There is no upside to Assad using chemical weapons on civilians. It serves no military or geopolitical purpose.
Why fight a grueling, years-long civil war with hyper-tense international implications, only to suddenly up and decide to do the one thing that would compel the strongest military in the world to intervene?
The only rationale here is that Assad is a naive moron who thought he could get away with using chemical weapons in front of the whole world. If that were the case, he would have lost this war a long time ago.
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Why fight a grueling, years-long civil war with hyper-tense international implications, only to suddenly up and decide to do the one thing that would compel the strongest military in the world to intervene?
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You are assuming that Syria and Russia knew that the US (Trump really) WOULD intervene. But that’s a bad assumption based on Trump’s past own words on this topic.
It probably seemed less foolish when he thought about the presence of Russian planes, troops, and air defenses and the person currently occupying the White House having been consistently anti-intervention from the initial chemical weapons reports in 2013 and throughout the 2016 campaign, whose public statements also signaled a desire to cooperate more with Russia. Assad probably felt like he had a freer hand.
And for Assad to use chemical weapons has the same rationale as his forces’ consistent use of barrel bombs dropped randomly in opposition-controlled urban areas - terror and degrading the will to fight of anyone in that area. It is more or less the same rationale that the Syrian and Russian Air Forces employed when intentionally destroying as many hospitals as they could (war crimes) in opposition controlled areas.
Let’s presume that Trump’s intervention was 50/50. What is the rationale to using chemical weapons in the first place? It’s literally the one thing he could have done that would whip up international outrage. He’s been fighting this war for 6 years and was essentially winning.
TOS-1 in particular is a short range rocket system used for close-in support of ground troops attacking deeply entrenched defenders. I used it as an example of the kinds of thermobaric weapons available, and there are a range of types all the way down to man portable rocket launchers. Certainly everyone has air dropped thermobaric warheads, the US has used them extensively in its recent wars. As far as “at that particular moment”, I agree that there is no way for any of us to know exactly what was on the ground at the time. When the attacks were first being reported, there were some rather vague and unreliable reports that ABdullah al Muhausini, a member of HTS’s SHura council, had been injured in the attack, which suggests there might have been an attempt to eliminate a bunch of senior AQ leadership at once, but everything has been drowned out by Trump now so who knows. As for attacks during the current rebel offensive, I’m not aware of any against AQ but there was a fairly major one in Raqqa today or yesterday that killed a dozen civilians. The United States is still at war with Al Qaeda, as approved by the AUMF post 9/11 so I’m sure it’s still a thing.
Again, you are making an assumption based on hindsight. The actual chance of Trump’s intervention before this was very small. He SAID he wouldn’t intervene in Syria. When this same thing happened in 2013 he urged Obama not to intervene, saying it was stupid and wasteful. During his campaign he repeatedly said we wouldn’t mess with Assad. Why would anyone think that, oh, THIS time Prez Carrot Top is going to change his mind and have the Navy strike directly at Assad? :dubious:
So, taking that into account…why wouldn’t Assad et al use gas? No one else was going to do anything if the US just stood by. What was the real risk? I seriously doubt he or Putin give a rats ass about ‘international outrage’. Putin has shrugged that off every time, and so has Assad.
I think it’s entirely reasonable that Putin and Assad was testing this administration. Neither knew how Trump would react but made a calculated decision to push them into some sort of response.
It serves the terror purpose, which is the war the regime Assad has been fighting since he chose the path of violence against the protestors.
That is a silly observation by someone who clearly does not know anything about the Syrian case. Miscalculating overreacher, it fits Assad very well. There would be no civil war in the Syria if the regime had not badly miscalculated its response to the peaceful protests and pushed a violent response too far so that a large portion of its own military rebelled and became the initial rebellion…
If Assad was actually clever there would not be the civil war at all, but he overreached and pushed to far and voila, whole army units turned against him.
I should have been more specific, I meant our bombing in Idlib. We’ve continually supported the SDF and I doubt their need for our advisors and bombing will change as they move closer to Raqqa. I remember an uptick in bombing of what used to be Al-Nusra et al. in Idlib after Aleppo was lost, but I hadn’t thought about whether or when it had died down.
Assuming that this bomb hit the intended target, and that’s a huge assumption, what could killing civilians do?
It could demoralize enemy soldiers from that area who are now the only surviving members of their family.
It could occupy medical personnel with treating the huge increase of victims instead of helping rebel soldiers.
It could use up medical supplies.
It could demoralize soldiers who do not have the proper equipment.
It could cause members of a rebel army composed of many factions to decide to not come or cease to take part in the offensive.
It could rally your soldiers who love the thought of all those animals in that town dying.
It could provide a check of international outrage and response.
Any of these reasons are beneficial to the war effort. Besides these reasons, the history books are filled with the evidence that it is completely rational to slaughter your enemy’s civilians in order to win a war. Little about that has changed in the present.
That drone strike mentioned in the tweet was in Idlib. Saraqib is a town deep in Northern Idlib and Kafr Nabhuda is a town on the border between Idlib and Hama, and both are under AQ control.
Another factor that isn’t always apparent to the casual observer is that all the rebel factions, not just the jihadists but the “moderate” rebels too, deeply despise the YPG and has spent years attacking them every chance they get. Even when they were surrounded and dying in East Aleppo the rebels never stopped shelling Sheikh Masqood, the YPG held enclave in Aleppo, despite it being of no threat to them. Many of the rebels were backed by the CIA(the program has since been wound down mostly, or so they say), while the YPG/SDF are backed by the DoD, so at least for a few years there was open warfare in Syria between the militias of rival factions within the US government. Up to this point it seemed like the CIA faction has lost and that the YPG will be the side that receives US support, but the YPG has had an entente with the Syrian government to at least coexist peacefully, if not cooperate against IS and Nusra. The YPG enclave in Aleppo is still held by them, with Russian troops stationed amongst both sides to ensure no misunderstandings, while the government still holds Hasakah in the northeast, deep within YPG territory and left alone in turn. Now that the US has come out strongly against the government it may be hard to maintain the entente since the US are seen as strong backers of the YPG.
He figured that if Obama did nothing, his guy whom everyone thought was pro Russia would nothing. Who can blame him? Tru,p just a week ago said hat fighting ISIS is the priority and his administration said Assad remaining in power is political reality. He has been against intervention, and isolationism. Saying how Russia is a partner and that NATO is dead, America should take care of it self and not get involved in the Middle East. Trump see,d like the perfect president to look away as Assad gassed his own people.
Coupled with the fact that why waste resources on a small town when he can use chemical weapons, and save his military for Idlib city, his next big target after taking Aleppo? Small towns are better for gassing, less witnesses. Also Russia will back him in the security council.
Oops, miscalculation on the chinless tyrant’s part.
Also while Assad has been taking major areas, he is jot winning really. Most doubt he will ever establish full control over Syria and truly defeat the rebels. It’s a hollow victory.
That’s not the craziest thing I’ve heard. There are plenty of people who think that Trump and the Russians set this up to make Trump look better and divert attention from the Russia investigation. I swear, if these people were Republicans they would STILL be demanding Obama’s birth certificate.
I think the entente will remain as it has until there is no reason to continue it. We have continuously opposed the Syrian government but our main program against the government was a failure. The SDF and Syrians/Russians have absolutely no reason to attack each other right now. Post ISIS and post FSA/rebels/whatever, the government and SDF will either fight or come to some agreement. I hope we continue to effectively back them either way.
It’s the same with the Turk-backed FSA units (Sultan Murad et al.). Right now the Syrian/Russian government and Turkey are informally cooperating while the government fights ISIS in Northern Syria. This peace will also break down when the time is right. It will be interesting to see what happens after Erdogan is elected strongman for life next week.
I don’t doubt that Trump did this because Trump felt it made Trump look good. His advisors probably recommended this action for responsible reasons. This particular CT misses the fact that strongmen continually do whatever makes them feel good and are more than happy to screw each other over and then kiss and make up the next day. Their outrage is just another pawn in their stupid games.
This wikipedia article makes it clear that all sides of the conflict have been using chemical weapons, on a regular basis, dating back years. Scroll down for a list of incidents. Chemical weapons appear to be a regular tool of war.
The question isn’t so much why the Syrian Forces used chemical weapons now, but why this incident is being treated any differently than all of the prior ones.
Your own link make’s clear why: it was “the deadliest use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war since the Ghouta chemical attack in 2013.[4]”. Many of the incidents on the wiki link are chlorine, which anyone can synthesize, improvised chlorine weapons are basically high school chemistry.
Sarin is much harder to synthesize and much more deadly than chlorine and more importantly it’s banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention (which Syria joined in 2013 after claiming they had destroyed their chemical weapons). Chlorine, since it has legitimate industrial uses is not a banned substance and it’s effectively impossible to stop insurgent groups from creating improvised chrlorine weapons.
There were multiple other sarin gas attacks, and multiple mustard gas attacks (which is nasty stuff), in addition to the chlorine. Perhaps it’s the number of casualties, although certainly higher numbers are achieved all too frequently with kinetic attacks. Perhaps it’s the images actually making it out of the country, when all too often that does not happen.
It’s not that anyone believes a false flag really makes sense, it’s just that right now there are two popular trends in public opinion in the US:
Cynicism beats facts. If you can think of some cynical CT, well it must be true and anyone that thinks otherwise is naive. This was a big factor in trump being elected IMO.
We really don’t want to get involved in foreign conflicts. Fingers thoroughly burned.
When you combine these factors it’s obvious that people would try to find some other interpretation for these events. So people are incredulous that Assad would use these weapons but happy to believe bizarre hypotheses like AQ scuttling into places just bombed and releasing nerve gas.
Its the same logic by which they argue that all US involvement is because of a pipeline. It doesn’t need to make sense, it just needs to be cynical and lead to conclusion “let’s get out of there”.