The recent news footage out of Syria showing victims of a chemical attack is haunting. When I first saw it I couldn’t quite comprehend what I was looking at. But after a minute of increasing discomfort I began to grasp the horror of the situation. Victims lying on the ground in puddles of water or in the midst of being flushed with a stream of water, gasping for air and limbs quivering in wide-eyed disbelief and fear of what they were experiencing. Others were unconscious or dead. Rescuers were moving around the victims not knowing what to do beyond rinsing off the bodies. Those handling the water, I’m sure, were grateful to be giving some kind of aid no matter how small.
It is interesting to see how people, myself included, react to this kind of news. I mean, this shouldn’t be happening. After all, the world has international conventions and treaties banning the use of chemical and biological agents in warfare. Humanity has gone to some length to bar the use of war shots designed to release toxic gas or aerosols over anyone anywhere.
When we shudder and express sincere horror at the barbarity of a chemical attack on civilians, along what track is our thinking guided? What kind of decision process might lead us to believe that a sarin attack is a higher level of depravity than a bomb blast? Could it be true that people who release chemical agents are actually guilty of a higher crime than those who send bombs in the direction of a civilian neighborhood or even just 50 caliber bullets?
Explosives are chemicals that unleash kinetic and thermal violence for a few seconds per explosion. Nerve agents move like the wind, breathing lethal aerosols or gas as they flow and leaving who knows how much contaminated … everything … and for how long. Bombs can be aimed, a gas cloud not so much. Bomb violence is much more common than death by acetylcholinesterase inhibition, yet our attention is always drawn to chemical violence.
We have an industry called show business that exploits bomb violence in its entertainment products. And we the viewing audience have become desensitized to the horrific effects of explosions by sheer repetition of highly staged portrayals. Perhaps it is the very novelty of a chemical attack that captures our attention. If you survive a bomb blast, there is a chance that you can be sewn back together again. If you receive an exposure to sarin, well, what do you do to stop the inhibition of an enzyme? Find a dose of atropine if possible from someone who knows it’s in stock somewhere.
The acceptance of explosives but not chemical agents as legitimate weapons of war is at best a false dichotomy. But, we are a world of men and women and weaponized conflict. If a ban on chemical and biological weapons can be negotiated faster than a ban on the use of explosives, then we take what we can get. But let us not get desensitized to high explosives and the horrific tragedies they produce.
Oh, one pet peeve. They’re not ‘explosive devices”, they are bombs. The former may infer skillful and clinical dispassion. The latter suggests dumb, blunt force. The latter seems more to the point.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
I agree with you 100% on the morality of accepting the bombs but not the chemical weapons. I am thinking that releasing the chemicals in air in a crude fashion can be perfected by any country including those who are not economically well off, but making bombs involve technology and means there to deliver the same.
As my ant trail of comments on Bellingcat and elsewhere have shown in recent weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about Sarin. The depravity of chemical weapons is not so much the manner in which they kill, but who their primary victims are: civilians.
Most military units have decent protection against nerve agents: full face respirators, chemical suits, prophylactics, atropine, enzyme reactivating drugs, etc. On the other hand, civilians do not have this
VX and Sarin have niche battlefield roles in covering flanks or clearing fortified positions, respectively; but neither offer a significant tactical advantage over conventional arms such as fuel/air explosives. So why stockpile them?
For these reasons, chemical weapons have established themselves as weapons to murder civilian populations. Moreover, the environmental legacy and morbidity caused by them is horrific. It’s very possible to survive an exposure to Sarin. But nerve agents cause poorly understood, ambiguous long-term symptoms such as organophosphate induced delayed neuropathy and psychological changes. Mustards may cause blood cancers and birth defects. Again: who is the target? Who is the victim? Enemy forces or future generations of civilians?
For these reasons, chemical weapons deserve to be distinguished from conventional arms. And thankfully, most of the world agrees–evidenced by the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention.
Hi, thanks for your thoughtful comment. I totally agree with you regarding the effects of nerve agents. They are indeed weapons of terror used on civilian populations. The use of high explosives began with WWI and since then it has become normalized. People just expect to be hit with powerful bombs that also kill a great many civilians. I imagine there is a good bit of terror as a building collapses over you or picking up pieces of your child in the street or out of a Humvee. I would like to have seen the same sort of revulsion to bomb blasts as well as war gases. I wrote this as a kind of lamentation of the normalcy of modern war. Sometimes it is good to reexamine basic concepts.
G