Barack Obama on Syria: text in full - Telegraph
Here's my question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community: What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price? What's the purpose of the international system that we've built if a prohibition on the use of chemical weapons that has been agreed to by the governments of 98 per cent of the world's people and approved overwhelmingly by the Congress of the United States is not enforced?
Make no mistake this has implications beyond chemical warfare. If we won't enforce accountability in the face of this heinous act, what does it say about our resolve to stand up to others who flout fundamental international rules? To governments who would choose to build nuclear arms? To terrorist who would spread biological weapons? To armies who carry out genocide?
Like Obama said, just because we punish and destroy them for CW usage doesn't mean other countries would not follow this lead, if their existence were threatened like Syria's was. It is a last-ditch effort of desperation that is the issue, when they shouldn't have been put in that position in the first place.