Syria

[Lady's Human]

Dear NATO leaders,

Stay out of Syria.

Please.

Yes, it's terrible that Assad is using chemweps against his own people.

However, it appears that it isn't just a weapon being used by the Government forces.

That being the case, and also being that the forces Assad is fighting just happen to be backed (evidently) by Iran, this is a no-win situation for the west.

A few cruise missiles or bombs will do exactly nothing to the tactical situation on the ground, and will, in fact, deteriorate the position of the United States and the rest of NATO politically. The bombs/missiles will be portrayed as hitting innocent civilians (regardless of who they actually hit), and will prove that NATO is a toothless tiger.

Irritate NATO, and you just have to hide your command and control assets for a while while NATO rains a few missiles down on your populace to demonstrate that they're irritated and paying attention. Nothing of any actual importance will follow, so go ahead and poke them in the eye all you want. Even better, you might get significant backing out of your intransigence, as Russia will take advantage of your actions and use NATO's limp reaction to gain political points in the great game.

CNN will cover the missile strikes, the armchair generals and admirals will sit and comment on what a wonderful job the troops did, and everyone will move on to the next distraction, be it Miley Cyrus or Kim Kardashian. The net effect on the ground will be nothing, but the ravening beast (the media) will have been fed and move on.

Again, NATO, stay out. Stop talking about red lines. You let them cross the last 3 "red lines" laid out by Pres. Obama, what's one more? You've already proven your threats are toothless.

If the chemweps cross borders, then get involved. Until then, however, you're firing missiles to no good end other than an immediate "feel good" news story that we did something, when the reality would be that we accomplished nothing in the near term, and eroded our political and military positions in the long term.

[pomtzu]

AMEN to that!

[phesina]

Would that they would actually listen to you here. Sigh....

[Karen]

It isn't like we need to be involved in yet another war ... Our prayers for the people and pets of Syria!

[smokey the elder]

IMO Syria is a no-win proposition. Arm the rebels? How do we know which faction is which? We tried that in Afghanistan 30+ years ago, which contributed to the birth of Al Qaeda. But the President said that chemical warfare would "cross a red line" and put himself between a rock and a hard place.

[RICHARD]

An aside from the topic? I don't want to hijack the thread and have one thought about the whole situation?

One thing that puzzles the eff out of me is the question "Are chemical weapons being used?"

When you see people dead in the streets that have no visible wounds or injuries what else would the die from?

I know there is a question of how and of what they died from, but what other weapon/system kills with out any obvious physical signs?

[smokey the elder]

It sure looks like chemical weapons are being used. The USA, unfortunately, has a poor track record dealing with possible CW usage (looked the other way while Saddam gassed the Kurds in 1988) and took off after false-positives in 2003.

[Lady's Human]

I have no doubt chem weaps are being used.

The question is who is controlling them. It appears BOTH sides have used them, so attacking the Assad government for using them when previous attacks may have been made by the rebels is fairly absurd.

To compare what Hussein did in the '80s to what is going on in Syria now doesn't quite fit. Hussein eliminated close to an entire population. In Syria they are evidently being used in very small amounts, and they're using non-persistent agents where Hussein used persistent agents. As an illustration of how small the amounts they're using in Syria, a golf-ball sized dose of sarin dispersed in a crowd could kill thousands. (I'm assuming Sarin, seems to be the nerve agent of choice in the area, I'm not volunteering to go over with an M-256 kit and find out)

As to false positives in 2003, I'm yet to be convinced that the positives were false, too many dispersed incidents from soldiers in theater where agent monitors went off.

[Karen]

It is just a sad, no-win situation. It is a civil war, and while I believe those using chemical weapons need to understand that is NOT okay with the rest of the world, I don't see how any bomb is going to have that effect. I just do not. It is the old "using a cannon as a flyswatter" problem - bombs don;t discriminate, innocent people will die, and it will be chaos.

I have not heard from the Syrian lady whose cat was Cat of the Day lately, I hope she and her cats are okay!

[Catty1]

Apparently the UK has backed down on attacking Syria, at least for now: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10272555/Cameron-backs-down-on-urgent-Syria-strikes.html

[Catty1]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/08/29/9-questions-about-syria-you-were-too-embarrassed-to-ask/

By Max Fisher (http://www.washingtonpost.com/max-fisher/2012/10/10/9d0a891e-12e7-11e2-a16b-2c110031514a_page.html), Published: August 29 at 12:50 pm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/files/2013/08/syriaForMax-2.jpg



The United States and allies are preparing for a possibly imminent series of limited military strikes against Syria, the first direct U.S. intervention in the two-year civil war, in retaliation for President Bashar al-Assad’s suspected use of chemical weapons against civilians. If you found the above sentence kind of confusing, or aren’t exactly sure why Syria is fighting a civil war, or even where Syria is located, then this is the article for you. What’s happening in Syria is really important, but it can also be confusing and difficult to follow even for those of us glued to it.
Here, then, are the most basic answers to your most basic questions. First, a disclaimer: Syria and its history are really complicated; this is not an exhaustive or definitive account of that entire story, just some background, written so that anyone can understand it.
Read the rest of our “9 questions you were too embarrassed to ask” series here (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/tag/9-questions/)
1. What is Syria?
Syria is a country in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It’s about the same size as Washington state with a population a little over three times as large – 22 million. Syria is very diverse, ethnically and religiously, but most Syrians are ethnic Arab and follow the Sunni branch of Islam. Civilization in Syria goes back thousands of years, but the country as it exists today is very young. Its borders were drawn by European colonial powers in the 1920s.
Syria is in the middle of an extremely violent civil war. Fighting between government forces and rebels has killed more 100,000 and created 2 million refugees, half of them children (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/un-says-child-refugees-fleeing-syria-violence-tops-1-million-mark/2013/08/23/b63571d6-0bb3-11e3-89fe-abb4a5067014_story.html).


2. Why are people in Syria killing each other?
The killing started in April 2011, when peaceful protests inspired by earlier revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia rose up to challenge the dictatorship running the country. The government responded — there is no getting around this — like monsters. First, security forces quietly killed activists. Then they started kidnapping, raping, torturing and killing activists and their family members, including a lot of children (http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/12/syrias-war-against-children/249941/), dumping their mutilated bodies by the sides of roads. Then troops began simply opening fire on protests. Eventually, civilians started shooting back.
Fighting escalated from there until it was a civil war. Armed civilians organized into rebel groups. The army deployed across the country, shelling and bombing whole neighborhoods and towns, trying to terrorize people into submission. They’ve also allegedly used chemical weapons, which is a big deal for reasons I’ll address below. Volunteers from other countries joined the rebels, either because they wanted freedom and democracy for Syria or, more likely, because they are jihadists who hate Syria’s secular government. The rebels were gaining ground for a while and now it looks like Assad is coming back. There is no end in sight.


3. That’s horrible. But there are protests lots of places. How did it all go so wrong in Syria? And, please, just give me the short version.
That’s a complicated question, and there’s no single, definitive answer. This is the shortest possible version — stay with me, it’s worth it. You might say, broadly speaking, that there are two general theories. Both start with the idea that Syria has been a powder keg waiting to explode for decades and that it was set off, maybe inevitably, by the 2011 protests and especially by the government’s overly harsh crackdown.
Before we dive into the theories, you have to understand that the Syrian government really overreacted when peaceful protests started in mid-2011, slaughtering civilians unapologetically, which was a big part of how things escalated as quickly as they did. Assad learned this from his father. In 1982, Assad’s father and then-dictator Hafez al-Assad responded to a Muslim Brotherhood-led uprising in the city of Hama by leveling entire neighborhoods (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/opinion/the-new-hama-rules.html). He killed thousands of civilians, many of whom had nothing to do with the uprising. But it worked, and it looks like the younger Assad tried to reproduce it. His failure made the descent into chaos much worse.
Okay, now the theories for why Syria spiraled so wildly. The first is what you might call “sectarian re-balancing” or “the Fareed Zakaria case (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/06/17/fareed-zakarias-case-against-u-s-involvement-in-syria/)” for why Syria is imploding (he didn’t invent this argument but is a major proponent). Syria has artificial borders that were created by European colonial powers, forcing together an amalgam of diverse religious and ethnic groups. Those powers also tended to promote a minority and rule through it, worsening preexisting sectarian tensions.
Zakaria’s argument is that what we’re seeing in Syria is in some ways the inevitable re-balancing of power along ethnic and religious lines. He compares it to the sectarian bloodbath in Iraq after the United States toppled Saddam Hussein, after which a long-oppressed majority retook power from, and violently punished, the former minority rulers. Most Syrians are Sunni Arabs, but the country is run by members of a minority sect known as Alawites (they’re ethnic Arab but follow a smaller branch of Islam). The Alawite government rules through a repressive dictatorship and gives Alawites special privileges (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/03/15/the-alawite-lane/), which makes some Sunnis and other groups hate Alawites in general, which in turn makes Alawites fear that they’ll be slaughtered en masse if Assad loses the war. (There are other minorities as well, such as ethnic Kurds and Christian Arabs; too much to cover in one explainer.) Also, lots of Syrian communities are already organized into ethnic or religious enclaves, which means that community militias are also sectarian militias. That would explain why so much of the killing in Syria has developed along sectarian lines. It would also suggest that there’s not much anyone can do to end the killing because, in Zakaria’s view, this is a painful but unstoppable process of re-balancing power.
The second big theory is a bit simpler: that the Assad regime was not a sustainable enterprise and it’s clawing desperately on its way down. Most countries have some kind of self-sustaining political order, and it looked for a long time like Syria was held together by a cruel and repressive but basically stable dictatorship. But maybe it wasn’t stable; maybe it was built on quicksand. Bashar al-Assad’s father Hafez seized power in a coup in 1970 after two decades of extreme political instability. His government was a product of Cold War meddling and a kind of Arab political identity crisis that was sweeping the region. But he picked the losing sides of both: the Soviet Union was his patron, and he followed a hard-line anti-Western nationalist ideology that’s now mostly defunct. The Cold War is long over, and most of the region long ago made peace with Israel and the United States; the Assad regime’s once-solid ideological and geopolitical identity is hopelessly outdated. But Bashar al-Assad, who took power in 2000 when his father died, never bothered to update it. So when things started going belly-up two years ago, he didn’t have much to fall back on except for his ability to kill people.


4. I hear a lot about how Russia still loves Syria, though. And Iran, too. What’s their deal?
Yeah, Russia is Syria’s most important ally. Moscow blocks the United Nations Security Council from passing anything that might hurt the Assad regime, which is why the United States has to go around the United Nations if it wants to do anything. Russia sends lots of weapons to Syria that make it easier for Assad to keep killing civilians and will make it much harder if the outside world ever wants to intervene.
The four big reasons that Russia wants to protect Assad, the importance of which vary depending on whom you ask, are: (1) Russia has a naval installation in Syria, which is strategically important and Russia’s last foreign military base (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/world/middleeast/russia-sends-warships-on-maneuvers-near-syria.html) outside the former Soviet Union; (2) Russia still has a bit of a Cold War mentality, as well as a touch of national insecurity, which makes it care very much about maintaining one of its last military alliances; (3) Russia also hates the idea of “international intervention” against countries like Syria because it sees this as Cold War-style Western imperialism and ultimately a threat to Russia; (4) Syria buys a lot of Russian military exports, and Russia needs the money.
Iran’s thinking in supporting Assad is more straightforward. It perceives Israel and the United States as existential threats and uses Syria to protect itself, shipping arms through Syria to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah and the Gaza-based militant group Hamas. Iran is already feeling isolated and insecure; it worries that if Assad falls it will lose a major ally and be cut off from its militant proxies, leaving it very vulnerable. So far, it looks like Iran is actually coming out ahead (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iran-emerging-as-victor-in-syrian-conflict/2013/06/11/345d92b2-d2c2-11e2-8cbe-1bcbee06f8f8_story.html): Assad is even more reliant on Tehran than he was before the war started.


5. This is all feeling really bleak and hopeless. Can we take a music break?
Oh man, it gets so much worse. But, yeah, let’s listen to some music from Syria. It’s really good!
If you want to go old-school you should listen to the man, the legend, the great Omar Souleyman (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgRUHIeaKOk) (playing Brooklyn this Saturday (http://issueprojectroom.org/drupal/event/omar-souleyman-bobb-trimble-75-dollar-bill-steve-gunn)!). Or, if you really want to get your revolutionary on, listen to the infectious 2011 anti-Assad anthem “Come on Bashar leave.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCS8SsFOBAI) The singer, a cement mixer who made Rage Against the Machine look like Enya, was killed for performing it in Hama (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/world/middleeast/22poet.html?pagewanted=all). But let’s listen to something non-war and bit more contemporary, the soulful and foot-tappable George Wassouf:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAnbdjGk3CU&feature=player_embedded


Hope you enjoyed that, because things are about to go from depressing to despondent.


6. Why hasn’t the United States fixed this yet?
Because it can’t. There are no viable options. Sorry.
The military options are all bad. Shipping arms to rebels, even if it helps them topple Assad, would ultimately empower jihadists and worsen rebel in-fighting, probably leading to lots of chaos and possibly a second civil war (the United States made this mistake during Afghanistan’s early 1990s civil war, which helped the Taliban take power in 1996). Taking out Assad somehow would probably do the same, opening up a dangerous power vacuum. Launching airstrikes or a “no-fly zone” could suck us in, possibly for years, and probably wouldn’t make much difference on the ground. An Iraq-style ground invasion would, in the very best outcome, accelerate the killing, cost a lot of U.S. lives, wildly exacerbate anti-Americanism in a boon to jihadists and nationalist dictators alike, and would require the United States to impose order for years across a country full of people trying to kill each other. Nope.
The one political option, which the Obama administration has been pushing for, would be for the Assad regime and the rebels to strike a peace deal. But there’s no indication that either side is interested in that, or that there’s even a viable unified rebel movement with which to negotiate.
It’s possible that there was a brief window for a Libya-style military intervention early on in the conflict. But we’ll never really know.


7. So why would Obama bother with strikes that no one expects to actually solve anything?
Okay, you’re asking here about the Obama administration’s not-so-subtle signals that it wants to launch some cruise missiles at Syria, which would be punishment for what it says is Assad’s use of chemical weapons against civilians.
It’s true that basically no one believes that this will turn the tide of the Syrian war. But this is important: it’s not supposed to (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/08/27/heres-why-obama-is-giving-up-the-element-of-surprise-in-syria/). The strikes wouldn’t be meant to shape the course of the war or to topple Assad, which Obama thinks would just make things worse anyway. They would be meant to punish Assad for (allegedly) using chemical weapons and to deter him, or any future military leader in any future war, from using them again.


8. Come on, what’s the big deal with chemical weapons? Assad kills 100,000 people with bullets and bombs but we’re freaked out over 1,000 who maybe died from poisonous gas? That seems silly.
You’re definitely not the only one who thinks the distinction is arbitrary and artificial. But there’s a good case to be made that this is a rare opportunity, at least in theory, for the United States to make the war a little bit less terrible — and to make future wars less terrible.
The whole idea that there are rules of war is a pretty new one: the practice of war is thousands of years old, but the idea that we can regulate war to make it less terrible has been around for less than a century. The institutions that do this are weak and inconsistent; the rules are frail and not very well observed. But one of the world’s few quasi-successes is the “norm” (a fancy way of saying a rule we all agree to follow) against chemical weapons. This norm is frail enough that Syria could drastically weaken it if we ignore Assad’s use of them, but it’s also strong enough that it’s worth protecting. So it’s sort of a low-hanging fruit: firing a few cruise missiles doesn’t cost us much and can maybe help preserve this really hard-won and valuable norm against chemical weapons.
You didn’t answer my question. That just tells me that we can maybe preserve the norm against chemical weapons, not why we should.
Fair point. Here’s the deal: war is going to happen. It just is. But the reason that the world got together in 1925 for the Geneva Convention to ban chemical weapons is because this stuff is really, really good at killing civilians but not actually very good at the conventional aim of warfare, which is to defeat the other side. You might say that they’re maybe 30 percent a battlefield weapon and 70 percent a tool of terror. In a world without that norm against chemical weapons, a military might fire off some sarin gas because it wants that battlefield advantage, even if it ends up causing unintended and massive suffering among civilians, maybe including its own. And if a military believes its adversary is probably going to use chemical weapons, it has a strong incentive to use them itself. After all, they’re fighting to the death.
So both sides of any conflict, not to mention civilians everywhere, are better off if neither of them uses chemical weapons. But that requires believing that your opponent will never use them, no matter what. And the only way to do that, short of removing them from the planet entirely, is for everyone to just agree in advance to never use them and to really mean it. That becomes much harder if the norm is weakened because someone like Assad got away with it. It becomes a bit easier if everyone believes using chemical weapons will cost you a few inbound U.S. cruise missiles.
That’s why the Obama administration apparently wants to fire cruise missiles at Syria, even though it won’t end the suffering, end the war or even really hurt Assad that much.


9. Hi, there was too much text so I skipped to the bottom to find the big take-away. What’s going to happen?
Short-term maybe the United States and some allies will launch some limited, brief strikes against Syria and maybe they won’t. Either way, these things seem pretty certain in the long-term:
• The killing will continue, probably for years. There’s no one to sign a peace treaty on the rebel side, even if the regime side were interested, and there’s no foreseeable victory for either. Refugees will continue fleeing into neighboring countries, causing instability and an entire other humanitarian crisis as conditions in the camps worsen.
• Syria as we know it, an ancient place with a rich and celebrated culture and history, will be a broken, failed society, probably for a generation or more. It’s very hard to see how you rebuild a functioning state after this. Maybe worse, it’s hard to see how you get back to a working social contract where everyone agrees to get along.
• Russia will continue to block international action, the window for which has maybe closed anyway. The United States might try to pressure, cajole or even horse-trade Moscow into changing its mind, but there’s not much we can offer them that they care about as much as Syria.
• At some point the conflict will cool, either from a partial victory or from exhaustion. The world could maybe send in some peacekeepers or even broker a fragile peace between the various ethnic, religious and political factions. Probably the best model is Lebanon, which fought a brutal civil war that lasted 15 years from 1975 to 1990 and has been slowly, slowly recovering ever since. It had some bombings just last week (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/northern-lebanese-city-buries-it-dead-after-double-bomb-attack/2013/08/24/ff4d6eb8-0cf9-11e3-89fe-abb4a5067014_story.html).

[Bonny]

Thank you Catty1 an interesting read. It answers some of the questions I had about Syria & its people.

[Karen]

Some of the answers were quite interesting that dissected the various factions at play - it is such a complex situation, we wish it could resolved peacefully.

[Lady's Human]

Bad history.

The arms to Afghan rebels was during the Soviet occupation, not during their civil war.

The borders of the entire region were drawn after World War 1 (excluding Russia and the United States in the particular negotiations) by the victorious allies. France and Britain partitioned the remnants of the Ottoman Empire between themselves, leaving a mess that we're still dealing with, as the powers paid no heed to tribal areas and traditional borders.

[lizbud]

I believe the President was right to put this intervention to a vote by Congress. I hope this is defeated. The whole thing seems to get
more complicated by the day.

[Catty1]

There's a petition from Avaaz making the rounds calling for "bold diplomacy". What the heck is that?

[cassiesmom]

What will happen if Obama does not get congressional approval for military action in Syria, I wonder? Also - why aren't the world leaders at the G-20 summit leaning on Putin, since they happen to all be there?

[Bonny]

It is to the point now where I think they should send our President & the of whole Congress Republicans & Democrats to Syria. Please we don't need to get involved in another war! :eek:

My nephew fought in Iraq. What he saw was tribal warfare amongst Iraq's. Is this part of their religion? Is this a norm with the people in the Near East-Middle East?

Did Syria get their chemicals for germ warfare from Iraq? Was President Bush fed the correct information before the Iraq War about those chemicals?

[Lady's Human]

The chemical weapons issue has been discussed to death in other threads. They are not practicing germ warfare, if they were, I'd be in a different frame of mind in this.

As to what happens if.....

If Congress votes, and turns down the resolution to use force, it SHOULD support the Constitutional division of powers and end the possibility of US intervention. However, as I'm typing this, it looks like the quisling in power in the House isn't going to even bring the measure to a floor to the vote, as Mr. Speaker knows the resolution would fail, and he doesn't want to embarrass the President. In this instance, the President SHOULD be embarrassed, as he made statements which were at odds with the strategic intentions of the United States as well as the tactical reality.

As to the G-20, the only members of the G-20 who have expressed any intention of doing anything are the French and the United States. Being in agreement with the French leadership in a situation like this should be enough to give anyone pause. Besides, Pres. Obama burned a lot of potential political capital by bowing out of Poland over pressure from Russia. Putin OWNS him, and the diplomats are well aware of it.

Syria isn't Iraq. They have been fighting Israel and their internal opponents for years. It would not be a cakewalk, especially if Russia decides to supply them with some new anti-shipping missiles in the time when Congress and the President are dithering.

As to the fractious nature of the Syrian opposition, one has to look at the awkward, forced constructs which are the current states in the area. They are artificial borders imposed by the west with no regards to historical reality or tribal areas. This is why there are Kurdish areas in Turkey and Iraq, to use one blatant example.

[Bonny]

The chemical weapons issue has been discussed to death in other threads. They are not practicing germ warfare, if they were, I'd be in a different frame of mind in this.

As to what happens if.....

If Congress votes, and turns down the resolution to use force, it SHOULD support the Constitutional division of powers and end the possibility of US intervention. However, as I'm typing this, it looks like the quisling in power in the House isn't going to even bring the measure to a floor to the vote, as Mr. Speaker knows the resolution would fail, and he doesn't want to embarrass the President. In this instance, the President SHOULD be embarrassed, as he made statements which were at odds with the strategic intentions of the United States as well as the tactical reality.

As to the G-20, the only members of the G-20 who have expressed any intention of doing anything are the French and the United States. Being in agreement with the French leadership in a situation like this should be enough to give anyone pause. Besides, Pres. Obama burned a lot of potential political capital by bowing out of Poland over pressure from Russia. Putin OWNS him, and the diplomats are well aware of it.

Syria isn't Iraq. They have been fighting Israel and their internal opponents for years. It would not be a cakewalk, especially if Russia decides to supply them with some new anti-shipping missiles in the time when Congress and the President are dithering.

As to the fractious nature of the Syrian opposition, one has to look at the awkward, forced constructs which are the current states in the area. They are artificial borders imposed by the west with no regards to historical reality or tribal areas. This is why there are Kurdish areas in Turkey and Iraq, to use one blatant example.

What if maybe nothing happens? There is a stalemate? What if Syria is left to settle their own differences?

If not germ warfare what did all those people in Syria suddenly die from?

What I have read France & Great Britain set the boundaries? Maybe they should get in there & fix things?

Once again the big power players using pawns to fight their war?

What do our children's children, children, children have to look forward to? :confused: A world that is suppose to be civil? It has a long way to go. If ever?

[Lady's Human]

What if maybe nothing happens? There is a stalemate? What if Syria is left to settle their own differences?

If not germ warfare what did all those people in Syria suddenly die from?

Chemical warfare, which is a completely different kettle of fish. Think of Ortho Human-be-gone instead of Bug-be-gone. Chemical warfare would consist of lingering biological attacks using weaponized anthrax. It would take weeks instead of minutes for the victims to die.

Syria SHOULD be left to settle it amongst themselves. It's a civil war, completely internal, and we have no business getting involved.

[Lady's Human]

Every once in a while The Onion hits close to home:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/poll-majority-of-americans-approve-of-sending-cong,33752/


WASHINGTON—As President Obama continues to push for a plan of limited military intervention in Syria, a new poll of Americans has found that though the nation remains wary over the prospect of becoming involved in another Middle Eastern war, the vast majority of U.S. citizens strongly approve of sending Congress to Syria.

The New York Times/CBS News poll showed that though just 1 in 4 Americans believe that the United States has a responsibility to intervene in the Syrian conflict, more than 90 percent of the public is convinced that putting all 535 representatives of the United States Congress on the ground in Syria—including Senate pro tempore Patrick Leahy, House Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and, in fact, all current members of the House and Senate—is the best course of action at this time.

“I believe it is in the best interest of the United States, and the global community as a whole, to move forward with the deployment of all U.S. congressional leaders to Syria immediately,” respondent Carol Abare, 50, said in the nationwide telephone survey, echoing the thoughts of an estimated 9 in 10 Americans who said they “strongly support” any plan of action that involves putting the U.S. House and Senate on the ground in the war-torn Middle Eastern state. “With violence intensifying every day, now is absolutely the right moment—the perfect moment, really—for the United States to send our legislators to the region.”

“In fact, my preference would have been for Congress to be deployed months ago,” she added

[cassiesmom]

What if the country that was using chemical weapons against its own people happened to be an ally of the U.S.? Would we still use missiles against them? Assad gets away with killing his own people via chemical weapons and the world does nothing. What happens when the next dictator decides to use an even stronger chemical weapon to achieve the same end? Chemicals don't exactly understand international borders; what happens if a chemical weapon - oops! - drifts over a border and kills people from a different country? Where does it end?

[Lady's Human]

Assad gets away with killing his own people via chemical weapons and the world does nothing.

And his own people were also using chemical weapons in their attacks on government forces. They're all bad actors.




What happens when the next dictator decides to use an even stronger chemical weapon to achieve the same end? Chemicals don't exactly understand international borders; what happens if a chemical weapon - oops! - drifts over a border and kills people from a different country? Where does it end?

Sarin is about one of the nastiest agents to deal with. However, it's non-persistent, and is broken down rapidly by water and sunlight.

I'd go into a dissertation on the effects of various agents, but the reason NATO forces don't use them are twofold:

1) Nasty for your own troops to handle and deploy.

2) impossible to control, weather has more control over the agents than the deploying troops.

There are persistent agents, non-persistent agents, blood agents, blister agents, mustards, the possibilities are many.

As insane as Hafez Assad appears to be, however, he's not dumb enough to let Sarin drift into Israel.

[Catty1]

http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/assad-gov-t-accepts-plan-to-relinquish-control-of-chemical-weapons-strike-momentum-eases-1.1447726

Lori Hinnant, The Associated Press
Published Tuesday, September 10, 2013 6:49AM EDT
Last Updated Tuesday, September 10, 2013 12:45PM EDT
PARIS -- Momentum to avoid Western missile strikes on Syria intensified Tuesday, as President Bashar Assad's government accepted a plan to turn over its chemical weapons stockpile and France pitched a UN Security Council resolution to verify the disarmament.
With domestic support for a strike uncertain in the United States and little international appetite to join forces against Assad, the developments had the potential to blunt a thorny diplomatic problem and allow the Obama administration to back away from military action.
But neither effort attempts to end or even address the civil war that has left more than 100,000 dead in Syria and the main opposition bloc dismissed the chemical weapons plan as a largely meaningless measure that would allow Assad free rein to fight on with conventional weapons.
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Caught in a Syrian Civil War: Visual history of the messy and cruel conflict


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Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem speaks to the media in Moscow, Monday, Sept. 9, 2013. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)



Syria's foreign minister said the government would accept a plan from Russia, its most powerful ally, to give up its chemical weapons in order "to thwart U.S. aggression," offering a diplomatic option for how to respond to the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack that the Obama administration, France and others blame on Assad.
Damascus denies its forces were behind the attack. The U.S. has said more than 1,400 Syrians died; even conservative estimates from international organizations put the toll at several hundred.
France, a permanent member of the 15-nation Security Council, will start the process at the United Nations on Tuesday under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which is militarily enforceable, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said at a news conference organized shortly after meeting with the French president.
U.S. President Barack Obama threw his support behind the resolution even as he pushed the idea of U.S. airstrikes against Assad's regime if that effort fails. British Prime Minister David Cameron said his country would join France and the U.S. in putting forward the proposal.


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Fabius said the French resolution would demand that Syria open its chemical weapons program to inspection, place it under international control, and ultimately dismantle it. A violation of that commitment, he said, would carry "very serious consequences." The resolution would condemn the attack and bring those responsible to justice, he said.
Fabius expressed caution that French authorities "don't want to fall into a trap" that could allow Assad's regime to skirt accountability or buy time.
"We do not want this to be used as a diversion," Fabius said. "It is by accepting these precise conditions that we will judge the credibility of the intentions expressed yesterday."
The details and timeframe of the French proposal remained vague, but Fabius said he expected a "nearly immediate" and tangible commitment from Syria. Within two hours, he had a response from his Syrian counterpart, Walid al-Moallem.
"We agreed to the Russian initiative as it should thwart the U.S. aggression against our country," he said.
Moallem's comments amounted to the first formal admissions by top Syrian officials that Damascus even possesses chemical weapons. In interviews aired as recently as Monday, Assad repeatedly refused to acknowledge whether his regime did.
Russia is now working with Damascus to prepare a detailed plan of action that will be presented soon, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. Russia will then be ready to finalize the plan with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.


Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/assad-gov-t-accepts-plan-to-relinquish-control-of-chemical-weapons-strike-momentum-eases-1.1447726#ixzz2eWCc12Zu