Why is using Sarin gas worse than using high explosives?

Great Debates
1

The statements on NPR are that the victims of last week’s bombing of a civilian neighborhood with sarin gas rounds from a rocket suffered, and in some cases died horribly. The UN of course states that using such weapons is illegal - but so is deliberately bombing a civilian city with the intention of killing everyone, something the Syrian government has done before.

Anyways, this got me thinking. I knew, from training in the Army, that modern nerve agents cause acetylcholine to build up. This messes up key control pathways to lungs involved in breathing and other bodily functions.

However, I intuitively knew that the damage was unlikely to be permanent, and from googling around, that seems to be true. For the lucky victims who survive, they will experience no significant impairment. “People who experience mild or moderate exposure usually recover completely. Severely exposed
people are not likely to survive. Unlike some organophosphate pesticides, nerve agents have not
been associated with neurological problems lasting more than one to two weeks after exposure.”

De-facto, the United States and the other major world powers have declared that using nerve agents is illegal, while using high explosives is not. I’m not trying to defend the use of the nerve gas, I’m trying to objectively compare it to the alternative. The Syrian dictator could have ordered that neighborhood shelled to rubble with many HE artillery rounds, killing precisely as many people inside it via the blast, shrapnel, or collapsing structures.

Explosives routinely cause amputations, loss of sight, loss of hearing, traumatic brain injuries, paralysis, and there is no medical treatment for any of those injuries. (the treatment only allows the victim to live and suffer longer)

So even if the acute pain of dying from a nerve gas attack is worse than the acute pain of bleeding out from shrapnel and blast wounds, impaled by a collapsed building, I don’t see how nerve gas causes more total suffering. The victims who survive aren’t missing any body parts, and, apparently, their nerves work properly again once the nerve agent leaves their body.

Nerve agents may be cheaper. The chemical mixtures in the shells are probably not hugely more expensive than HE, and they kill people behind cover that would stop HE fragments. Also, it means that the neighborhoods cleared of people can be reoccupied, rather than being shelled into rubble.

With that said, how does the United States morally justify an attack that will realistically kill thousands of people to be effective, destroy countless productive buildings, in the name of reducing suffering for the rebels who will just die by other means? The worst thing is, if the Syrian government is damaged enough, it could prolong the civil war by years, possibly killing far more people. (since it is hard to see how the damage could be enough that the rebels win, but if they lose their airfields, it will take longer for the government to win)

2

There was a war fought almost a hundred years ago where this issue was pretty much settled. They used machine guns, tanks, all sorts of bombs and poison gas. The one thing both sides agreed upon was that poison gas was inhuman, so much so that they agreed not to use it again in a conflict and actually kept that agreement in the next major war. It’s not the just because international law says it’s illegal to use, but that even some of the most terrible dictators the world has every seen refused to use it on the battlefield as well.

Those that forget history are doomed to repeat it.

3

But, that isn’t the same gas. Mustard gas does cause chronic, lifelong injuries that bullet wounds do not.

Those who blindly quote others are doomed to the same mistakes.

4

From an ethical standpoint, there is really no difference between indiscriminate bombing and the use of nerve or checmial agents. The point that would be made against the use of such agents is that they are incapable of being targetted, and the residue can potentially last for days or in some cases even weeks after deployment, posing hazard not only to civilians on or adjacent to the battlefield but also those whom come after. The realistic counter to that is that unexploded ordnance, including mines, cluster bombs, and the occasional dud which is still armed and ready to fire pose similar hazards and can cause grevious maiming injuries to noncombatants.

Regardless of the wrongness of the actions of the Syrian government (if they are actually the party which deployed chemical warfare agents) it makes little sense for the US to bomb Syria in response in a fashion that will just create more casualties. We seem not to be able to learn this lesson from either past or recent history.

Stranger

5

I’m not normally an advocate for the slippery slope, but if you say bombs are just as bad a poison gas, you’ve started down the road of allowing their use.

Yes, it’s not entirely certain that the Syrian government was the one using it. Yes, a military strike will probably make matters worse. I think Assad is testing the waters of how much he can utilize his stockpile.

6

Hopefully we have learned from Iraq; I am not defending using the use of chemical weapons as an open invitation to start another war. Just noting that this issue was dealt with before.

7

Like much of international law, chemical weapons are bad because we say they’re bad. The Geneva Protocol of 1925 (to which Syria is a party, mind) says in the preamble that “the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices, has been justly condemned by the general opinion of the civilised world.”

As to why chemical weapons are somehow “worse” than conventional weapons, I think that’s kind of a matter for GD. Certainly the public reaction to the use of chlorine and mustard gas in World War I was a large part of why they’re banned today. Perhaps it’s because poisoning your enemies is seen as “less noble” than overtly attacking them?

8

Probably because the CIA or MOSSAD had something to do with the sarin gas used in Syria. Why would the CIA or Mossad do that? Well it was the only reason the governments of the West(USA, Britain, France, etc) would be able to get involved without igniting the wrath of their own war-weary people.

But so far the citizens distaste for another war or intervention in the middle-east was too much for them anyways. France’s government is still down to punish Assad. Britain’s Prime Minister was pumped for it, but I think the motion to intervene was defeated by as little as ten votes. Merkel, of Germany bailed. Canada’s government is down, but is too bitch to actually commit to it for fear of losing the next election.

Obama needs more countries to join in, as it stands. Without Britain(at least), they’re open to massive global criticism.

Don’t believe me?

There’s no way Assad would gas his own citizens, like you said. That was the only thing barring the West from intervening(or claiming they were going to, as they are now on the verge of chickening out) in that whole ordeal. So why would he do that, when he could’ve just terminated them with standard firepower, like he’s done all along?

Anyways I’m pretty sure this isn’t the first time the US has screwed around with Sarin in the middle-east. Wasn’t there a whole thing about Iran and Iraq in the eighties?

9

LOST gas, and nerve agents = horrible death or lasting gruesome injuries.
So does Napalm.

These toxic chemicals drift on the wind and leave residue that is dangerous.
So do tactical nukes … witness radioactive fallout.

We routinely threaten each other with nukes, and have used them in the past on large civilian populations, as we have used Napalm in the past … but somehow, toxic chemicals are worse?

10

Yes, Saddam used it against the Iranians but it was ignored because we don’t like Iran. Wish we’d just stay the hell out of those places unless they harbor people who fly jets into our buildings.

11

A bomb’s main purpose is to destroy buildings and infrastructure. People do die during bomb raids but they are not specifically targeted.

On the other hand, chemical weapons target humans exclusively. So do landmines and cluster bombs and there’s a similar pressure to outlaw these too.

12

[ul]
[li]We don’t control the atmosphere. Gas drifts; it’s ridiculously hard to target specific areas with it[/li]
[li]It will indiscriminately affect everyone in the areas into which it does drift[/li]
[li]Military forces are (by now) relatively well-protected against gas attacks – they have protective gear, antidotes on hand, and sealed-environment vehicles (called “NBC” in the US military, for nuclear, biological, chemical protection). This means that gas attacks have little effect on military units, but decimate or even eradicate civilian populations[/li][/ul]
For these reasons – it hits the wrong people, kills “innocent” people disproportionately, and (a key point in international willingness to forswear its use) isn’t very effective at winning wars, it was possible to get widespread agreement to outlaw the use of gas weapons.

13

'… it was possible to get widespread agreement to outlaw the use …"

While we’re at it, let’s outlaw drones, bombs, and tanks. If war can be limited, let’s limit the hell out of it.

Until someone launches a nuke, and then the fairy-tale ends.

14

He wasn’t ignored. The US assisted Saddam in gassing the Iranians.

15

and cluster bombs, land mines, depleted uranium, white phosphorus, drone strikes on first responders and funerals, etc.

16

“A bomb’s main purpose is to destroy buildings and infrastructure. People do die during bomb raids but they are not specifically targeted.”

So, the guys who crashed Boeing 767s into the WTC buildings were using the planes as convenient bombs and if they said,“We were destroying buildings, sorry about the collateral civilian casualties,” that’s substantially different than, “We were targeting enemy soldiers, sorry about the drifting gas?” When war-mongers argue semantics, I find it … unsatisfying.

17

In the modern geopolitical world there’s also the idea that because the cost per kill ratio can be invitingly high compared to HE bombs, third world armies would be too tempted to manufacture & use them as a ‘poor-man’s-nuke’.

But I also think that the primary reason for their banning is that, psychologically, it is considered more emotional disturbing and heinous to kill people en mass during war via quiet, creepy, insidious means like poison gas as opposed to blasting them apart via high explosives.

However, when we carry out capital punishment (in the West at least) we prefer the opposite: Hanging and decapitation and firing squads first gave way to electrocution and gas chambers, and finally lethal injection. It would be considered barbaric to execute an individual with high explosives (even if it was done in a manner that guaranteed instantaneous, painless death)…

18

Any weapon will kill. Any weapon can be used to kill civilians.

The calculus of whether a weapon is judged “inhumane” or not is based on the ratio of ‘legitimate’ targets (like destroying enemy military equipment and soldiers) versus ‘illigitimate’ targets (like babies in the crib) caused when the weapon is used as intended.

What makes gas different from other weapons, is there is no way to use it other than indiscriminately - unless one’s enemies are, as in WW1, totally seperated from the civilian population, using gas means you simply don’t care who you kill.

19

So, when we destroyed the infrastructure of Nagasaki, we were relieved that Japanese weren’t using nerve gas because, you know, civilians might have gotten hurt.

Are we a different “we” than we were then?

20

To look at this another way, if indiscriminate bombing and the use of anti-personnel ordnance devices is just as bad as using nerve and chemical agents, then the US is already in a morally compromised position. So, we’ve already gone down that road and the only way to maintain a position of moral superiority is to make an artificial distinction over the functional harm and hazard between ordnance weapons and chemical weapons, when in reality we have not made the utmost effort to ensure that minimum harm comes to non-combatants.

Horseshit. It is true that there are unavoidable casualties when dropping bombs against facilities and emplacements, but there are still incidiary weapons in the US arsenal which are primarily designed for use against personnel, e.g. the infamous Mark 77 ‘Firebug’. We can pretend that we are all too superior to deign to use “weapons of mass destruction” and only employ “clean” explosive and incindiary weapons, but the reality is that warfare inevitably descends to the most effective weapons and tactics, however inhumane they may be, and civilian populations often bear a disproportionate amount of the casualities, especially when they are being used as a screen for the opposition. This is what it is, and no amount of either spin or intention will change it. This consideration needs to be factored into any decision to go to war; that regardless of intention, we will kill many innocent people in our actions, and that cost needs to be weighed against any real and tangible benefit. Going to war “to bring democracy to <wherever>” is usually a screen for some other, more self-serving agenda that ignores the suffering of the people on the ground.

Stranger