From the Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt:
Gary Johnson’s Bad Morning, and Consequence-Free Syria Horrors
Everyone is buzzing about this exchange on Morning Joe, featuring Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson:
Mike Barnicle: What would you do, if you were elected, about Aleppo?
Gary Johnson: And what is Aleppo?
Barnicle: You’re kidding.
Johnson: No.
Barnicle: Aleppo is in Syria. It’s the epicenter of the refugee crisis.
Johnson: Okay, got it, got it. Well, with regard to Syria, I do think it’s a mess. I think that the only way to deal with Syria is to join hands with Russia to diplomatically bring that to an end.
Sure, Johnson should have known. But let’s face it, it’s not like the American media likes to spend a lot of time on the mess in Syria.
I know almost no one cares about chemical weapons attacks in Syria. It’s one of those events far overseas that rarely seems to break through as big news anymore, at least here in the United States. Perhaps that’s because Americans are exhausted of hearing about fighting in the Middle East, or perhaps because it represents one of the most vivid failures of this administration, the bloodiest demonstration that President Obama’s “red line” declarations are meaningless. Or perhaps some media voices fear that if Americans heard and saw enough about this, there would be cries to do something about it, to respond, and they fear that would lead to another war.
But just because most American news audiences aren’t hearing much about chemical weapons attacks doesn’t mean they aren’t still occurring:
Chlorine gas allegedly was dropped about 1 p.m. local time Tuesday in barrel bombs from a helicopter, according to another Aleppo Media Center activist who attended the aftermath of the blast.
The drop was followed by four rockets fired by military jets, he said.
“When I arrived at the market, I started seeing the injured people and noticed that something was unusual,” he said.
“The injured did not have any signs of injuries or blood,” he said, but instead were coughing loudly and had red, teary eyes.
“From 300 meters from the center of the barrel bomb, I started smelling chlorine, and I realized it was a chlorine bomb,” he said.
At least 37 children and 10 women were among those hospitalized, the Aleppo Free Doctors Committee said in a statement.
The victims were struggling to breathe, coughing harshly, and they had the smell of chlorine on their clothes, the statement said.
Most were discharged after several hours, but 10 people remained in intensive care, including a pregnant woman in her last trimester whose unborn child was showing a weak pulse, the committee said.
It’s all over Syria these days:
In the past two months, there have been at least four suspected chlorine attacks in Syria. One in Saraqib, in northern Syria, two in eastern Aleppo, which is controlled by groups opposed to the Syrian regime, and one reported attack in Eastern Ghouta.
We used to worry that use of chemical weapons could be “normalized” by the Syrian Civil War. Too late.
The UN-OPCW team said that between December 2015 and August 2016 it received more than 130 new allegations from UN member states of the use of chemical weapons or toxic chemicals as weapons in Syria.
It said 13 alleged the use of sarin, 12 mustard gas, four VX nerve gas, 41 chlorine, and 61 other toxic chemicals.
There was a time when using chemical weapons against civilians was so abominable, that it was unthinkable that the world would collectively shrug and offer toothless condemnations. Something very fundamental about the world’s leaders has changed, compared to ten, twenty, or thirty years ago:
Others say that by using gas against its own civilians Syria is violating taboos built up over more than a century that need to be defended. “We signed up for over 100 years to not use these weapons,” Ms. Kidd of King’s College said, “and if we just stand by and not do anything, what is the value of the treaty and the norm?”
Remember, in the eyes of this president, it’s not really clear that a chlorine bomb counts as a chemical weapon. As Obama said at a press conference last year:
I don’t think there are a lot of folks in the region who are disappointed that Assad is no longer in possession of one of the biggest stockpiles of chemical weapons of any country on earth. Those have been eliminated. It is true that we have seen reports about the use of Chlorine in bombs that had the effect of chemical weapons. Chlorine itself has not been listed as a chemical weapon but when it is used in this fashion it can be consider a prohibited use of that particular chemical.