Response: I don't want to say whether or there should be airstrikes on Syria. But as a reporter familiar with the different views on this topic I can say this -- Certainly some Western officials have been saying exactly that, that there must be accountability for last week's chemical weapons attack, that if there's no military action it will be sending a message to Syria that it's ok to use chemical weapons . Russia (like Syria's government) has been arguing that some Western nations are just looking for a pretext for military intervention in Syria and the alleged poison gas attack -- which they blame the rebels for -- is exactly that. So it all depends on which side of this issue you place yourself.
There are many issues on which the UN Security Council have been unable to agree. They're almost inevitably issues on which one of the five veto powers has a strong position. If one of the so-called P5 has a stake in an issue and starts waving around its veto, deadlock is inevitable. That's the way the UN works (or doesn't work). And it's important to point out that the Security Council was designed to be dysfunctional in that way because the Big Powers -- the victors of WWII -- wanted their vetoes...
