For more than 30 years, the United States has worked tirelessly to eliminate our chemical weapons stockpile. Today, I am proud to announce that the United States has safely destroyed the final munition in that stockpile—bringing us one step closer to a world free from the horrors of chemical weapons. Successive administrations have determined that these…

  • OptimusPrimeDownfall@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    Why do I feel like some has gotten lost over the years and we’re just gonna “find” it if we ever get into another world war? Or we got rid of the weapons, but it was juuuust long enough to make sure we stored the info on how to make them?

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m super happy if we did get rid of them, I’m just skeptical.

    • Scooter411@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      We absolutely still know how to make them and in fact still have small stockpiles of them.

      What we have kept are far below international agreements and are used to test PPE for soldiers who may find themselves being attacked with these bio/chem threats.

      • purahna@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Isn’t that a little bit charitable for the country that blackbagged and drugged criminal and non-criminal civilians with LSD, deliberately circulated drugs both inside and outside our own borders, taught animals with bombs strapped to them to seek out rival personnel and infrastructure, infiltrated and assassinated members of social justice movements, deliberately exported indiscriminate murder to countries that looked like they might be starting to think about not being the right kind of democratic, used guns to back corporations quashing striking workers, poisoned the earth in Vietnam with agent orange, and far, far more, all in violation of our own Democratic process, the trust of our people, or the nations we interact with?

        • thisbenzingring@wirebase.org
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          1 year ago

          We can’t move forward if we can’t get past the past. You have brought nothing to this conversation except being a troll. Nobody is saying that the USA is without fault.

          • ChrisLicht@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Doesn’t the recent nomination of a guy like Eliott Abrams—by an ostensibly liberal administration—suggest that the U.S. has not gotten past its past?

          • purahna@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            Many of these things are still ongoing today, and many more (possibly all?) have never been apologized for or have even been denied. Why are you calling that the past?

            If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out that’s not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven’t even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound.

            • Malcolm X
          • purahna@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            At what date do you think the United States just stopped doing all that evil bad stuff and got its act together?

          • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            The point being made is that the present contains the past and there has been no attempt to break with the past. The CIA hacked into the state-owned computers of Congressional staffers who were writing up the report on torture findings and destroyed most of their report permanently. The CIA was ordered not destroy video evidence. The woman who then destroyed the evidence against court order was unpunished and she was appointed to oversee the case against the CIA hackers, who she absolved of any wrong doing.

            It’s literally not the past. The US is constantly and continuously doing these things.

              • CapitalismsRefugee@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Is your statement meant to imply that one might miss the forest of US atrocities if one looks at every tree of genocide or civilian assassination or unjust imperial war as individual and unrelated incidents?

          • purahna@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            Yes I can, if the US loses its power to treat the rest of the world like this, things will improve and also the atrocities of its past will remain relevant.

    • utopianfiat@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Chemical weapons are pretty strategically bad for how the US engages in warfare. Chemical weapons are great for driving up civilian body count. The US doesn’t really do that as a strategic goal. On the battlefield they have a really high chance of killing and/or permanently disabling your own soldiers. It’s really more of a guerilla’s/terrorist’s class of weapon because it’s good for area denial and wreaking havoc on soft targets.

    • PugJesus@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      We had (literal) tons of chemical weapons during WW2 and never resorted to them.

      Truth be told, chemical weapons are generally actually pretty shit. They’re hard to control (which creates potential for both civilian AND friendly casualties), they don’t kill or otherwise put enemies hors de combat particularly reliably, and if both sides end up using them, all that ends up with is a lot of infantry in NBC gear being miserable and not actually increasing the ability of offensives or defensives in any meaningful way.

      Anyway, there’s no need to store the info on how to make them because it’s quite literally public knowledge for the most useful and widely used/stored chemical weapons.

    • piecat@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      We got rid of the “finished and assembled” chemical weapons. The precursors are all ready to be mixed.

    • MxM111@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      US did not use chemical weapons since WW I. Why would we start using them in future wars?

      • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        What are you talking about?!

        Agent Orange, White Phosphorous, crowd control conpounds (like tear gas, “pepper” munitions, etc). Napalm was used in Iraq and Kuwait.

        What you’re talking about is the US not using a very specific list of very specific weapons that are effective due to their chemical properties and the way those chemicals interact with human bodies. It is by no means a comprehensive list of munitions with similar chemical properties.

        And it is a classic imperialist move to make a list of some chemical weapons, call the list The List Of Chemical Weapons and they develop new chemical weapons that aren’t on the list and say “These aren’t chemical weapons because they aren’t on the list”.

  • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Well, I suppose it’s a good thing no one will try to invade us over WMDs now, considering we invaded Iraq for what turned out to be 39 tons of mustard gas

    • atlhart@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      In principle, these type of weapons are immoral even in war. We’re talking about things like mustard gas, chlorine gas, sarin gas. Nerve agents that are incredibly cruel and painful. They painfully, sometimes slowly, kill or incapacitate indiscriminately.

      I think in practice warfare and weaponry have changed enough that the U.S. military feels it can wage war more effectively without these type of weapons.