Last week, the air force of Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad, a London-trained physician, deployed chemical weapons (presumably Sarin, a dreadfully toxic nerve agent) against civilians in Idlib province, killing over 80 men, women, and children in an agonizing way. The use of such deadly chemical agents in warfare has been proscribed by the Geneva Convention since 1925. Not surprisingly, this appears to be of no moment in the Muslim Arab world, given earlier slaughters of many more Syrians by Assad throughout 2013 and the mass murder of Kurds by Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 1988 and others in 1991. Even the pronouncement of an American “red line” by President Barack Obama in 2012, apparently promising teeth-laden consequences for its violation, did nothing to dampen Syria’s readiness to deal death from the sky via poison against its own people.