I personally don't think so. By definition, war is the practice of mass killing between two armed groups. Chemical weapons are merely a means to end the lives of many, like every weapon we've ever developed. Tell me, what is the difference between killing someone with bayonet or bullet and choking them to death with gas? It is a horrible way to die, but is it any more horrible than dying because of a piece of metal lodged in your chest? In certain cases, it may actually be more merciful to use gas. I'm certain that many would find choking and spasming to death on fumes from a sarin canister to be preferable to burning to death from napalm. It doesn't even have the instantaneous mass destructive properties of nuclear weapons, or the ability to spread from biological target to biological target like a plague.

What is you opinion on chemical weapons?

4229599
Well, I don't trust something that can kill me when the wind changes...

4229666
Of course not, but is it really worse to die from gas as opposed to a bullet?

Depends on where you get hit by the bullet. If it goes through your brain, or damages it sufficiently, you're brain dead before you hit the floor. However, shot through the heart, and you're going to be hurting for a bit. Shot somewhere else, perhaps slightly less important but no less lethal, like say a punctured lung, then yeah, I could see your point.

4229599 The issue with gas is that most of the war agents are persistent and far more indiscriminate than a bullet or an artillery shell. The danger-zone of a dumb artillery shell can be fairly large if the shell is fired from long range, but that danger-zone does not move with the wind and it does not expand after the shell has hit the ground. The other major issue with gas is the same issue that surrounds nuclear weapons, that to use them is to invite retaliation in kind, and thus an escalation of force can lead to a scenario where both sides end up inflicting truly massive civilian casualties upon each other.

Also, bullet wounds are miniscule compared to the trauma that various war-agents can inflict, such as Mustard gas.

4229599

By definition, war is the practice of mass killing between two armed groups.

No, by definition war is the use of force to achieve a political goal. It's aim is victory and the imposition of terms, not slaughter. Throughout history armies that have shown themselves to be utterly unfettered in the pursuit of victory have tended to find it very difficult to make their opponents surrender. If chemical weapons are "no different" to deaths by bullets or artillery, then explain to me why soldiers in the First World War feared gas above all other weapons.

4230315

No, by definition war is the use of force to achieve a political goal.

You are right. My error. I apologize. Naturally, this is achieved through mass killing between two armed groups.

If chemical weapons are "no different" to deaths by bullets or artillery, then explain to me why soldiers in the First World War feared gas above all other weapons.

Perhaps it was more the thought of death via gas as opposed to the actual dying. The psychological impact for chemical weapons would be very real, but otherwise, poison gas and a bullet have the same purpose and same outcome: death.