8/26/13

Syria and The Logic of Intervention Over VX or Sarin Deaths

After the death of several hundred people in a suburb of Damascus probably by contact with nerve agent calls for instant U.S. intervention in the Syrian civil war on behalf of the rebels have arisen even as the Syrian government has allowed U.N. chemical weapons to investigate the site of the event. The U.S. navy has moved warships closer offshore Syria in preparation for a possible cruise missile attack on that country as if the U.S.A. is the world's policeman.  Some are anxious to remove Assad and move custody of the trove of nerve agent to more reliable hands such as a new Muslim Brotherhood led Sunni government of Syria or get rid of the stock altogether by dispersing it around the middle east and North Africa to ad hoc Al Qaeda terror associates. Who can say? We can be sure that if Armageddon were to actualize the problem would not be comparatively substantive.

Policemen are not generally judges yet should be good investigators. Investigating the alleged rocket attack on a Syrian suburb that delivered nerve agent is just getting started. Calls for launching a war instantly as if the Poles had attacked Germany again or as if Saddam Hussein was readying to launch his nuclear weapons on New York or the North Vietnamese navy has attacked American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin bring a certain measure of familiar incredulity to citizens distrusting U.S. government credibility on such issues. Some people in government never want to hesitate with second thoughts and miss the chance to leap into the righteous glory of war upon puny powers evolving the future with a roll of the dice. And that without a clue about what a post-Assad Syria would be like in this case. Maybe it would only cost two or three billion to rebuild Syria as it would Iraq according to neo-con estimates.


Nerve agent is in effect a very concentrated insect poison. It is fairly easy for governments to manufacture and there is a lot of it around. The former Soviet Union probably left oceans of old artillery shells full of it in its former Republics. It does not stretch the imagination much to consider that Al Qaeda or another Sunni covert op could have acquired a cup of VX, GA or GB to use in the Syrian conflict as a way to get the U.S. military to win the war for them.

A cup of VX could kill a thousand people if optimally use as a vaporized. There are numerous ways of delivering VX from a pressurized spray canister hidden under a burka or placed in a low-flying quiet drone aircraft like a wraith painted black flying through the evening to disperse death. So even if there is are rocket remnants on site and even if there are traces of nerve agent associated with it. It should be plain that the rocket actually was the delivery vehicle of the nerve agent and not contaminated post hoc before proceeded to step two.

Step two would be finding an answer to the logical question of who it was in the Syrian Government ordered chemical a weapon to be launched? Was the order to use nerve agent one time on a particular civilian concentration a decision made by the Assad chain of command or was it a volunteer selection by a rebel sympathizing commander trying to bring U.S. intervention down upon the Assad Government forces?

Another question for Americans is that of intervention at all. Why should the U.S. government be quick to enter foreign wars on one side or the other when neither has attacked the United States of America? Neither should the U.S. government be a slow dupe easily led by plotters getting the bull to charge where they like to do their killing for them.

Syria does not yet seem much of a threat to the U.S.A. or N.A.T.O. members though an attack on Syria making the government more desperate could perhaps lead to unforeseeable consequences in the protracted development of chaotic conflict in Syria the Obama administration supported from the start. If the Assad government did launch the chemical weapon time to prosecute that regime's bad actors in the future probably will exist. I

Democrat Congressman (of N.Y.) Eliot Engall spoke out recently urging the administration to expedite attack on the Assad Government and bypass the slow legal machinery of the U.N.. He cited humanitarian and national interest reasons in promoting conflict enhancement. Even so it seems a bad idea.


If the orgasm of intervening cruise missile blasts occurs the aftermath will not necessarily be development of good fruit of peace and prosperity Syria. France, the former colonial power has also urged intervention. It would be good if the French, British and other interventionists could pay for and enact military assaults against Syria for-themselves and for others concerned around the world about the developments in the Syrian war without U.S. participation for a change. The Obama administration should not be the designated hit man of special interests.

The basic concern internationally when chemical war incidents occur ought to be containment and later prosecution of particular individuals that decided to use chemical weapons in the world court. Actual decisive intervention to alter the course of war as a punishment for an alleged use of chemical war weapons as a minor element of war tactic rather than as a primary methodical approach to conducting war would seem to wrong. That is non-substantive use of chemical weapons in war would seem a cause for post-war prosecution of perpetrators by international war crimes courts whereas if chemical weapons are used in order to decisively win a war that might be a valid reason for international intervention contingent upon if the international body intervening likes or dislikes the protagonists in the war. For instance if Australians had used chemical weapons on the Nazis during World War Two (they didn't) the other allies would not have intervened on behalf of the Nazis to make the conflict fairer.

A civil war is a bloody thing and in the modern context where foreign volunteer warriors and terrorists by the thousands actively involve themselves and where a host of 'friends of Syria' have provide weapons and other material for war in addition to bucket-loads of cash the impartiality of intervention is hardly credible.


Instead of choosing who the winners and losers are in foreign conflicts not concerning our allies with copious cruise missiles and carpet bombing because of the orgasmic military pleasure of killing with a pretension of righteousness the U.S.A. should be cool on war and invest in building peaceful, renewable economic methods at home and abroad that employ the poor and restore the decaying planetary ecosphere too health with liberty and tigers for all.

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