COMMENTARY: Concerning Chemical Weapons In Syria

It now appears that sarin, a chemical weapon, was used in Syria’s civil war.

Sarin can be inhaled or absorbed through the skin.

It destroys nerve function by causing continuous transmission of impulses across synapses. It’s 500 times more toxic than cyanide. It’s normally a liquid, but even its gaseous vapor immediately penetrates the skin. Clothing releases sarin for 30 minutes following exposure, thus exposing others. Non-lethal doses may cause permanent nerve damage. Symptoms are a runny nose and tightness in the chest, then difficulty breathing, nausea, and drooling, then nervous system breakdown, loss of control of bodily functions, vomiting, and finally suffocation in convulsive spasms.

Sarin was used along with other chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein in 1988 against the ethnic Kurd city of Halabja in Iraq, killing 5,000. The Japanese religious sect Aum Shinrikyo used an impure form of sarin in its 1995 attack on the Tokyo Metro in which 13 died.

Chemical weapons were introduced to the world during World War I. It began with tear gas by both sides. Then in 1915 the Germans launched the first large-scale chemical attack, using chlorine gas released from large tanks.

The gas sprayed out in a fog that drifted across fields and down trench walls where men who breathed it screamed in pain, choked, and suffocated. Soon a lengthy menu of chemical options was available, including mustard gas that dissolved rubber and leather and soaked through multiple layers of cloth, making gas masks useless in protecting against it.

America entered World War I in 1917, and participated actively during 1918 until the permanent ceasefire on 11 November. Near the end, we began production of the gas Lewisite for use in an offensive planned for early 1919. The production plant made 10 tons per day, but for only 15 days because the war ended.

Wilfred Owen is the English language’s greatest war poet. He enlisted in the British Army in October 1915, and was soon fighting on the western front. In 1917, suffering from shell-shock and wrestling with the moral dilemmas of war, he was sent to a war hospital in Britain. Soon after returning to the front line in August 1918, he seized a German machine-gun emplacement and killed a number of the enemy, an act of bravery that won him the Military Cross. While crossing a canal in pursuit of the German Army, Owen was shot and killed. It was Nov.

1. As his body was returned to Britain, the bells of peace were finally tolling.

Nothing I have read conveys the reality of chemical weapons better than Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est.” I’ll quote only the last 14 lines. The poet is caught in a gas attack and has put on his own protective mask, but a comrade fumbled for too long with his mask:

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Translating the last two lines: “The old Lie: It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”

I have always been flabbergasted homo Sapiens conduct organized warfare against each other.

Think about it, from a distance. It’s a strange thing, an unnatural thing, for a group of animals to do.

Chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons are a breed apart, instruments of terror and mass destruction. They must not be used. But we must tread carefully, and not get involved militarily beyond what might be required to prevent chemical weapons. The Assad regime has shown itself to be brutally dictatorial, but according to the U.S. Department of State, it is basically secular and that’s good, of course. The rebels, on the other hand, are extreme fundamentalists who will probably be worse than the current government.

We have no business supporting either side. It hasn’t been established which side used these weapons, and the most effective response might be entirely non-military.

It’s a deep dilemma for our president and our nation.

ART HOBSON IS A PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF PHYSICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS.