Why did they use Tomahawks? This is a pretty good explanation. As the article says, it was low payoff, but it was also low risk, and could be done quickly without having to coordinate with allies, as symbolism.
[Update a few minutes later]
What the Syria attack did, and didn’t do.
Related, a good write-up on the venerable TLAM by Sean Gallagher at ars.
My initial response was, “If I wanted to start a war with Russia, I would have voted for Hillary Clinton.”
The sense I get now is that some kind of “fix” is in.
Nerve gas in canisters dropped from Syrian jets? People are saying that nerve gas is a lot more deadly than that. I believe them because I read the labels of different chemicals used against insects when growing fruit, these chemicals are used in exceedingly low concentrations, and these formulations are chosen because they differentially target insects rather than people. I could see where a change in a chemical bond could reverse this.
We are now embroiled in a fight with the Russians? This after Russian “flaks” as much as hinted that their patience with their client in Syria has limits? After the Russians (and by extension their Assad-regime ally) received timely warning of “incoming”?
I get a feeling that this was U.S.-leadership-in-collective-world-security-against-the-use-of-chemical-weapons theatre; this is something the U.S. “had” to do, and the bluster of defending against any future strike is something that Russians, being Russians, have to do. This isn’t the U.S. being the “world’s policeman”, rather, the U.S. being the “world’s classroom teacher”?
It doesn’t matter whether it is Assad’s people or the rebels “had done it”, the international system on chemical weapons demands someone be “sent to the Principal’s office” for what happened, and I take some reassurance that the response was limited to that.
We are now embroiled in a fight with the Russians?
We have been in a proxy war with Russia in Syria ever since Obama said we weren’t going to have a proxy war with Russia in Syria.
Nerve gas in canisters dropped from Syrian jets? People are saying that nerve gas is a lot more deadly than that. I believe them because I read the labels of different chemicals used against insects when growing fruit, these chemicals are used in exceedingly low concentrations, and these formulations are chosen because they differentially target insects rather than people. I could see where a change in a chemical bond could reverse this.
On the other hand, if these weapons are truly so ineffective (due perhaps to age or poor design), that would explain why Assad isn’t using them all the time. As an alternate theory to the “false flag” one that’s going about, Assad may be doing this to improve some very ineffective chemical weapons with limited testing on conveniently located victims.
Nerve gas is incredibly effective–in the lab.
In the real world, gas disperses, and goes places where people aren’t as well as where they are (or conversely, there will be some people in an area affected by gas, and many more who are not).
The end result is headlines screaming about how somebody had access to enough material to kill “X thousand/million people”, but the actual usage only killed a handful. This happens every time the subject comes up, and then everybody forgets about it before the next time.
The issue with NBC weapons is their cruelty and unpredictability, not their ability to kill vast numbers of people in a single attack. In addition, because they *are* rare, unpredictable, generally recognized as horrific, and for the most part less than militarily optimal, their use can be deterred, when more conventional weapons cannot, despite killing vastly greater numbers.
That’s basically what’s going on here. We can’t make every government in the world stop shooting their own people–far too slippery and dangerous a slope (not to mention infeasible), there–but, we darn sure well can draw the line at the use of NBCs and send a clear signal that we *will* intervene in some form or other against anyone who uses them, and actually have a chance of making that stick.
And that policy, I don’t really have a problem with. The greater issue of Syria, though, is a quagmire waiting to happen, and I think we’re best off staying mostly out of it. There just aren’t enough “good guys” (even the Syrian Kurds are largely kinda-sorta Communists, and everybody else is far, far worse) to support.
It’s not a gas — it is a liquid. I could (legally) spray my apple trees with a very highly diluted analog to nerve gas, and not only does it kill 99.9% of the insects that could lay eggs and put “worms” in my apples, it sticks to the leaves and fruit to keep doing this for at least a couple of weeks. I don’t use this “agent” but instead another one that is an analog to nicotine on account that it is rated as a much lower human hazard, but I have used Carbaryl, a neuro-poison that is supposed to have a temporary effect on what the organophosphates have as a permanent effect.
Think of an organophosphate, like the Malathion that Jerry Brown sprayed on my in 1980 on account of the Medfly Crisis, that got on my car parked outside, only this too was sprayed at a very dilute concentration and Malathion is regarded as the least human-dangerous version of these compounds. Think of a related chemical compound chosen for maximum damage to the human nervous system, and think of it sprayed full strength instead of diluted.
For example, the “occupational exposure limit” for Sarin is about 1 microgram/m^3 whereas the concentration of Malathion in the Medfly spraying was about one tenth that.
Again, “nerve gas” is not a gas like chlorine that disperses with the wind, it is a weapon that you spray on people just like you spray for orchard insects. The orchard sprays are very lethal to their target organism and the spray sticks to surfaces where it gets on whatever contacts those surfaces.
I’m saying that Mr. Assad could have killed many more people with something like Imidan used full strength — I see that it is Category II and lethal at 2 mg/m^3 inhaled whereas Sarin is deemed promptly lethal at 30 mg/m^3. These are three orders of magnitude higher concentration than used in agricultural spraying?
And boy am I going to trouble with Homeland Security for my browsing history? I grow fruit, people, and I have to know how to protect myself.
Why don’t we bring back DDT? It kills bugs but it remarkably does very little to people. My grandfather a WW-II refugee spoke of having the stuff dusted into his shorts “by the Allies” as protection against lice.
Carfentanil, an elephant tranquilizer that China keeps selling to drug cartels, has an LD50 that’s far lower than sarin or VX, and it comes with a rather unique personal delivery system.
And I wouldn’t worry about Syria becoming a quagmire. The east is well drained mountains and the west is extremely arid. The only quagmire we’re likely to encounter in the Middle East is the marsh areas of southern Iraq.
^^^ That’s my way of poking at all the hippies who kept reading that Vietnam was a quagmire without looking up the definition of “quagmire”, or noting that we used the term to describe US soldiers wading along in a column with their rifles held over their heads to keep them dry.
A useful guide re war gasses is at Derek Lowe’s blog. A series of 5 articles he wrote back in the Tokyo subway gas attack era.
Derek the “In the Pipeline” guy, not the baseball guy.
It seems to me that if they wanted maximum effect, one tomahawk should have personally targeted Assad?