[Opinion:] Before we go to war with Syria, inconvenient truths must be confronted

On Tuesday, 4 April, images from a suspected a chemical weapons attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria, circulated the world and shocked all who saw them. Infants could be seen convulsing as they breathed into gas masks. Young men were hosed down with water as they rolled around naked on the floor.

I was shocked too of course, but moreover I was saddened: I was saddened because as soon as I saw the images, I knew exactly what the consequences would be.

They’re not difficult to predict. In fact, we have all seen how the events of Khan Sheikhoun play out dozens of times before: a heinous affront against humanity takes place, Western leaders apportion blame before any facts can be independently verified, all inconvenient narratives are ignored, sovereign leaders are vilified and a vulnerable government is toppled in the name of “regime change” – killing millions of people along the way.

However, for some of us who follow Western foreign policy more closely, there usually entails another step in the chain of events that is not so well known: the incident that causes so much outrage often turns out to be not as we were told or, in some instances, completely fabricated.

The weapons of mass destruction lie from the 2003 Iraq War is still fresh in our minds, but an example from the First Gulf War of 1990 may be more appropriate.

When public opinion was split about whether America should be involved in that conflict or not, a 15-year-old girl who gave her name simply as Nayirah tugged the heartstrings of every right-thinking person and sold the case for war.

Appearing in front of US Congress, she testified that Iraqi soldiers took babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital and left them on the floor to die.

Her testimony was corroborated by Amnesty International and was broadcast all over the world, but in 1992, it emerged that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the U.S. – her testimony was co-ordinated by a pro-Kuwaiti public relations campaign and that her story was completely false.

But by then, it was too late. The largest coalition of countries since World War Two had already gone to war.

Such tactics have come to be known as atrocity propaganda and they have become so widespread, they have often become the pursuit of academic study for political scientists.

“So great are the psychological resistances to war in modern nations”, wrote Harold Lasswell, a leading American political scientist, “that every war must appear to be a war of defence against a menacing, murderous aggressor.

“There must be no ambiguity about who the public is to hate.”

Academics concluded that such atrocity propaganda leads to real atrocities, however. Invading troops are more likely to let their hate dictate their actions and carry out acts of needless aggression. Such violence then creates a cycle of hate that leads to the deaths of millions of civilians and the destruction of entire countries.

Therefore, though the facts are yet to fully emerge in this case of Khan Sheikhoun, let us consider the following inconvenient truths at play before we commit ourselves to the fate of all-out war.

One: In spite of the assertions of U.S. officials, there is still no independently verified evidence to suggest President Bashar al-Assad’s troops were behind the suspected chemical weapon attack.

Two: Most evidence thus far has come from the British-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights – a network of opposition activists – and the White Helmets, founded by a former British Army officer. Both groups openly align with anti-Assad forces and are not impartial.

Three: One of the doctors who documented the alleged use of chemical weapons and appeared on television networks claiming sarin was used is Shajul Islam, 31, from east London. In 2013, he was arrested for the kidnapping of two Western journalists and was considered a “committed jihadist” by MI6 before being struck off the General Medical Council in 2016.

Four: We are expected to believe that Assad, who trained as an eye doctor in London, is so daft that he authorised the attack days before a major peace conference in Geneva and after he has already vastly gained the upper hand against anti-government militants.

Five: Faced with U.S. invasion in 2013 and when former President Barack Obama made his “red line” declaration, Syria joined the Chemical Weapons Convention of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and destroyed its 1,300-ton stockpile of chemical weapons and so-called precursor chemicals that can be used to make such weapons.

Six: Though Assad is still believed to have some access to some chemical weapons, he is not the only actor in Syria to do so. Following the 2013 chemical weapon attack in eastern Ghouta that was immediately blamed on Assad, it emerged that groups such as the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front were more likely to be the perpetrators.

Seymour Hersh ­– a veteran investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner – was one of the most well-renowned to make this case. He wrote for the London Review of Books at the time: “Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August [2013].

“In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts.

“Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the U.S. intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin.”

In Khan Sheikhoun, other perpetrators again cannot be automatically ruled out because U.S. officials simply said so, especially as they would be the ones with so much to gain. Before we assume Assad was responsible, go along with the calls for regime change and risk the prospect of a proxy war with Russia that would threaten World War Three, is it not reasonable to ensure we understand who was really responsible in this case?