The deadliest chemical weapons attack in years in Syria killed dozens of people in northern Idlib province on Tuesday morning, including children, and sickened scores more, according to medics, rescuers and witnesses in the rebel-held province, who said the gas had been delivered by a government airstrike.
A few hours later, according to several witnesses, another airstrike hit one of the clinics treating victims, who had been farmed out to smaller hospitals and maternity wards because the area’s largest hospital had been severely damaged by an airstrike two days earlier.
It was one of the worst atrocities attributed to the Syrian government since President Trump took office
(New York Times, April 4, 2017)
This is an unconscionable crime against humanity. Unfortunately, it is one Syrian President Bashir al-Assad has repeatedly committed over the past six years — with impunity. And he has never shown any scruples about doing so.
This is why iPINIONS suspects his puppet master, Russian President Vladimir Putin, thought nothing of ordering him to commit this atrocity. It would clearly take something this horrific to deflect media attention from yesterday’s terrorist attack on a train in the Russian city of St. Petersburg. And Putin has his diabolical reasons for orchestrating this wag-the-dog deflection.
Foremost, it would mean no stoking terrorized Russians with unsettling reports on how their own president might have triggered this attack. This is a reasonable connection to make from Putin’s misadventure in Syria. After all, he evidently thought he could squash US-backed freedom fighters, destroy the ISIS Caliphate, and set up a Russian satellite state in seven days. It’s been seventeen months.
Not to mention that, just days ago, disgusted and disillusioned Russians were staging anti-government protests all over the country. An underground report incited their protests. For it exposed Putin and his cohorts living such an opulent lifestyle, it makes that of Louis XVI and his courtiers seem modest by comparison.
Meanwhile, an increasing number of Russians don’t even have cake to eat — the apocryphal nature of this quip notwithstanding. This specter of Soviet-style food shortages stems from the crippling economic sanctions Putin triggered with his ongoing misadventure in Ukraine, which included the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
But this chemical gas attack in Syria would also mean no humiliating punditry about strongman Putin being every bit as feckless as Western leaders when it comes to protecting their respective citizens from terrorist attacks. Bear in mind that his iron-fisted rule rests on propagating the hype that only he can protect the Russian people from all manner of evil – foreign and domestic.
Secondarily, this deflection would help his He-Man crush, Donald J. Trump, deflect media attention from ongoing investigations into how Russia’s meddling got him elected president of the United States. And, given the mess his indiscriminate bombing has created, Putin was probably happy to provide a pretext for Trump to willfully scapegoat his predecessor, Barack Obama, for all that is wrong in Syria.
Sure enough, Trump wasted no time doing just that. Specifically, he cited Obama’s failure to enforce that infamous “red line” four years ago to explain what will likely be his feckless response to this crime against humanity today. But blaming Obama is just passing the buck. Worse still, Trump is skirting his presidential duty by “leading from behind,” which is what he and Republicans always accused Obama of doing.
Frankly, his response thus far to this first international crisis on his watch has been pusillanimous, perplexing, and even puerile. This is especially so when juxtaposed with the way his UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, responded by condemning Russia for being complicit in this gas attack. She even vowed that America will take unilateral action to avenge it if the international community fails to do so. If you didn’t know better, you’d be forgiven for thinking she’s one of those holdovers from the Obama administration who Trump has accused of trying to sabotage his.
Ironically, Trump’s response makes him look like the weakest of all Western leaders, who are condemning this latest chemical attack in the strongest possible terms but vowing to do nothing to punish Assad or stop him from launching another. Hell, their fecklessness is such that they can’t even get Russia and China to endorse a toothless UN resolution condemning Syria.
Mind you, trying to get either Russia or China to condemn Syria for crimes against humanity makes even less sense than trying to get America to condemn Mexico for the scourge of gun violence. As I noted years ago, Russian and Chinese leaders express solidarity with Assad because he’s emulating the brute force they use to hold on to power in their own countries.
Accordingly, Trump should lead a coalition of the willing to set up a no-fly, safe, humanitarian zone in Syria – even if that means a de-facto partitioning of the country. It would not only save innocent Syrians from recurring atrocities, but also stem the tide of migration that is destabilizing so many European countries.
This is what I urged Obama to do, to no avail. Staking out safe zones in Syria would stem the flow of refugees into Europe and provide a base from which Western forces could launch strategic incursions to kill ISIS leaders and enemy combatants, not hapless Syrians unable to flee.
That said, I have a longstanding aversion to leaders venting outrage over the killing of hundreds with gas while blithely condoning, even enabling, the killing of thousands with guns and bombs.
The point is that you’d be hard-pressed to find among the Western leaders venting outrage over this gas attack in Syria one who has vented similar outrage over ethnic cleansing in South Sudan, where hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions more displaced.
One might even wonder why this gas attack should compel Western leaders to act any differently than they have to all of the others Assad has perpetrated over the years. Of course, if Trump joins (or begins leading) this chorus of outrage, he should be particularly pressed to explain this inconsistency. After all, here is the infamous way he warned Obama against retaliating after Assad gassed many more innocent men, women, and children in 2013.
The only reason President Obama wants to attack Syria is to save face over his very dumb RED LINE statement. Do NOT attack Syria, fix U.S.A.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Sept. 5, 2013
And that was his most respectful tweet among the torrent he unleashed — all telling “foolish” Obama not to waste American blood and treasure for a few gassed Syrians. Granted, hypocrisy is second nature to Trump; so expecting consistency from him is rather like expecting chastity from a whore.
In any event, Putin’s attempt to deflect will undoubtedly work in Russia, where he controls all media and dictates the political narrative. But it won’t work in too many other countries, least of all Western ones.
More to the point, though, he has demonstrated time and again that there’s nothing he would not do to protect and preserve his strongman reputation, which he has spent his entire career cultivating. I have ridiculed many of his PR stunts in this regard
But, if you don’t think he could be so diabolical as to order Assad to gas innocent men, women, and children, I have one word for you: Chechnya.
NOTE: I delineated the myriad reasons why a day of reckoning will come when Trump and Putin will be directly confronting each other instead of indirectly colluding. What’s more, no matter their coordination on Syria, it will not provide sufficient justification for Trump to lift sanctions on Russia related to Ukraine. Much as he’d like to.
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