Editor,
Hitler refused to use sarin gas against his military adversaries in WWII. Nobody knows why. Of course, he gassed 6 million Jews in his “chambers” with a cyanide-based gas, Zyklon B. He refused to use sarin gas against his military adversaries in WWII. Nobody knows why. Of course, he gassed at least 6 million Jews, and gypsies, socialists, homosexuals, political opposition, Poles and other Slavic peoples, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the disabled, and courageous resisters. He killed them with Zyklon B, a cyanide-based gas.
Churchill advocated using poisonous gas in WWI. He thought there were some gases that would not leave lasting effects. I do not know if his conjecture is true; surely there were some nasty effects.
Syria’s previous president (Assad’s father) did sign the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which bans the use of chemical and biological weapons. This President Assad did not sign the current international treaty against the use of poison gas; however, Assad denies using any kind of poison gas (sarin or so-called binary nerve agents which are a mixture of various gases, chlorine, etc.). Supposedly, he agreed with the Obama Administration to give up his stockpile of chemical weapons.
Russia, Assad’s benefactor, lies about Syria’s use of poisonous gas. Russia herself has signed and ratified the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Fiji was the first signer! So has the United States, as well as 192 other countries; Egypt, Israel (signed but not ratified), North Korea, Palestine, and South Sudan did not.
I could not stand seeing the little children suffering from being gassed. My heart cried. A Syrian doctor told CNN, “The symptoms develop rapidly within minutes, redness of eyes, foaming at the mouth, contracted pupils, labored breathing, shortness of breath and suffocation.” Death in ten minutes.
How can President Assad, an American-educated optometrist, watch his own people suffer and die like this? Then, get his disinformation machine cranking to lie about who bombed whom.
The Syrian American Medical Society identified the gas used as organophosphorus compounds, a category of poisonous toxic gases that includes sarin.
I hate what Assad is doing in Syria; however, I do not believe more violence stops other violent acts. The Quakers condemn the Trump administration’s airstrikes in Syria and call on Congress to urgently intervene against the Trump administration’s unlawful and reckless widening of the war in Syria.
We surely need a more positive and successful program against Assad’s war against his own people and our President should withdraw the over 1,000 American troops in danger in Syria.
Trella Laughlin