It’s hard for me to see the motive in this. He knows that doing so will risk having major powers drawn in to the war against him. I can see the reason for doing it if he was down for the count, and/or if he did a major game-changing attack. But as it is, momentum of late seems to be on his side, and these seem to be small time attacks. The risk doesn’t seem to be worth the reward.
Could he be miscalculating that chemical weapons will make other powers less likely to intervene rather than more? Or could he be testing out his chemical weapons arsenal is preparation for possible larger scale attacks later on? Those are the only possibilities that I can think of.
I think he witnessed what Saddam got away with in the 80s, and does not believe the major powers are going to intervene in any significant way. Chuck Hagel said the US wouldn’t do anything without Britain and France. That means all that will happen for the next few weeks is a UN resolution or something.
The worst Obama is going to do is lob some missiles - not enough to defeat Assad, because missiles can’t do that. But Obama has to do something to save face after his silly “red line” remarks about the irrevocability of WMD use. It’s not going to make any difference, apart from that.
The rebels aren’t any better than Assad. The worst case scenario here is that there is a long-drawn out civil war where hundreds of thousands of Syrians die. Best case scenario is pretty much the same. Or else Assad will win, and then wipe out the rebels, or the rebels will win, and then wipe out each other until one group is left. Then that one group turns into a brutal, repressive Islamo-fascist regime instead of a brutal repressive secular regime like Assad’s.
OK, but what’s in it for him? He’s killing a lot of people without it. This scale of attack is at best some marginal battlefield advantage. Balance that against the risk. I can’t see it.?
It’s to terrorize the remaining rebels, by showing them what can happen to them and their families if they continue to resist. Remember his father destroyed an entire city for the same reason.
It shows the world what he’s capable of doing *outside *Syria’s borders, if there’s a military intervention. Nerve gas is pretty easy to move around and release.
It also shows what can happen if an attack happens to hit one of the gas depots, and thereby makes target selection far more difficult. We may or may not know where the stuff is being held at any given time, and do we dare risk releasing any as the result of a strike?
I’m wondering if this might be a “false flag” attack by the rebels. Like the OP said, I just can’t imagine how Assad could conclude that the (marginal) rewards outweight the (massive) risks. OTOH, if the rebels managed to get their hands on some nerve gas, what’s to stop them from gassing a friendly village and claiming it was the Assad regime?
Also, I’ve noticed that the attack seems to have hit mostly (exclusively?) civilians, misssing the actual rebels themselves.
Doesn’t really make sense to use nerve agents in your own city. Even with a short-lived agent, too much risk of blowback.
But something like CS gas could be useful, and still be termed ‘chemical warfare’ for retaliation purposes.
In addition to the reasons ElvisL1ves mentions, it shows the world that he is a crazy fuck and can’t be messed with. Because he will stop at nothing.
I thinnk you are over-estimating the risk to Assad. He needs to scare off potential future rebels, as well as anyone who is considering invading Syria.
I too, do not believe Assad would commit such a blunder. It makes him look bad.
I suspect that the rebels found a few warheads loaded with sarin, and set them up like “IEDS”-they went off unexpectedly, and killed those unfortunate to be living in the neighborhood.
And why is the world so upset? When Assad’s daddy killed 50,000 people (in the city of Homs), nobody raised a peep-maybe because he killed them with artillery and machine gun fire, and not gas?:eek:
Something like a sixth of the victims were rebel soliders. So if it was a false-flag operation, they were willing to sacrifice some of their own to do it. Though the rebels aren’t super-unified, so I guess “some of their own” may have been a rival group.
Dunno. I agree this seems like a pretty bizarre move from Assad if it was him. On the other hand, my understanding is that to use chemical weapon shells, you have to actually launch them, you can’t just blow up a shell on the ground. I don’t think the rebels have artillery pieces.
Anyone likely to invade Syria will have equipment to deal with chemical weapons. As a deterant its pretty marginal. As a terror weapon its a little more effective, but I don’t think its really that much more effective then just blowing stuff up.
To use chemical artillery shells appropriately- as an area denial munition- would require firing them, properly fuzed and aimed.
Setting one off by accident in IED form is just barely plausible, I suppose. Chemical weapons are painted a different color and have different codes, but if you don’t know, you don’t know.
Cite: I’m a former artilleryman, I had to learn NATO and Warsaw Pact markings for artillery shells.
I am very skeptical that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons.
The rebel parties are losing in Syria and they are the party most likely to benefit from outside intervention from nations, or the UN, being outraged by their use.
Assad does not benefit at all from their use, nor are they militarily effective against the people that the Assad regime is fighting.
Ask yourself, who does the possible use of chemical weapons benefit? It benefits the rebel cause. How? By bringing in outside forces that will help win a war that the rebels have already lost.
This reeks of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” all over again. Obama’s words about a “red line” that shall not be crossed, regarding the use of chemical weapons, are being used to force him into action.
If the UN or the US decides to intervene then the rebels will win, Assad will be toppled like Saddam and Gaddafi. It is simple math. The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and it ain’t from the chemical weapons.
Actions are being forced upon us through manipulation of information.
So I have a sort of GQ question: if you see evidence that chemical weapons have been used, as the UN-sponsored team is trying to check for, how can you tell who has deployed them? And if you can’t be fairly sure who has deployed them, then how can you risk doing anything on one side or the other?
As someone started a thread to ask a while back, why is everyone so eager for Obama to get the US heavily involved in what is happening in Syria? It’s like our worst nightmare - a nutso, stop-at-nothing dictator and his cohorts and allies on one side, and a bunch of loosely affiliated rebel groups most of whose ideologies we cringe at, on the other. There is no credible group that will be able to govern without Assad, and if he is driven out instead of warfare they will have chaos, followed by something worse than Assad (yes, there are worse things than Assad).
If those who are hot to take action don’t have a very credible plan for governing Syria after Assad falls, then we will be in for another Iraq times 10 for horribleness.
Roddy
Depends on the evidence- back tracing artillery fire is an established art.
Chemical analysis might point towards a pure product, manufactured by the Soviets, or possibly could indicate a cruder home made product.
More than that, you’d have personal analysis, people talking to people, listening to people.
It is a good question that I really don’t understand either.
Perhaps Assad has seen the winds of political views on his regime, and realizes it is only a matter of time until the west intervenes in some form or another anyway. If so, using WMD isn’t going to ‘cause’ a heightened western intervention so much as accelerate it. From what I remember western nations like the US were calling on Assad to step down before this. So perhaps this was a calculated effort to intimidate the rebels to show them the west will not intervene (assuming the west doesn’t intervene). It could be a poker play, either Assad thinks the west will get involved anyway with or without WMD, or they will not get involved with or without WMD. But if his ploy plays out the west will create a new ‘line in the sand’ and the rebels will realize nobody is coming to help them.
Also in the run up to the Iraq war, international opinion was pretty divided. In this situation Russia & China are not willing to go along with the west, maybe he assumes it will lead to the international community not getting involved.
Or it could be that some officer got overeager and released the gas w/o authorization from higher ups. Perhaps he did it because he is secretly anti-Assad and wants the international community to intervene. If you are a Machiavellian officer in the Syrian army who wants Assad to fall, the fastest way to do it would be to use nerve gas on civilians to get the western world involved on the rebel side.
Unless there s a group of “freedom fighters” that are solidly on our side and will promote our interests there is little justification in our involvement.
I’m a bit skeptical too that Assad would use them. Would the rebels use them, killing a lot of their own people just to blame it on the Assad regime? Hmmm…
Either way, it’s absolutely disgusting. Here come the drones.
If only. It would be most delightful to see a direct drone strike on Assad’s Presidential Palace (or whatever they call it).
Anyhow the same question could be asked about (for example) Milosevich-why did he continue ethnic cleansing despite the fact that most of the world was against it?