#2

1. The two accounts of being attacked by gas are similar in that they paint a vivid picture of destruction and pain. It is clear from the 1916 account and the 1987 one that poison gas is/was incredibly destructive and a painful way to die: one woman lost nine relatives in the 1987 bombing and described her children with "their eyes swollen, their skin blackened"; the man from the 1916 account describes a man dying from the gas, "[sinking] to the ground, clutching at his throat and after a few spasmodic twistings, [dying]". The accounts of those who felt the attacks of the gas both describe it as incredibly painful, but in the case of the 1987 account the effects were: blindness, burns and vomiting until there was nothing left to vomit but blood. The 1916 account describes the gas as creating a heavy pressure on the lungs, a dry throat, a swimming head, hallucination, the feeling that needles were pricking the skin, and finally unconsciousness. The differences in the effects of the different gas can probably be accounted for by the years between the attacks. In 1916, poison gas was a new technology that was being used for the first time in World War I; by 1987, the technology could have been more refined to cause more devastating and long-term effects to the survivors -- the man who was attacked in 1916 woke after 3 hours, whereas the woman in the 1987 attack was still badly wounded after 5 days.

2. I think that it can be surmised that the use of gas in the Iraqi bombing account was to inspire fear more than anything else. Saddam Hussein's attempts to stay in power were strengthened by the fact that he could and would beat any villagers into submission with only the threat of what he could do to them: the villagers had no defense against poison gas except to run to the caves, and the gas is described as being especially painful and devastating -- not only did it kill people, but it left a vivid mark on those who witnessed the attacks and experienced the pain of the gas but survived. The goals of the German army's use of gas seem to be weakening the defenses of the Allied armies. The gas was used to kill soldiers on the other side, an easy way to do so because the use of poison gas put the risk to soldiers on the side using the gas at a minimum; the men didn't have to be physically near the trenches and could let the wind do the work for them. Furthermore, it was used as a distraction to those who survived: the man in the 1916 account describes how "Fritz generally follows the gas with an infantry attack". The men who were left surviving the poison gas were in pain or were disoriented from trying to avoid the gas, which created an opportunity for the Germans to attack with minimal risk of efficient retaliation.

3. Gas may not have been used extensively in 20th century wars after 1918 for several reasons. For one, gas had an immense ability to backfire on the army using it: if the breezes changed, the poison gas would be brought to the trenches of the army that had released it, effectively incapacitating it and probably killing a great deal of its men. The ethical implications of using gas are also another consideration. Many new technologies were first born around the time of World War I and stay in use today: innovations such as barbed wire, machine guns and tanks are vital to modern warfare. And although these technologies are immensely destructive, they do not have the same capacity to cause immense pain to other human beings -- in an odd way, it may have been seen as inhumane to use it on a mass scale, similarly to how the nuclear bomb was not used after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, although using it ended World War II. After World War I, poison gas figured most prominently in events such as the Holocaust, where it was used in extermination camps to kill Jews en masse; the association between poison gas and cruelty became cemented at that point, I would think, and if the United States attempted to use it today in Iraq it would likely be met with public outcry due to the ethical questions of whether it is ever right to use weapons such as poison gas. Ethical considerations have changed since 1918.