Connor Norton - After reports of chemical attacks, White House considers new military action against Syrian regime

The already-tense situation in Syria has only continued to get worse as senior government officials have begun discussing military recourse for President Bashar Al-Assad's use of chemical weapons against civilians in rebel-held territory. Assad has already carried out 7 gas attacks this year, most of which involved chlorine, a green gas causing suffocation and an immense pain described as "having a blowtorch put to your sinuses" when inhaled, which have lead to multiple reported civilian deaths; this isn't the first time the US has addressed the issue, however. Mid-last year the President actually ordered the missile barrage of a Syrian air force base in response to an alleged sarin gas attack (the gas used in the infamous Tokyo subway attack), and Americans along with other nations have been calling out Syria and Russia, a close ally, for practicing and condoning not just chemical warfare but chemical warfare against civilians. Whether the US actually does something is up-in-the-air as of now due to conflicting approaches to the problem, but everyone can agree on one thing: you shouldn't be gassing people for any reason. Period.

This ties in to the use of poison gas in WWI, widely recognized as the birthplace of modern chemical warfare. Before 1915, the greatest act of chemical warfare was when the Mongols allegedly tossed plague victims over the walls of fortified cities to infect the inhabitants, but this all changed with the rise of Fritz Haber and eventually his rival, Victor Grignard. Germany tried out massive shelling of tear gas on the Russians in early 1915 to little avail (the cold cancelled out the affects of the primitive chemical agent), but their real success came at the Second Battle of Ypres, where Fritz Haber personally oversaw the implementation of his wartime masterpiece: waiting for the wind to blow towards their enemies, the Germans speedily cranked open valves that spilled massive quantities of deadly and agonizing chlorine gas onto the battlefield and then ran like hell. This destroyed the morale of the allies, who were immediately fear-struck, until the French came up with their own poisonous gas, called phosgene. These two suffocating and pain-inducing agents were somewhat hampered by innovations in gas mask technology, giving rise to blistering agents like mustard gas (or sulphur mustard) and other such things that you should never google search, and the widespread contamination of battlefields for days to weeks on end continued until the end of the war, but here's the kicker: we thought we solved this problem. After the end of WWI most countries signed onto the Geneva Protocol banning the use of chemical warfare and although it has been broken a few times by Spain, Italy, and most notably Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War (they did some really messed up stuff), mutual terror has kept chemicals out of major wars since the protocol's going into effect. However, this has once again become an important subject of discussion with Assad's use of chlorine, as he claims that either he didn't do it or that it's okay because it's within his own borders and not being used between 2+ warring countries. I say we already outlawed the stuff, and it should stay that way.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/after-reports-of-chemical-attacks-white-house-considers-new-military-action-against-syrian-regime/2018/03/05/d5d2de2e-1d7a-11e8-b2d9-08e748f892c0_story.html?utm_term=.c0026fadda07