Should the U.S. bomb Syria?

Absolutely. Assad is terrible but the the Al Quaida supporting Muslim brotherhood is worse

Exactly. If your solution to the problem of innocents being killed results in more innocents being killed, then your solution is invalid, and you become the aggressor rather than the hero. It doesn't matter whether you killed those innocents accidentally or deliberately, because the victim gets to decide the meaning of justice, not you. The bottom line is that the vicims of "collateral damage" (let's be real and call it manslaughter) don't give a damn what your agenda is. From that point on, you are the aggressor, not the hero.

If you gas 400 children and many more other innocent adults, people should be lining up around the block to smack you in the mouth. Other nations should be ashamed of themselves for looking the other way.

Does it suck to get involved? Absolutely. Do we have a clear side we can support? Nope. Will it be messy? Absolutely.

I guess I feel an obligation and a duty to make sure no backwater leader feels weapons of mass destruction are an OK response to a regional conflict.

It's always somebody else's problem until it's not.

How is it that the method of killing merits a greater response than the quantity of those killed? North Korea, for instance, kills tens of thousands of innocents per year and imprisions hundreds of thousands (most of whom die a slow and painful death of starvation and disease). I guess Kim is safe so long as he doesn't gas a few hundred?

So why would you impose your Western point of view onto a population that is at most apathetic towards your existence?
The "we care about their well-being and therefore we bomb their country" is old and wrinkled. The MOST I would agree with is total cessation of trading with said country. "We don't agree with your internal actions so we stop trading with you" is fine, it's your decision as a country. But dropping bombs onto their heads is despicable.

Internal matters are internal matters.

Finally, if some US states decide they want to revolt and civil war ensues and a party uses chemical weapons in a situation - what would you say about the UK, Russia, China starting to bomb USA ground because hey, "you used gas and we need to show you the light at the end of the tunnel by force".

Whenever someone thinks "we should bomb them for this reason!" - they should be ready to stand by the "they should bomb us for the same reason" approach. With this in mind... should the USA bomb Syria for this reason?

You realize that the "Where's Syria" option isn't exclusive with any of the others. :)

Great, that gives us 3 possibilities

1. The Germans are wrong and Assad did authorize the attack.
2. The rebels have gotten their hands on chemical weapons.
3. The government of Syria has lost control of their chemical arsenal.

2 and 3 are not necessarily mutually exclusive (Rebels might have stolen the gas from the Syrian military) and I personally find those possibilities considerably more worrying than 1.

How is it that the method of killing merits a greater response than the quantity of those killed?

Your question is tantamount to "Why should war have rules?".

The rule against chemical weapons is simply a subset of "rules of war". These include rules for the treatment of POWs. Because of these standards, a lot of GIs came home from the European theater who otherwise wouldn't have. Likewise, it would have been a lot more convenient for the US to just neglect or gun down Axis POWs, or napalm the whole area during mop-up operations rather than accept surrenders. Etc, etc.

So. If war has rules, either you enforce them or war has no rules. Most reasonable powers, even some unreasonable powers like North Korea realize that a no-holds-barred street fight could lead to something like 20% survival rate with a bunch of unhealthy people trying to rebuild after victory vs. 90% survival after victory.

Aside from the cold rational incentive to follow rules of war, they are also deeply rooted in something like chivalry. At least, that's what the West calls it. The East and other areas have different names and different codes that historically allowed different things. For example, Japanese didn't view surrender as honorable during the WW2 era, and that caused a lot of problems. I'm not picking on Japan here. I'm simply pointing it out as an obvious difference between different cultures having different rules. I'm sure there are some rules the Japanese had for conduct in war that were kind and gentle in some way. One of the most universal rules of war used to be "don't kill women and children". Modern technology has made that impractical as an absolute; but the nature of chemical weapons is such that they can't be easily confined to the target zone.

Anyway, to answer your original question. It's because war has rules designed to limit its scope in various ways, and chemical weapons are outside those limits.

In other words:

4. Assad no longer has control of his military.

I think it's only a matter of time before he is deposed from the inside.

I saw some forum poster (probably at Fark) summarize it thusly:

The guys that made it out of WWI after the air bursting artillery, watching wave after wave of fellow humans get mowed down by machine guns, soggy trenches, bayoneting a few people, the screams of people dying on the wire in no-man's land, trench foot, disease, gangrene... the guys that made it through all that drew the line and said chemical weapons were too barbaric.

Iraq is an Iranian puppet, as is syria. Your bush hating rhetoric is obsolete, incorrect, and leading you to the wrong conclusion here.

You gonna fire cruise missiles at his ass, and take out all the innocent people at the surrounding tables?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Who the fuck has given the USA to decide what's moral?

BTW : LOL. The USA bombs either to destroy Commies (50-80s) or Muslims (90-today) or to get oil.

Where were the morals in Ruanda or in Zagreb?
Was it moralistic to use Agent Orange or Napalm in 'Nam?
Was it moralistic to use weapons of mass destructions (freaking Nukes) in Japan? Totally unnecessary as the Japanese government already signalled to sign a peace treaty. Nooooo. don't haggle with the Japanese. Let's incinerate hundred of thousands of them, destroy two cities and give millions cancer just to show who the biggest Penis has.

The USA has forever lost the right to use the word "Moral". Don't dare to use that word.

You FUCKING idiots nuked civilians.

No Pearl Habor can justfy that.
NOTHING can.

and we do nothing... chems are used (we still don't know who) ,killing less than 1500 and we must "stop" him?

why would Assad, while winning the war risk getting the international community involved by using chems?

As you even admit in your post, the drought in Syria was POSSIBLY caused by Climate Change. That's a theory, but there's no way to be sure. It could also just be one of the droughts that has plagued nations for centuries, at random times and places?

I'd agree with most of what you said, except your summary seems completely misplaced to me..... Turning the Syria crisis into just another reason the world needs to address Climate Change? Umm, no. For starters, Syria clearly mishandled the situation with their crops and farmers in a MASSIVE way. There's no excuse for creating a Civil War over the fact that there's a water shortage. Treating farmers coming to the cities for assistance as subversives and arresting them?? Yeah, THAT would really fly in most civilized parts of the world!

Climate Change or not, countries will have hardships and natural disasters .... It's just part of life. If they're incapable of handling them in an appropriate manner, they should expect uprisings and overthrows.