04-15-2017, 11:27 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-15-2017, 11:54 PM by Warren Dew.)
(04-11-2017, 06:42 PM)Mikebert Wrote: The reason I am curious is a chemical attack of this sort by the Syrian government makes no sense to me. It appears to offer no benefit to Assad while making Putin look bad and turning a neutral Trump administration into a belligerent. On the other hand it seems to make sense for regime opponents.
Given the possibility that we jumped the gun last time (which might be why Obama never carried out any airstrikes after Russia granted him a face-saving way to back down) I am not so quick to just accept our government's word that Assad was definitely responsible.
It seems to me there is a way to test this. If it really was a regime opponent who had the chemical munitions, we should see more of this.
It made sense for Assad because, what with regaining territory, he had a population to pacify. Gassing Sunnis would help him rule through fear. At best, he could keep using these attacks. At worst, he probably thought, there would be another Russia brokered "deal", making him useful to Putin as a way of magnifying Russia's geopolitical influence.
Instead, there was an air strike. But he still only lost a few warplanes. It's probably enough to keep him from using nerve gas again, but it's not a big loss for him.
The reason to think the regime was the perpetrator rather than their opponents is because the effective dispersion of the nerve gas required weaponization which is available to the Assad regime but not to the other suspects.