require MOPP 0 and above is negligible due to the our current landscape but that can honestly change based on the opponent or geography.
I similarly condemn such actions. But unless we are in a position to enforce any change in behaviour on Serbia then being unhappy on a web forum doesn't count. It's as useful as "thoughts and prayers".
Take some meaningful action away from this forum and we'll see. I am not in a meaningful position to do so unfortunately.
Action isnt the only measure of meaning or the only determinate of caring.
Caring exists on a spectrum, and isnt black and white.
Thoughts and prayers are a form of caring as well, and an important one. It isn't always what a utilitarian wants, but it is part of a package deal when working with real humans with emotional and social lives.
I think you and I are largely in agreement in that caring is good. Without such caring then no such meaningful actions would ever happen. We need to care, it is a good part of society. But care without action can be ignored.
So as far as Serbia is concerned "no meaningful consequence = the world is fine with.. just about anything."
It is an obvious fallacy to conflate the usage of tear gas canisters with the usage of mustard gas in WWI. They differ drastically in amount/concentration, area of effect, and long term health risks, thus should be treated differently in considering their usage.
Tear gas clearly sits on a spectrum of non-lethal arms with various other options that are more or less harmful. While it's entirely fair to criticize its use on a case by case basis, insofar as disorderly public gatherings can have varying levels of violence/destruction, it would stand to reason that some instances warrant the use of tear gas.
> These are weapons that would violate the Geneva convention, but we're okay with them to disperse a crowd.
Isn't that a category ban that came out of a couple specific members of that category that were used and had particularly nasty effects? And then countries' domestic law enforcement rules tend to be defined in different terms.
It is. People think that the "Frangible bullets and teargas banned by the Genevan Conventions" means that they're seen as too cruel to use in war. Unfortunately the "wisdom of crowds" that we've created on social media has decided that it does.
The reality is that we're talking about the views of people in 1925, as informed by a previous group of people in the late 1800's. They were far more concerned with avoiding the use of gas as a weapon than in dealing with the LD50 of the various gasses.
Likewise with frangible/hollow-point ammunition, it isn't even banned by the Geneva Conventions, it was banned under the now-defunct Hague Convention. For better or worse they thought that these "tumbling" or "expanding" bullets were designed to inflict intentionally greater suffering. Who knows maybe the versions that existed in the late 1800's did too, the ones today aren't used because they're worthless against even modest body armor.
But again, people just see text on a picture in a meme and take it to heart.
Except they are used today. Russian 5.45 is famously highly prone to tumbling due to its design with bubble of air in the front of the bullet (even more so than rifle rounds in general). If we look at American 5.56mm, the original M193 was prone to fragmenting, which the original study reports on what would eventually become M16 noted as the reason why it's capable of creating more devastating wounds then the then-standard M80 ball. And modern M855A1 fragments even more reliably (at lower velocities) while still punching through armor.
Pretty much any OTM round is effectively expanding and/or fragmenting (depending on velocity) as well...
So for all practical purposes this convention hasn't been followed for literally decades now. The pretense is that we claim that all these bullet designs just happen to do what they do. Although IIRC the US military authorized use of 9mm JHP in some circumstances, as well, so I think even that veneer is mostly gone by now.
> Who knows maybe the versions that existed in the late 1800's did too
The ones now and back then aren't any different. They do inflict greater suffering when the injury isn't immediately lethal. They essentially maim the target.
There's a legitimate case to be made for home defense because they won't penetrate common building materials nearly as far. It makes them much safer to anyone in the surrounding area.
There are also cases where the additional stopping power is invaluable, for example against a pack of dogs.
You can argue that any GSW that isn't immediately lethal inflicts suffering, I'm not sure how an expanding head changes that. In a handgun round mushrooming is absolutely about terminal ballistics rather than protection against over-penetration, but it is true that expanding .223 and frangible rounds are focused on over-penetration
But again the biggest reason you don't see expanding rounds in war is (especially modern) armor defeats them far more easily than standard .223.
An argument that modern body armor has largely negated the incentive does not imply that the ethical concerns don't exist. They are entirely separate points of discussion.
> You can argue that any GSW that isn't immediately lethal inflicts suffering, I'm not sure how an expanding head changes that.
It's a matter of intent and degree. If we collectively threw up our hands every time we encountered a grey area we'd never be able to agree on anything.
The point is that in the event that a weapon fails to kill the target, there are ethical concerns if it does more damage, particularly long term damage, than absolutely necessary. There's no need to make warfare even worse than it already is.
It's because of the direct effects; chlorine gas for instance will almost instantly blind anyone exposed to it, and tear gas can also be fatal. My great-grandfather was gassed in the First World War and only narrowly survived. Chemical weapons were technically already banned by this point, but it was WW1 that prompted the modern Geneva Protocol (not the Geneva Conventions; these are slight different). Unfortunately, none of the Geneva treaties cover their use outside of wartime.
Many people don't realize this but many of the banned weapons are ones with a decent chance of maiming people but leaving them alive. This is worse for everyone involved in a war (everyone here meaning politicians and generals, not soldiers) than killing them. Cluster munitions, flamethrowers, and anti-personnel mines all fit in this category, too.
AIUI they are mainly banned because they could lead to escalations in chemical weapons usage. If your enemy uses tear gas vs cs gas, it could be hard to tell right away and you might feel pressure to use all the tools you have available (including lethal chemical weapons) vs. Play by the rules.
Of course if you are fighting a real war, there is probably going to be chem weapons used. It happened in Syria. It is happening in Ukraine. It will keep happening. Geneva convention is wishful thinking.
something to consider is that in the Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) the military used a bunker buster on a Sarin gas storage facility and shot the sarin high into the atmosphere, where it then floated far downwind and landed on US troops. Ofc, reporting on it doesn't really consider Iraqi civilians and is only weepy about US soldiers.
Murder is generally punished. Unless you spew pollutants with known biological harm leading to numerous cancerous deaths and cover it up and pay off enough politicians. Then it is generally rewarded or at least tolerated.
Some weapons are intrinsically forbidden because of their effects on individuals: soft-point bullets for instance. These are as discriminate as you want them to be, but are nonetheless prohibited in conflicts. Thus it's not just indiscriminate weapons that are banned by international agreement!
When asked why tear gas is banned, the answer I gave was "the weapon is indiscriminate and chemical" not "all banned weapons are indiscriminate and chemical".
For example lasers used to blind soldiers are generally banned as well and as you point out, lasers are basically arbitrarily discriminate.
Most of Geneva Convention items are things that are huge liabilities to the own sides. e.g., there were such chemical gases that react with gas mask filters so to specifically bypass filtering. No one in Europe wants to pay welfare costs for factory leaks or downwind collateral damages in neighboring countries or army of veterans maimed with that thing, but they will have to if their enemies would use it to their advantages. Agreeing to a universal ban solves that problem.
Tear gas and more lethal gasses were extensively used in WWI. Afterwards the various belligerents came to an agreement on which weapons were acceptable, and they specifically decided to include tear gas in that ban. There were various reasons they did this (fear of escalation to lethal gasses was the biggest concern) but one specific reason was the indiscriminate nature of the gas as well as the fact that it can cause unnecessary suffering. It is true that the Geneva Convention only bans tear gas for warfare, and allowed it for military riot control. The CWC then banned it even for those military applications in the 1990s. Some of the arguments made against the use of tear gas in military applications (in the 1920s and 1990s) also make good arguments for minimizing or eliminating its use in law enforcement settings.
Rationalists like to reduce everything to a simple black and white argument, which tends to inject imprecision and bad understanding into the discourse.
But then you tacked this on to the end and it's entirely unnecessary. The linked article is actually a very good one about recognizing bad faith use of labels.
It just doesn't really apply in this case because the original point (at least by my reading) wasn't a gotcha relying on the definition of a label but rather was using a label that the author believes is legitimate to point out the seeming inconsistency.
Of course whether or not the label is legitimate is itself perfectly reasonable to discuss.
My problem with the linked argument -- and specifically, with the idea of linking it and not so much the argument -- is that it takes a statement with validity and then tries to use a kind of rhetorical trick to argue that it's false. It is not false, which is the entire point of my post, and those rhetorical cookbook tricks harm understanding and lead us away from truth, because the world is full of nuance and complexity.
>one specific reason was the indiscriminate nature of the gas
What are you talking about? The canisters launched by police are probably as discriminate as you can be when firing into a crowd. Are you expecting some sort of weapon that can precisely target the rioters in a crowd but leave everyone alone?
>as well as the fact that it can cause unnecessary suffering.
In the sense that "tear gas is just mustard gas", or "protesters have every right to be there and therefore any sort of discomfort is 'unnecessary suffering'"? What amount of "suffering" would you find acceptable?
I believe you have misunderstood this (extremely dumb) article.
The idea and significance of the proper noun 'The Geneva Convention' is a much different class than just a noun like 'criminal' or 'murder'. The point of invoking it is not to hide behind an abstraction, but in fact to appeal to something specific.
Unless you just read that article as "how to be uncharitable," your point does not make any sense.
What's dumb about it? People often use labels in bad faith. I'd think that learning to recognize that is a good thing.
Of course the larger issue is that you are unlikely to be able to have a constructive dialogue with someone who is engaging in such tactics. Pointing out that someone is behaving poorly rarely solves the issue. I think it's still useful to be able to recognize the pattern though.
>The idea and significance of the proper noun 'The Geneva Convention' is a much different class than just a noun like 'criminal' or 'murder'. The point of invoking it is not to hide behind an abstraction, but in fact to appeal to something specific.
What is it appealing to then? When you say "violates the Geneva convention", I'm thinking of things like genocide, killing of civilians, and soldiers in trenches choking to death because they couldn't put their gas mask in time. None of that applies to tear gas.
Insofar as you want to continue to charge this fallacy here, it doesn't really matter because "the Geneva Convention" is not, per the cited article, a "category whose archetypal member gives us a certain emotional reaction." It is something specific that happened/exists, and in that it has no "archetypal member." Whether you specifically have an emotional reaction to it is beyond the point, and in fact beyond gp's point. If you take the argument minimally charitably its just pointing out an inconsistency between what was at once point judged to be bad by an international community, and the actions of one member of that community today.
But further, do you really, in good faith, think gp was trying to form some airtight logical argument against the use of tear gas? Do you think its possible they were maybe just pointing something interesting out? What actual motive could you have to try and create this very thin gotcha here? Can you maybe step back and see how sealioning like this just adds noise?
>Insofar as you want to continue to charge this fallacy here, it doesn't really matter because "the Geneva Convention" is not, per the cited article, a "category whose archetypal member gives us a certain emotional reaction." It is something specific that happened/exists, and in that it has no "archetypal member."
The exact phrasing used in the quoted post was "violate the Geneva convention". I don't know about you, but "violate the Geneva convention" does give me an emotional reaction.
>If you take the argument minimally charitably [...]
Like you're doing above by some clever rewording?
>its just pointing out an inconsistency between what was at once point judged to be bad by an international community, and the actions of one member of that community today.
I seriously doubt any member of "the international community" thinks that tear gas is somehow comparable to a war crime or using mustard gas, or that it's somehow extra bad because it's a chemical weapon. Moreover if you really want to cling onto what was written (ie. "no chemical weapons") vs what's intended (ie. "no mustard gas deployed in the trenches"), the geneva convention also has a specific carve-out for domestic use.
>BBut further, do you really, in good faith, think gp was trying to form some airtight logical argument against the use of tear gas? Do you think its possible they were maybe just pointing something interesting out? What actual motive could you have to try and create this very thin gotcha here?
Because I think it's interesting to point out how the non-central fallacy might apply here :^)
> "Tear gas is bad because it violates the Geneva convention" makes as much sense as "MLK is a bad person because he's a criminal".
Not really, no. The Geneva Convention has specific reasoning and rationale for making tear gas illegal during warfare, which does apply to tear gas and make perfect sense.
That's not the same thing as saying taxation is theft, or MLK is bad.
>Not really, no. The Geneva Convention has specific reasoning and rationale for making tear gas illegal during warfare, which does apply to tear gas and make perfect sense.
Mind elaborating? The arguments in sibling comments seem to be some variant of "avoid escalating to more dangerous chemical agents". I don't see how that's relevant to protests. Are we seriously expecting the protesters to escalate to mustard gas because the police used tear gas?
Even if mustard gas escalation is unlikely in protests, the reasoning behind banning the use of tear gas on protesters still matters:
1. The ban sends a clear message: chemical weapons of any kind are too dangerous to use on people. That's a good and important message to send.
2. If a government uses tear gas on its own citizens but condemns it in war, it creates a moral contradiction (even if the government don't see it that way).
3. Normalization - just as in war, allowing tear gas domestically could open the door to more severe measures over time. Maybe not mustard gas, but you know, that's not the only possible escalation.
4. When the government are describing peaceful protesters as "terrorists", and abducting them pending illegal deportation, arguing to give them carte blanche on using sonic and chemical weapons to suppress protest is... Well, it's kinda fascist. I don't know a nicer way to say it. Context matters.
>1. The ban sends a clear message: chemical weapons of any kind are too dangerous to use on people. That's a good and important message to send.
This is begging the question. The topic being discussed is whether "all chemical weapons (including tear gas) are bad". You can't use "we should ban all chemical weapons because it sends a clear message that all chemical weapons are bad" as a reason to justify that, it's circular reasoning.
> 2. If a government uses tear gas on its own citizens but condemns it in war, it creates a moral contradiction (even if the government don't see it that way).
It's only a moral contradiction when people fall for the non-central fallacy that all chemical weapons are bad. Pepper spray is technically a "chemical weapon", but the average person isn't going to think that someone using a pepper spray is somehow comparable to Germans flooding the front lines with mustard gas.
>3. Normalization - just as in war, allowing tear gas domestically could open the door to more severe measures over time.
You can literally say that about any other bad thing that police does. It's not specific to tear gas, or the geneva convention.
>4. When the government are describing peaceful protesters as "terrorists", and abducting them pending illegal deportation, arguing to give them carte blanche on using sonic and chemical weapons to suppress protest is... Well, it's kinda fucking fascist. I don't know a nicer way to say it.
This is obvious a derail, and has nothing to do with the use of tear gas, or the geneva convention. Moreover none of those things are actually against the geneva convention. But that's fine, because you can still object to those things even if they're not banned by the geneva convention.
> It's only a moral contradiction when people fall for the non-central fallacy that all chemical weapons are bad.
Who's begging the question here?
> You can literally say that about any other bad thing that police does.
Maybe police shouldn't be doing bad things? ... And maybe supporting them when they do bad things is also bad?
> This is obvious a derail, and has nothing to do with the use of tear gas, or the geneva convention.
Fascists and chemical weapons are not separate questions, because fascists are known to use extreme measures when suppressing dissent; systematically escalating past all previous reasonable lines.
Which one is it? Are you sticking to the exact wording of the law (ie. that all chemical weapons are banned), or the principle (that we shouldn't use substances like mustard gas against combatants)? If you're going to stick to the exact wording, you should also note that the geneva convention only applies to conflicts between countries, so chemicals weapon use by police forces don't contravene it. There's no "legal line" being broken.
>Who's begging the question here?
It really isn't, given that I have plenty of other objections that don't depend on using the non-central fallacy, and the comment you replied to doesn't even mention the non-central fallacy.
>Maybe police shouldn't be doing bad things? ... And maybe supporting them when they do bad things is also bad?
I'm not sure how you got the impression, given that I specifically said otherwise in my previous comment:
"But that's fine, because you can still object to those things even if they're not banned by the geneva convention."
>Fascists and chemical weapons are not separate questions, because fascists are known to use extreme measures when suppressing dissent; systematically escalating past all previous reasonable lines.
None of this has anything to do with the geneva convention or the use of tear gas. Moreover this presumes that if it wasn't for tear gas, police would stand down, when realistically speaking they'll just escalate to more lethal weapons.
> this presumes that if it wasn't for tear gas, police would stand down, when realistically speaking they'll just escalate to more lethal weapons.
When cops use tear gas on peaceful protesters, a sizable segment of the population shrugs. That's nor the case when "more lethal weapons" are used.
Do you have stocks in tear gas manufacturers or something? This endless sea lioning is super weird. Every attempt to explain what the noncentral fallacy actually is and why it doesn't apply here just seems to leave you more confused, so I'mma stop trying. Good luck!
