Well, I suppose it's always best to begin with the facts, but to be honest there's very little we know for sure about the situation, although we can make an educated guess. What we know is this: On the 21st August the nerve gas Sarin was released in Damascus, killing many and permantly damaging many more. I won't go into the gory detail about what Sarin does, because the majority of the public have seen it on the news, but it's far to say that it's pretty nasty. However, from there, the 'facts' become bluured; namely who excatly released the gas, although an educated guess has been made that it was the government. This wasn't decided ''because the syrian governments obviously dodgy'', as the girl at my bus stop said this morning, but rather because it's thought that only the government has large enough stocks of sarin to cause harm and the means to disperse them, making it seem obvious that it must be the goverment who had released it upon the rebels, which may have been seen as a final attempt to end the civil war. But although the facts are largely agreed upon by the U.N ( though not Russia), ideas about what to do as the 'next step' are the cause of many a heated debate, not just in the houses of parliament, but also in ordinary housholds. I've just about separated the different ideas into four basic categories:
There's School of thought One: That we should take miliary action on Syria to ensure that such gas attacks cannot happen again. If we don't do anything, the the U.N will appear weak, and that will be it's downfall - basically history repeating itself (Leauge of Nations, anyone?). It may bring us into a war, but we cannot let these kind of attacks go on unreprimanded.
School of thought Two ( usually in debate with One): Syrias alliances with very powerful countries could potentially drag us into an incredibly destructive war, mainly based on allainces,which is again history repeating itself. Also, we can be seen to ignore other countries in the UN, that would basically undermine the point of it, and cause it to fall apart.
School of thought Three ( usually held up by the person annoyed by this debate): The UN is on its way out, thats clear. Either way people will get hurt, so why bother arguing about it. None is particularly better than the other, so it's just damage limitation that we're looking at.
School of thought Four ( One that I haven't heard as often as the others) : A military strike on the stores of Sarin would do more harm than good. A medium- strength missile would fail to destory all the Sarin, and a strong one would only succeed in blowing the sarin up into the air, where it could blow into many overpopulated areas. What we should be trying to do is provide people with the anti dotes for Sarin and Mustard gas, and also give them leaflets telling them what to do in case of a gas attack.
Each idea has it's own individual problems, and at the moment all eyes are on America, watching to see what it will do. For the meantime, we'll have to be content in our intense squabbling. Whatever America does, it's sure to cause fireworks with the rest of the world, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.
So there we are. A moderately serious article from me. I haven't joked for so long, I can feel the 'bad joke' part of me slowly dying. I may have to call up the wonderful Nan and Grandad and annoy them with my horrendous sense of humour, just to get back to my old self again. I hope this article was at least a tiny bit informative, and I will be back soon to my old mental self, jabbering on about something or another. Thanks again for reading!
E.C
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