Last week, we posed the question in a leading article, asking whether military intervention in Syria would lead to a complete breakdown of the country, turning it into a failed state.

There was no agreement at the G20 meeting, over the use of force against Bashar Al Assad’s regime. The US, in turn, has ratcheted up pressure, by saying that if nothing is done, Assad and anyone else will be able to strike with impunity if no action is taken.

But it does sound hypocritical. Malta has harshly condemned the chemical attacks, but insists that a political solution be found. Other countries and the Vatican have also said that their convictions lie in the same place. Britain’s parliament has also voted against using force in Syria. As such, there is only the US and France – buoyed by the success in Mali – that advocate the use of force.

We ask the question… How is it ok to ignore the killing of 100,000 people by artillery, sniper fire and illegal cluster bombs, only to then spring into action when 1,000-odd people were killed by chemical weapons? Is it not, at the end of the day, the same thing? It does not matter what weapons were used to kill people and it matters not whether they were asleep or going to the shops. Over one hundred thousand people have been killed. Why now? The questions continue to rise as news that more militant and terrorist groups are joining the ranks of the Syrian rebels.

But in war — what is it about chemical weapons that set them apart in policy and perception?

Some experts say chemical weapons belong in a special category. They point to the moral and legal taboos that date to World War I, when the gassing of thousands of soldiers led to a worldwide treaty banning the use of these weapons. The experts also say these chemicals are not just repugnant but pose national security risks.

Others contend there is no distinction and that the US should focus on protecting Syrian civilians, not on preventing the use of a particular type of weapon against them.

The attack came a year after Obama said the use of such lethal weapons in Syria would carry "enormous consequences." "A red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized," Obama said.

Last week, Obama shifted the onus. "I didn't set a red line," he said. "The world set a red line" with a treaty banning the use of chemical weapons.

The president's condemnation of chemical weapons reflects a nearly century-long history of opposition that spans the globe.

After tens of thousands of soldiers, mostly Russians, were asphyxiated by phosgene, chlorine and other deadly gases on the battlefield during World War I, most nations banned these chemicals in the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which Syria signed.

In 1993, the Chemical Weapons Convention outlawed the use, production and stockpiling of these agents. Syria is one of the few nations not to have signed the agreement.

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration did not punish Iraq's Saddam Hussein when he used chemical weapons during the war with Iran and against his country's Kurdish minority. Those attacks killed several thousand people, including an estimated 5,000 in the Iraqi village of Halabja. Shocking pictures of those victims were transmitted around the world.

At the time, the US had other priorities, such as the Cold War with the Soviet Union and attempts to contain Iran, where an Islamic revolution in 1979 had ousted the shah, a US ally. Punishing Saddam could have undermined those objectives.

Five days after the gas attack, an incendiary bomb, which contains substances that cause severe burns, struck a building being used as a school in northwest Syria, killing at least one man and wounding several others.

The New York-based group Human Rights Watch says it has documented multiple attacks in Syria with incendiary bombs dropped from government planes since November – so what is different?  We said last week that Obama is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. But in reality, what will happen? Al Qaeda militants are going to be given a boost in Syria through a strike on Assad by the West. Are the blind leading the sighted?