Mick Hartley

David Aaronovitch in the Times (£):

The Syrian citizens killed in Khan Sheikhoun yesterday by a regime air attack will have died an unusual death if, as suspected, sarin bombs were used. Sarin is a nerve agent that works by blocking the neurotransmitters that control and limit the body’s various functions. Muscles and glands go into overdrive. So they will have drooled, vomited, urinated, defecated and finally choked to death. At the time of writing the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is estimating that nearly 100 died in this particular incident….

On October 1, 2014, the United Nations and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (which won the 2013 Nobel peace prize) issued a statement congratulating themselves on the end of their joint mission to Syria, which had worked “to complete the elimination of the declared chemical weapons programme of the Syrian Arab Republic”….

Well, what does it matter? Dead is dead. If the sarin doesn’t get you then the helicopter-dropped barrel bombs will. Most of those killed recently in the rebel-held areas of Aleppo died in the hell created by conventional weapons. If we can manage to tolerate that happening to people, we should be able to cope with them dying from nerve gas.

All I would say is let’s stop pretending. Since 2011 we have allowed the Assad regime effective carte blanche to prosecute the Syrian civil war in any way it wants, largely because it had the backing of President Putin and the shield of his Security Council veto. So we refused to enforce no-fly zones or create safe havens because they would be of dubious legality under international law. More than 400,000 have died and millions have fled, to then be regarded across the West as an existential nuisance. So next time we pitch up at Geneva or some other convention-hosting town and are asked to sign a declaration against this or that abomination, instead of perjuring ourselves by signing it, let’s say instead: “It’s a nice idea in theory, but we’ll never make it work in practice.”