SYRIA thread

**Agent Miles** · 04-16-2018, 16:24

For what it's worth:

We have a report that two Hip helicopters took off from an airbase in Damascus and flew over Douma around the time of the gas attack. We have another report that one Hip dropped one "barrel bomb". We have another report that an aircraft fired a missile at another target at a front line position near Douma. As a result, the front line and three neighborhoods were exposed to chlorine gas and possibly Sarin nerve agent. We have video taken by the rebels of innocent men, women and children suffering from the attack. What we don't have is any hard evidence of this and none has been presented. Because some of the people I would like to see burn in hell may be responsible is not a factor in finding the truth of what happened.

One barrel bomb and one missile filled with a chemical agent do not disintegrate on impact. Actual chemical tainted debris should exist. The bodies of the victims were apparently burned and buried. Hmmm... Speaking of the victims that were filmed...by the rebels, the dramatic detox although visually effective was useless. The rebels and the medical personnel should know what to do, since this has happened before (about 35 times). All the victims should be taken to an enclosed area where their clothes are removed and bagged to prevent the agent from spreading. They are scrubbed down with simple cleanser. Dumping water on their heads at the medical facility would be a real mistake as any remaining residue would just be released. The video is incredibly disturbing, if it portrays something that actually happened as described.

Most likely, Israeli sources again confirmed the attack as being from Assad's regime and not from chemicals that we know the rebels also have. Macron stated that he had proof. Syria still has a Catholic population descended from French crusaders and they may be his HUMINT source. Of course, Israeli intelligence and Catholic rebels are totally disinterested parties in the conflict (I keep forgetting, which font is it for sarcasm?). A fact-finding team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) arrived in Syria on Saturday, the same day the US, UK and France carried out airstrikes against Syrian government targets. However, when JFK took us to the brink of WW3, he brought out recon pictures of the missile sites in Cuba so that there would be no question of the reason for the blockade. In this case, the horse is squarely behind the cart.

As sabres rattled, lots of well-meaning people explained how blowing up empty buildings in retaliation would change the world and make it possible for a diplomatic settlement of the civil war, allowing a Syrian George Washington to be elected. Meanwhile, the rebels are going to be brutally, viciously and mercilessly crushed with conventional barrel bombs dropped on innocent men, women and children.

Students, scholars and other useful idiots tried to bring the "Arab Spring" to Syria. Assad emptied his prisons of the people who started ISIS so that he could label the resistance as terrorists. With the help of Russia and now Iran, he was thus able to do anything he wanted against them. A hundred million dollars worth of munitions won't fix this. Syria is diplomacy's Gordian Knot, don't get me wrong. However, whenever free people refuse to find a difficult solution, then brutal dictators will always have a default solution.

**rory_20_uk** · 04-16-2018, 16:55

Isn't it odd that we are completely fine with thousands dying every day from starvation, ethnic cleansing, machetes, small arms. But the Red Line is as soon as it is a chemical that kills people from a chemical reaction to the body as opposed to indirectly (e.g. explosives). It is INSANE!

I do not see there to be a "solution" to this one. After WW2 many Germans were ethnically cleansed from Poland and elsewhere. And there appears to be no rancour (barring a small minority). Even if by some miracle every there was the way to sort people in that area by ethnic / religion / political outlook they'd of course instantly be a war to claim more land that was viewed as "ancestral" by one or all of the groups.

**Husar** · 04-16-2018, 17:11

Originally Posted by rory_20_uk

Isn't it odd that we are completely fine with thousands dying every day from starvation, ethnic cleansing, machetes, small arms. But the Red Line is as soon as it is a chemical that kills people from a chemical reaction to the body as opposed to indirectly (e.g. explosives). It is INSANE!

Yes and no.

With these small-scale attacks, the use of chemicals seems rally weird even since it's not doing a whole lot. In general, I think chemical weapons are so scary for a number of reasons. They're potentially very deadly to a whole lot of people in a relatively short amount of time. They bypass a lot and the medium they use to spread is the same air that we need to breathe, it's like an almost inescapable attack on our most fundamental and precious resource. Plus imagining people screaming in horror as they burn inside out or whatever is just terror-inflicting.

I know a bomb and a rifle and so on can also kill you slowly and painfully and turn half your organs into ground meat, but I think most people imagine them to kill more instantly due to illusions of accuracy and so on. With the gas it's more like getting killed by a ghost, something about it is scary as.....
I would assume the people who wanted it banned after WW1 did have their reasons as well and I never heard about it having been deployed against civilians there. Perhaps it is also more "thorough" as in where other weapons can be more easily evaded or the battle group retreats after some losses and surrenders later, the gas would kill all of them before anyone can retreat. I'm really just guessing though.

**rory_20_uk** · 04-16-2018, 17:29

There is no rational link between a barrel bomb containing noxious chemicals and a missile containing a VX nebuliser over a city of your choice. Thermobaric bombs are equally bad - people shredded with overpressure.

Phosgene is degraded by water, especially if alkaline. Pretty easy to remove- and that is a really old one. I am sure newer ones have a very short half life.

I would hope that our politicians are above the Id of the general public - chemical weapons have been recently used to assassinate people both in Asia and Europe and that was pretty much ignored and the agents used were far nastier. Before that was the Polonium assassination.

**Husar** · 04-16-2018, 20:59

You're both wrong and I'm right:

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/27/wo...ine/index.html

"Modern weaponry, while it's grown more lethal, has also grown more precise," says Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official now with the American Enterprise Institute. But chemical agents disperse to affect large numbers of people and "can produce horror for a lifetime."

Some conventional attacks do the same, he acknowledges.

But there's another reason that it makes sense to view a chemical attack as a reason for international intervention, Rubin says.

"We want to establish the parameters of warfare. If you don't, combatants will keep pressing the boundaries. Ultimately, the question is, should we have any boundaries in war or not?"

It's a slippery slope, he says. If a chemical weapons attack goes unchecked, what about some other form of weapon of mass destruction -- a biological or nuclear attack?
[...]
Tierney, in The Atlantic, suggests a "strategic self-interest" for the United States to oppose chemical weapons.

"Powerful countries like the United States cultivate a taboo against using WMD partly because they have a vast advantage in conventional arms," he writes. "... Washington can defeat most enemy states in a few days -- unless the adversary uses WMD to level the playing field."

Rubin rejects that argument, saying the U.S. advantage in weapons of mass destruction precludes any possibility of a level playing field.

https://theweek.com/articles/460452/...tional-weapons

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, told Mother Jones that he found no reason why those restrictions should be lifted or ignored:

Holding the line against further chemical weapons use is in the interests of the United States and international security, because chemical weapons produce horrible, indiscriminate effects, especially against civilians, and because the erosion of the taboo against chemical weapons can lead to further, more significant use of these or other mass destruction weapons in the future. [Mother Jones]

While sarin gas might actually kill you faster than, say, bleeding out from a bullet wound, it has become a "weapon of terror" that we are "hard-wired" to fear because of how unexpectedly and quickly it begins to work, Charles Blair, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, told the National Post.

"They couldn't smell it, see it coming and 'wham,' next thing you know they're in convulsions, frothing at the mouth and they're dead," he said.

**Montmorency** · 04-17-2018, 05:43

Originally Posted by rory_20_uk

There is no rational link between a barrel bomb containing noxious chemicals and a missile containing a VX nebuliser over a city of your choice. Thermobaric bombs are equally bad - people shredded with overpressure.

Phosgene is degraded by water, especially if alkaline. Pretty easy to remove- and that is a really old one. I am sure newer ones have a very short half life.

I would hope that our politicians are above the Id of the general public - chemical weapons have been recently used to assassinate people both in Asia and Europe and that was pretty much ignored and the agents used were far nastier. Before that was the Polonium assassination.

As Husar covers:

1. Should there be any standards in international relations? Some standards is demonstrably better than no standards.
2. Are some military technologies set apart from others? It seems pretty clear to me (as well as to a large proportion of the world's politicians over the 20th century) that chemical weapons, for one, are more weapons of terror than weapons of war, and so more like mines designed to maim than a simple shard of metal to the neck.

A key phrase in international laws is "superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering".

Thermobaric weapons are probably illegal by the spirit of international law. Is your complaint then that they are not fully illegal, that the law hasn't caught up to them yet? Hardly a case against restricting chemical weapons.

For further reference, here are the various conventions and protocols on Methods and Means of War, and the titled rules specifying their areas:

Chemical weapons used in assassinations have been ignored? Those were major international incidents that led to sanctions or other diplomatic retaliation. These didn't go unnoticed.

**rory_20_uk** · 04-17-2018, 09:26

Originally Posted by Montmorency

As Husar covers:

1. Should there be any standards in international relations? Some standards is demonstrably better than no standards.
2. Are some military technologies set apart from others? It seems pretty clear to me (as well as to a large proportion of the world's politicians over the 20th century) that chemical weapons, for one, are more weapons of terror than weapons of war, and so more like mines designed to maim than a simple shard of metal to the neck.

A key phrase in international laws is "superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering".

Thermobaric weapons are probably illegal by the spirit of international law. Is your complaint then that they are not fully illegal, that the law hasn't caught up to them yet? Hardly a case against restricting chemical weapons.

For further reference, here are the various conventions and protocols on Methods and Means of War, and the titled rules specifying their areas:

Chemical weapons used in assassinations have been ignored? Those were major international incidents that led to sanctions or other diplomatic retaliation. These didn't go unnoticed.

On the first point:

Every country agrees to follow them unless there is a need not to - those countries with the greatest numbers of cluster munitions refused to sign up, and the UK added wording to ensure that their weaponry was technically OK.
These rules are enforced only when it suits and only against countries too weak to defend - Israel using phosphorous against people was of course overlooked.
Rules enforced in this way only display the rotten corruption of the whole system - trying to make "might is right" slightly more palatable. The "spirit" of international law is another phrase that is taken by the strong to do whatever they want - especially since the UN so often fails to give them the cover to do so.

To the second point:

It is how a weapon is used, not what it is: mines are a fantastic weapon of defence since it has no offensive capabilities whatsoever. You can have a border laced with mines and AA weaponry and be extremely certain it is safe with the country on the other side not worried that they are about to be attacked. A brigade of tanks and attack helicopters might make it equally safe, but they have offensive capabilities. Dropping mines in bright colours to attract children is using them as a terror weapon; randomly bombing a city is pretty terrifying - and drones are so terrifying children in Afghanistan and Pakistan have come to fear the blue sky since it makes attacks more likely.

Superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering is my personal favourite. Only such a phrase could have been created by lawyers who have never been in action. I am pretty certain that those in a war view any and all suffering sustained by their foes is necessary - to make them surrender. Or do the victors then get to take the losers to court for what they did?

**Husar** · 04-17-2018, 12:27

Why is Marihuana illegal and alcohol is not?

**Montmorency** · 04-18-2018, 05:03

Originally Posted by rory_20_uk

On the first point:

Every country agrees to follow them unless there is a need not to - those countries with the greatest numbers of cluster munitions refused to sign up, and the UK added wording to ensure that their weaponry was technically OK.
These rules are enforced only when it suits and only against countries too weak to defend - Israel using phosphorous against people was of course overlooked.
Rules enforced in this way only display the rotten corruption of the whole system - trying to make "might is right" slightly more palatable. The "spirit" of international law is another phrase that is taken by the strong to do whatever they want - especially since the UN so often fails to give them the cover to do so.

To the second point:

It is how a weapon is used, not what it is: mines are a fantastic weapon of defence since it has no offensive capabilities whatsoever. You can have a border laced with mines and AA weaponry and be extremely certain it is safe with the country on the other side not worried that they are about to be attacked. A brigade of tanks and attack helicopters might make it equally safe, but they have offensive capabilities. Dropping mines in bright colours to attract children is using them as a terror weapon; randomly bombing a city is pretty terrifying - and drones are so terrifying children in Afghanistan and Pakistan have come to fear the blue sky since it makes attacks more likely.

Superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering is my personal favourite. Only such a phrase could have been created by lawyers who have never been in action. I am pretty certain that those in a war view any and all suffering sustained by their foes is necessary - to make them surrender. Or do the victors then get to take the losers to court for what they did?

Ah.

Originally Posted by rory_20_uk

[...] but better unexpected progress than none at all.

The existence of international law of any import is after all a mitigation of the arbitrary exercise of unmitigated power*. If it exists, if it is possible, it deserves acknowledgment. In the case of extant arms restrictions you could possibly demonstrate that many of these are relatively unburdensome for great powers to implement, but "better unexpected progress than none at all". So while it's possible - as America has done since Vietnam - to co-opt the language of Law and Human Rights to serve the pretexts of power, that this is even the direction powerful countries are incentivized to take is probably a good thing.

Now, as far as how to make you care about differentiating modalities of violence - I'll have to think about it more. I'm sure we agree, for example, that sticks and stones aren't fungible with the atom bomb.

Is it really about "how" it's used? Hypothetically a nuclear device could be used to destroy bunkers or in some other limited context, but really it's unacceptable to deploy at all (though as with reprisals against civilian populations, some governments are shy about depriving themselves of the option)

Area bombardment is usually acceptable as far as war may be acceptable - but you can't treat a population center as a target.

Meanwhile, you have China and Russia getting ornery at the thought of US missile defense systems in place near their borders, basically because it could reduce the effectiveness of their nuclear second strike.

So what does it all matter? I would say that chipping away at the margins of war's brutality can indeed shift the paradigm over time. I can't source any direct comparison, but my impression is that even the worst excesses of aerial prosecution in the Syrian conflict (or the US drone program) are overall less deleterious to civilians and infrastructure than what was routine throughout the mid-century. We should encourage this, because the development this century of energy, hyperkinetic, and autonomous weapons systems (or that sci-fi bogeyman of "biological", but not bacteriological/virological, weapons) could moot all the elaborations of the 20th century before we know it.

*Arguably why these transient pseudo-interventions in Syria are net negatives for the world, not because of any specter of WW3 but because they undermine what international law there is - and apparently for the sake of nothing other than cheap domestic political points.

**Seamus Fermanagh** · 04-16-2018, 17:25

Originally Posted by rory_20_uk

Isn't it odd that we are completely fine with thousands dying every day from starvation, ethnic cleansing, machetes, small arms. But the Red Line is as soon as it is a chemical that kills people from a chemical reaction to the body as opposed to indirectly (e.g. explosives). It is INSANE!....

I am not sure of this rory. In purely logical terms, death via a nerve agent is unlikely to be any more horrific for the decedent that would burning to death following the use of an "accepted" weapon based on thermobaric principles. So I get your point about one painful death being about the same as another.

Yet I have heard vets talking about such issues and they seem to think that such weaponry is inappropriate on some level, that it somehow makes things worse. Maybe that is the same thinking behind men-at-arms not taking Arquebussiers prisoner because their weaponry was "unfair." I admit that I am not sure.

Still, WMDs that have the potential for a persistent lethality -- that can leave whole areas uninhabitable -- are a qualitatively different thing. Maybe they should be treated differently?

As I recall it from the 1980s, our European Allies (among others) opposed the USA's push for a neutron-centric weapon because it would NOT have the persistent effect of a "conventional" nuke and would therefore not deter its own use through some sense of horror. Or maybe they just wanted to ___k with Reagan.

**Montmorency** · 04-17-2018, 05:48

Originally Posted by Agent Miles

For what it's worth:

One thing you are right about is that there is a political selection of which incidents to respond to - as there are many incidents of chemical deployment. It's certainly pretextual.

For general pleasure, a recent report on the Siege of Aleppo.