No Thanks, We Don’t Need Your Help

Questions surrounding the recent nerve gas attack in Syria have come up.  Here are a few brief answers.

Why would Syria’s government attack rebels with nerve gas now, when they supposedly have the upper hand?  First, they may have thought we wouldn’t be paying attention, what with the massacres in Egypt.  Second, they only have the upper hand as long as they are willing to use weapons of overkill: Scud missiles, air strikes, artillery, and nerve gas.  They have used nerve gas in localized attacks over the last year, against rebel front lines that were subsequently over-run.  In the recent attack, gas was used as a small part of an intense attack on civilians who have refused to evacuate rebel-held areas.  The attack may have killed many more than expected because it occurred at night and most victims were sheltering or sleeping in basements where the gas would accumulate.

Why can’t the rebels just as easily procure and use nerve gas?  Because sarin has a short shelf life.  The ingredients have to be prepared, stored, and delivered by units with special training and equipment.  The big news last winter was that the Syrian government was mixing up a fresh batch of sarin, which will probably be good for a year or less.  The Syrians probably don’t have the “binary” capability, in which the gas is actually created when the missile is fired.  Instead, they mix up a batch of gas when they expect to need it in the near future.

Why is any military action by the Western Powers [TM] likely to be insignificant and yet still resented by Arabs everywhere?  First, President Obama has specifically limited the aims of a military strike to deter and degrade the Syrian capability to use nerve gas rather than to tilt the balance on the battlefield.  Second, Arabs have been so ill-treated by Westerners over the years that they are suspicious of any activity that might be construed as interference.

This is an important point, and not understood by most in the West.  The Arabs in general are so suspicious of Westerners that they do not even appreciate the NATO military action in Libya that led to the overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi, action that would be characterized by objective observers as a big help in the liberation of the Arab world.  Westerners, and particularly the British and Americans, have abused and occupied  Arab countries for many years, going back to the Crusades a thousand years ago.  The occupation of Afghanistan, first by the Soviets and then by the Americans, followed by the occupation of Iraq, are only the most recent of impositions on Arab sensibilities.  Western support of Israel is seen by Arabs as perfidy.  Iranians have still not forgotten the CIA-sponsored coup in 1953 that deposed an elected government and substituted a monarch beholden to the British and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which was offended by nationalization of its assets in Iran.

Western “interference” in Syria will not be appreciated, at least in public, by any Arab country.  Only private thanks will come from conservative Sunni oligarchies like Saudi Arabia.  If Syria can be deterred from continuing to use nerve gas on its people, some good might come from military action.  This seems unlikely.  Larger massacres might prompt more decisive military action.  Is this what has to happen to stop the atrocities?

Looking back to World War Two, it is a little known fact that the Nazis intended to use nerve gas but apparently never got around to it.  The Nazis produced large quantities of the first nerve gas, tabun, and a small quantity of sarin.  At war’s end, a full-scale production facility for sarin was still under construction, but many tons of tabun had been conveniently installed in artillery shells, ready for use.  Hitler may have been hesitant to use chemical warfare because he had been wounded at the end of WWI in a mustard gas attack, leaving him with nightmares of suffocation.  It is also likely that Hitler did not use chemicals because tabun was so secret that he did not know the Allies only had mustard gas and their retaliation to Nazi use of tabun or sarin would have been ineffective.

It is well to remember that the Nazi philosophy of “might makes right” has not disappeared from the world.