These initial attacks are what steer me to the conclusion that Assad was testing the legitimacy of our deterrent and was therefore in control and authorized the subsequent attacks on Ghouta. If the previous attacks were the result of a command issue it seems logical that this would have been resolved prior to Ghouta. Additionally with the US Red Line in place I can’t see any logical reason that Assad would grant unrestricted use of his CWs to the military. The only conclusion that I keep coming back to is that Assad was involved and authorized the CWs attacks, although perhaps not to the scale that ultimately played out.
This appears to be a misunderstanding: I haven’t said that any previous attack was a command issue, and I haven’t said that sarin wasn’t supposed to be used at Ghouta. None of that is even close to the reality. What I have said, and am saying, is that we know the Syrian military made a mistake at Ghouta and immediately panicked. The implications – for our disagreement about the word “scramble”; for what we know about Putin/Assad’s plans and intentions; and more – are as I spelled them out toward the bottom of my last post.
What I’m getting at here is that the difference between a chemical weapons attack and conventional attack does not just happen accidentally, particularly at this scale. This isn’t to say that the attack couldn’t have been carried out without full authorization of the Assad regime but that some party along the chain of command must have knowingly authorized the strikes as large scale CWs attacks.
I am interested to read more about the dialogue that took place the day of, unfortunately my WSJ registration expired a year or two ago so I couldn’t access the link you posted.
I believe those accounts were made when Russia/Syria was trying to pin the Ghouta attack on the resistance so yes I suppose you could state they are reductive. Nonetheless it highlights my concern as to why any of the CWs attacks were carried out in the first place? If they were used in error it wouldn’t have persisted, if they were used out of necessity they would have been used in more decisive fashion, it seems the intent was directed towards challenging US demands. (note that I could understand how the Ghouta attacks could possibly have been carried out on a larger scale than the regime anticipated.)
Also fwiw I share your concerns regarding the stockpiles in Syria, the significance of the threat they posed is largely downplayed.
This gets to a somewhat central proposition of my argument in that the anticipated “punishment” was far greater than what occurred. As an aside note the comparison between WMD pursuit and active use against civilian targets is in my opinion night and day with regard to views on common human values. This may not necessarily be inline with a rational foreign policy in the explicit scope of US interests but nonetheless I find it morally unacceptable that no one is held directly responsible.
Actually, we do not disagree on the underlying premise, save potentially for the centuries old hatreds. And that’s simply because those hatreds exist, in somewhat equal measure across the entirety of the ME and N. Africa and yet those people manage to get along, barring minor skirmishes here and there.
We are there because of a failed coup that started off peacefully until Assad’s forces starting shooting the protesters. There was no way we were going to be able to stay out of that. Once Assad started murdering his own people there was not a chance that international intervention could be avoided.
My beef is with the reaction. That the seriousness of the situation was played down. We were too slow to act and too little was done too late, where early intervention could have mitigated a great deal of the resultant misery that the Syrian people now live with on a daily basis.
Once the first shot was fired during the initial protests, U.S. intervention was a foregone conclusion. We failed to treat the cold until it turned into double pneumonia. And it’s much harder to fight pneumonia than a cold. Our patient is now in critical condition.
On a different note, have you ever wondered why the neighboring Arab countries are not taking in the refugees, while they insist the west must? Some have, Jordan and Lebanon have, but the most able Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, etc refuse to take any of them.