While stressing that he has not yet decided on launching a military strike against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, US President Barack Obama said on Aug. 28, “[W]e do have to make sure that when countries break international norms on chemical weapons they are held accountable.” In the meantime, the British government argued that the legal reasoning for a strike on Syria “is justified on humanitarian grounds,” shoveling aside all questions concerning the legality of such an operation in the absence of a UN Security Council resolution.

Whether the strike is inevitable or not, the White House said on Tuesday, Aug. 27, that the mission of such an operation won’t be about ousting Assad.

“I want to make clear that the options that we are considering are not about regime change,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney. “They are about responding to a clear violation of international standards that prohibit the use of chemical weapons.”

In this context, should one consider this to mean that those who are trying to justify an outside military intervention in Syria were not equally compelled by more than 100,000 people being killed, according to the latest UN numbers? Would this mean that it is okay to kill under international norms as many as you wish in whatever barbaric, conventional ways possible, but not with chemical weapons? What logic, while building the legal justification on a humanitarian cause!