You Weren’t Paying Attention

Chemical weapons are horrible. Most ways that civilians die in war are horrible. Yet we have legitimate, important reasons for creating norms that prevent the use of certain classes of weapons. Chemical weapons are high on that list. But if the events of the last few days take you from “hands off, not our problem” to “Assad needs to go” it’s hard to come to any other conclusion than that you simply weren’t paying attention until now.