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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