by Travis Normand
April 7, 2017
This is currently a rough draft and needs to be edited. However, due to current events, I am posting the rough draft for any and all to read.
The U.S. fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syria in response to what it believes was a chemical weapons attack that killed more than 100 people. For more on the attack itself, you can read about it here at CNN.com and CNBC.com.
The chemical weapons attack, carried out by the Assad regime (apparently), is a violation of the Chemical Weapons Treaty. The use of chemical weapons are banned under the law of armed conflict because, among other things, they are indiscriminate and cause inhumane suffering. Further, the use of chemical weapons are also banned under customary international humanitarian law (thus, even if Syria wasn’t a party to the treaty, the use of these weapons would still be illegal).
The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) 