Some dopers and I assume others outside this message board seem to be convincing themselves the sarin gas attack on Khan Shaykhun is some kind of false flag operation. Hypotheses seem to revolve around Al Qaeda or humorously, ISIS, staging this attack. The idea seems to be that the false flag attack would somehow cause the USA or maybe international organizations to get involved in the conflict militarily. To be honest, I am not sure to what end.
Yet why would a false flag chemical attack be effective? There have been continuous chemical weapons attacks during the war without military repercussions. How could Al Qaeda know that this particular attack would bring about a military confrontation with the USA. Nothing about it this idea makes sense to me, but I do appreciate it for helping me to fight my own ignorance about the location of this town. I thought it was much further North. And my mention of this ignorance is important in showing why this attack makes sense:
The Al Qaeda linked rebels and the FSA? rebels seem to be cooperating. They started an offensive to Hama which is South of the town.
The Syrian Army and its allies seem to be having some trouble pushing them back.
Gassing civilians may take some of the strength out of the offensive which would spare your soldiers from becoming casualties.
It seems that should be enough to make it clear why using chemical weapons or other weapons that somehow indicate desperation makes sense.
But that’s not my main point. My main point is that in a war, if killing masses of civilians will get you toward your goal of victory, then it is perfectly rational to commit such an act.
Even if you are winning gassing civilians will get you more quickly to victory, then it is completely rational. It is generally foolish to sacrifice your soldiers to spare your enemy.
A war is not a game where somebody is trying to be popular on social media or thought of internationally as a wonderful person. Losing a war has consequences more terrible than fighting the war, so it makes sense to use whatever weapon you can to win. It’s preferable to win and be thought of as a criminal and thug by a toothless UN than lose and be dead, but respected.
The only reason someone like Assad would NOT gas civilians is international outrage. He’s already bombed them directly and purposely bombed hospitals to make their lives miserable. He only cares about winning, not the means. We shudder at the use of CW, but Assad has done much, much worse in this long Civil War.
Honestly, the only ones who are trying to put some doubt on the story are Russia and Iran (and those who are listening to their version)…and they have a vested interest in muddying the waters and making it appear that there is some controversy here. This has been their tactic all along. Every time Assad and his merry men do something like this, there is Russia and Iran saying ‘well, we don’t have all the facts…and, really, it was ISIS and ‘terrorists’ who staged it anyway!’. Hard to see how people keep swallowing this, but they do.
As for some sort of CT false flag operation, it makes zero sense if you really look at it. Who would have predicted that president Carrot Top would suddenly get a heart…or, for that matter, would even bother listening to the facts. A week before this attack the official position of the WH was that the on the question of Assad it would be the Syrian people who would decide things…which translates into ‘the US isn’t going to get involved’. Before that, the first time there was a gas attack the Trumpster, via twitter was urging Obama NOT to attack (and, ironically, to get congressional approval before he did anything), saying it was a waste and stupid. Who could have predicted that this time Trump would actually look at the information given to him and see it as ‘real’? I’m going to say no one could have predicted that, since Trump is a loose cannon who defies prediction. If he made decisions (and tweets) by looking at goat entrails he’d be more predictable and rational.
This was a strategic use of chemical weapons. Assad wants to let his people know that he doesn’t give a shit about international law and that they shouldn’t depend on the regime being swayed by it. Tillerson’s comments about Syrians needing to deal with Assad themselves emboldened him. I’d cut and paste from this article but I’m on an iPad.
The Grim Logic behind Chemical Weapons( paraphrasing title)
Right, Assad’s use of gas would make perfect sense.
After all, who would have though the next move after that would be to bomb him and for the international community to condemn him. Its not like that didn’t happen last time.
It happened last time? As to your question, I didn’t think that Trump would authorize something like this, especially given his track record on this topic. The only line in your post that makes sense is the one you obviously thought was sarcastic…‘Right, Assad’s use of gas would make perfect sense.’ You should have just stuck with that.
Does nobody consider that all of it was a stupid mistake ? And not some mastermind plan, although masterminds can be at work after the fact to use and spin the gas attack?
I work for the regional government and frankly, a lot of actions happen mostly because:
a. reasons
b. the people who were supposed to check said actions didn’t quite know they were supposed to check said actions, didn’t know how, thought other people probably knew what they were doing, or they just wanted to get home in a hurry.
The only way for the Dutch government to do be seen to do anything about it, was to find out what the hell actually happened, and why. They left no stone unturned. And basically, what happened was that in the chaos of war, insurgents with enough military training to fire a stolen missile but not enough training, intelligence or inclination to check if they were attacking the proper target, high on adrenaline, and keen to shoot such a big honking missile because awesome, shot at Flight M17, by mistake.
Mistake.
In the chaos that is now Syria, I would not be at all surprised if such a tragedy had occurred for the same murky, chaotic, stupid reason.
It’s very disheartening to see Russian disinformation working so well online, even after it has been pretty thoroughly documented because of recent elections and so forth. They are using the exact same tactics to try and discredit stories about Assad using chemical weapons, and you shouldn’t believe them. All the proof so far supports the fact that Assad ordered the chemical attack(s), with only a “firehose of falsehoods” supporting the conspiracy theory that it was a false flag.
There have only been three other confirmed uses of Sarin being used, with the most recent one before current events also being Assad. (The other two were Saddam Hussein and Aum Shinrikyo). In other words, Assad has used Sarin before and is now likely responsible for half of the four known attacks using Sarin.
“Why would Assad use chemical weapons if Assad is winning?” is a textbook case of attempts to disinform. If you haven’t seen a number of the other “false flag” arguments in the last link, you haven’t been paying attention to news about Syria online. It’s been pretty successful judging by the number of people repeating it without actually examining the answers.
I could probably go on, but I would think the above would be enough for most people, especially when compared to the lack of factual support of “false flag” claims.
The reasonable argument is that if Assad wanted to cause the death of a bunch of civilians he didn’t need gas to do it, he could have just used conventional bombs, or thermobaric warheads from something like a TOS-1, which is arguably a more terrifying weapon than gas - there are gas masks and protective equipment and antidotes to nerve gas, there are no antidotes to “lungs explode”. Here’s a video of a TOS-1 being used on this very front with no international opprobrium.
The answer that Assad is “just an asshole” isn’t very satisfying but seems to be the best one right now.
The province of Idlib in general and that town in particular has historically been a hotbed of jihadists and is currently happily under the rule of Al Qaeda. The US has been massacring scores of people there with alarming frequency, the last strike being not 2 weeks ago. All killed were Al Qaeda sympathyzers, no doubt.
If that town had been taken by ground assault the outcomes for the civilian population would not have been great, gas or no gas.
Mistakes certainly happen in conventional weapon strikes, but this is a bit different. For it to be a mistake all around, that means:
Syrian Air Force personnel unknowingly had chemical weapons in their munitions, and
Unknowingly loaded that ordnance onto a Syrian Air Force jet, and
That Syrian Air Force pilot unknowingly fired the chemical weapons ordnance, somehow believing it was a conventional missile.
With the last damning fact being that the target that was struck was a civilian and not military target.
Given the storage requirements and precautions needed for a Sarin or Sarin-like nerve agent and how even a small amount of it can be deadly if there were leakage from the warhead, it seems pretty unlikely to have been loaded onto a jet by mistake and even more unlikely that the pilot would not know he was carrying at least one missile with chemical ordnance. Since the Chemical Weapons Convention that Assad signed and Syria ratified in 2013 prohibits the use of chemical weapons full stop, even if it was fired at a purely military target (which it wasn’t), the strike still would be illegal and a war crime.
It is possible that Assad himself did not specifically order this particular strike. But it seems extremely unlikely that some other commander did not, given that there must be significant safety and security precautions in place just to access wherever chemical weapons are stored in Syrian military bases, let alone transport munitions out of that area and onto the flight line.
I thought one of the positives of chemical attacks is it leaves the infrastructure mostly intact. Presumably Assad wants a country left to rule, instead of a ruined moonscape. Might still need a decent amount of money to decontaminate the targets later, but probably not as much as rebuilding whole cities.
Maybe hitting the civilians with the gas was a mistake. The town is very close to where there is a lot of fighting. Maybe there were soldiers there a little while before?
Maybe the pilots from this particular base always carry Sarin gas and the pilot made a mistake.
Looking at this event as a mistake is far more reasonable than a conspiracy theory, no matter how unlikely one mistake is relative to another.
I think there are certain types of warfare where killing civilians helps with victory.
So these TOS-1 warheads were available to use that day and in that way? I agree there might be better weapons, but it doesn’t mean they were available. Even if available, it doesn’t mean there weren’t any number of dozens of considerations we have no idea about that made the Sarin bomb more feasible at that particular moment.
Did our bombings stop when the offensive toward Hama started?
As to your question, I didn’t think that Trump would authorize something like this, especially given his track record on this topic. The only line in your post that makes sense is the one you obviously thought was sarcastic…‘Right, Assad’s use of gas would make perfect sense.’ You should have just stuck with that.