Trump,
Syria, and Chemical Weapons: What We Know, What We Don't, and the Dangers Ahead
www.commondreams.org/views/2017/04/06/trump-syria-and-chemical-weapons-what-we-know-what-we-dont-and-dangers-ahead
Thursday, April 06, 2017
Further military engagement by the U.S. is not the way to end
the horrific carnage
President Trump and King Abdullah II of Jordan hold a joint news
conference at the Rose Garden of the White House on Wednesday. (Photo: Alex
Wong / Getty Images)
Let's start with what we don't know. Experts remain uncertain what chemical(s)
were involved in the horrific chemical attack, almost certainly from the air,
on the village of Khan Sheikhun in Idlib province in Syria. The nerve
agent sarin, chlorine, and unknown combinations of chemicals have all been
identified as possible, but in the first 48 hours nothing has been confirmed.
We don't know for sure yet what it was that killed more than 75 people, many of
them children, and injured many more.
Crucially, we also don't know who was responsible. Western
governments, led by the United States, and much of the western press have
asserted that the Syrian regime is responsible, but there is still no clear
evidence. Certainly Damascus has an air force, has been known to use chemical, particularly
chlorine, weapons in 2014 and 2015. So that's certainly possible.
"A US military escalation against Syria (because we must
not forget that US Special Forces and US bombers are already fighting there)
will not help the victims of this heinous chemical attack, it will not bring
the devastating war in Syria to a quicker end, it will not bring back the dead
children."
The Syrian military denies using chemical weapons. Their
international backer, Russia, claims that the Syrian military did drop bombs in
the affected area but that the chemical effect was not in the bombs dropped but
rather from the explosion of an alleged chemical warehouse under the control of
unnamed rebel forces. The same report by the United Nations and the
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that found Syrian
government responsibility for chlorine attacks also found that ISIS had used
another chemical weapon, mustard gas, and investigated at least three other
chemical weapons attacks whose perpetrators could not be identified. So
that could be possible as well.
For a variety of reasons, some of these possibilities don't hold
up so well if the chemical used this week was the sarin nerve agent -- but we
don't know yet what it was.
There are some other, perhaps even more important things, that
we do know. We know that in 2013, at the time of an earlier, even more deadly
chemical weapon attack, similar accusations against the Syrian regime were
widely made, assumed to be true, and used as the basis for calls for direct US
military intervention in the civil war. And we know those accusations were
never proved, and that it remains uncertain even now, almost four years later,
who was actually responsible.
And we know that the bombing of Syria in 2013 was averted,
despite President Obama's "red line" being crossed, because an
enormous US and global campaign against such a disastrous escalation made it
politically too costly to launch a new US war. This was a president
willing but not eager, or driven, to go to war. When Obama turned
decision-making over to Congress, hundreds of thousands of people across the
United States called and wrote and emailed their representatives, urging them
to prevent a new war. In some offices calls were running six or seven hundred
to one against a new bombing campaign.
And we know that President Obama turned it over to Congress in
the first place because the British parliament, facing massive public
opposition, made clear that the UK would not join its US ally in going to war
against Syria. And eventually, when Congressional opposition became undeniable,
Russia provided the US with a way out, arranging for international collection
and destruction of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal. Chlorine was not included,
and it is certainly possible that Syria didn't declare all of its weapons, or
perhaps the precursor chemicals to make them, and but that claim was never
proven. Ultimately, though, a US attack was averted.
Much is different now from 2013. The state of the Syrian civil
war is far different - in 2013, the war was still new and uncertain; today it
is recognized as the world's most devastating conflict. There is little
chance of UK involvement in a military attack on Syria this time around, so the
sudden resistance of a key US ally isn't going to happen. Congress is not being
consulted, and it is very unclear whether Congressmembers of either party are
prepared to take on challenging a military campaign dressed up as a campaign
for justice.
At the United Nations, Trump's Ambassador Nikki Haley seemed to
be channeling George W. Bush even more than her actual boss. She threatened
that if the Security Council did not act according to US demands—meaning if it
resisted authorizing military escalation in Syria—that the US was prepared to
go alone. International law, the UN Charter, diplomacy be damned.
And this is a president, a cabinet, a White House with no
military or diplomatic experience, with no understanding of the complications
of the roiling Middle East conflicts or the consequences of war, and with a
personal eagerness to demonstrate power. This is not a president accountable to
a political party, to Congress and its constitutional role in military
decision-making, and certainly less accountable to international law.
"Trump's incoherent reaction showed the lack of any
strategic understanding in his foreign policy."
Trump's incoherent reaction on Wednesday
showed the lack of any strategic understanding in his foreign policy. He blames
former President Obama for the crisis in Syria, while Trump of course had urged
Obama not to attack Syria after the chemical bombing of 2013, tweeting in all caps "DO NOT ATTACK
SYRIA — IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN." He continued
that criticism of Obama, but then switched gears to brag about his
"flexibility," noting that "my attitude towards Syria and Assad
have changed very much." It was a clear implication he's considering a
military response, although he pulled back from any clarity on that as well.
Asked what his message would be to the Iranian militias supporting the Syrian
military, Trump first went off on an unrelated attack on the
Iranian nuclear deal, eventually circling back to a threatening but
vague "You will see what the message will be. They will have a
message."
And the anti-Trump resistance that rose so heroically from the
first moments of this presidency faces new challenges on a daily, even hourly
basis. The mobilizations—in the streets, at the airports, at the White House,
at the Supreme Court and beyond—and the letters and petitions and sit-ins and
teach-ins and more, have been incredibly powerful. Remobilizing those
exhausted millions around an anti-war message will be a huge challenge for
anti-war and indeed the whole range of social movements. As usual, much remains
unknown.
But we know two crucial things, things that were true then, and
remain true today. We know that using chemical weapons—of any sort, in
any war, against any target—is a crime. And we know there must ultimately be
accountability for those who use it, regardless of who they are. That will take
time.
In the meantime we know another truth: that a US military
escalation against Syria (because we must not forget that US Special Forces and
US bombers are already fighting there) will not help the victims of this
heinous chemical attack, it will not bring the devastating war in Syria to a
quicker end, it will not bring back the dead children. It will not defeat ISIS
or end terrorism, it will create more terrorists. It will almost certainly
cause more casualties, more injuries, and more dead. Maybe dead children.
There is still no military solution. This is what we know.
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Phyllis Bennis directs
the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. Her
most recent book is Understanding
ISIS and the New Global War on Terror. Other books include Understanding
the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer, Understanding
the U.S.-Iran Crisis: A Primer, Ending the Iraq
War: A Primer, and Ending the Us
War in Afghanistan: A Primer. If you want to receive her talking
points and articles on a regular basis, click here and
choose "New Internationalism." You can find her on Facebook
here: http://www.facebook.com/PhyllisBennis
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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