Posts Tagged ‘Syria’
Even When It’s Theresa May We Must Not Constrain Our PM From Taking Effective Military Action.
I’d prefer Theresa May wasn’t in charge of putting out her own recycling, let alone the defence of our nation but those MPs and commentators calling for a vote in Parliament before military action are misguided and foolish.
It’s absurd to expect any prime minster to go to Parliament before acting on what may be an immediate threat to our nation or, indeed, to human life elsewhere.
It’s difficult to think of anyone more unsuitable to have their finger ‘on the button’ than Theresa May. She’s a religious nutcase and shifts her position with the wind to suit her own political advantage. Nevertheless, we just have to accept the fact that for now she is prime minister and she has to have the authority to act.
Whether we should attack the Syria government is another matter. With the amount of disinformation coming from all sides it’s impossible for me to make a rational decision. I don’t trust the Russians at all but then neither do I trust Mrs May nor the totally incredible Boris Johnson whose bluster and exaggeration has finally destroyed any confidence I had in him.
There’s disinformation from all sides on Syria, on the Salisbury nerve agent attack, even this morning from the Met Commissioner, Cressida Dick, on gangsters and violent crime in London. The news is full of propaganda these days and both the BBC and the press are playing their own games. They’re all unreliable and untrustworthy.
What I am sure of is that our weak and pathetic MPs, the likes of Chuka Umunna and Ken Clarke, should have had the courage to deal with Assad back in 2013 when he first used chemical weapons and before Putin muscled in when the West was too timid to act. The last thing we need now is to let them delay and bicker and score party political points off each other.
Six Very Good Reasons To Panic
George Galloway Talks More Sense On Syria Than Anyone Else. Where Is A Credible British Leader?
George Galloway on the Sunday Politics
On this morning’s BBC politics-fest the most credible views on Syria I heard were from George Galloway. He was balanced, intelligent, rational and focused on the issue rather than his personal advancement.
Corbyn is a pacifist, whatever he says and that is an untenable position for a leader. I agree with him about the futility of bombing in Syria and that it will create rather than solve problems for us at home in the UK. However, I think he is incredible and incompetent. His confusion about the use of deadly force against marauding terrorists was unforgiveable. He won’t last much longer.
Michael Fallon is a bumptious, Tory fool, better suited to life as a provincial solicitor than as defence minister. Dr Liam Fox would be more use caring for patients than as a warmongering, hard right authoritarian disguised as a friendly GP. Cameron is a liar about there being 70,000 soldiers on the ground ready to support action against Daesh/ISIS, just like Blair was a liar about Saddam Hussein able to launch a WMD attack in 45 minutes. I’m afraid I think his principal motivation is that he wants to be at the ‘top table’ with Obama and Hollande and he feels left out. It’s a pathetic reason but I fear it’s true. It’s his personal prestige he’s most concerned about.
I can see no argument at all that bombing in Syria will make us safer, the reverse is the truth. The story about British forces having greater precision bombing capability with our Brimstone missiles is propaganda. I believe that the US, France, Russia and all modern military powers have at least equivalent if not better capability.
The most convincing argument I can see for bombing in Syria is that our ally, France, has asked for our assistance. I would be more ready to support such action if we were prepared to do the job properly and that means putting in our own ground forces.
I don’t want war but Daesh/ISIS is a evil ideology just like Nazism and we need to destroy it. I think we need to put a substantial force of highly trained professional soldiers on the ground and expect that we will take many casualties but that we will root out the terrorists house by house, room by room until the job is properly done and that includes removing Assad. Thereafter, we need to be ready to stay there for at least a decade until civil society is restored. This is why we have a military and if we don’t use it as necessary then why do we bother?
I am more convinced every day that the election result this year was a disaster for Britain. Cameron is an oily, self-serving creep with no integrity, no backbone and interested only in advancing his own interests. The Tory frontbench is composed mainly of toady yes men (and women) who fail to achieve the intellectual and moral qualities that we should expect from ministers. Personally I blame the Tory dominated press and all those weak, flip flopping voters who turned on the Liberal Democrats. Another coalition would have set Britain on the right course. That we now have a government with a mandate from just 24% of the electorate is absolute proof that British democracy has failed.
I fear that the outcome of all this will be more half measures. Then there will be another terrorist outrage, quite probably in the UK, possibly even in America. Then we’ll have more handwringing and the endless cycle of political posturing with no one having the courage to act will resume.
We have no moral justification for our conduct in the Middle East when we support Israel which is the most dangerous terrorist state, responsible for creating much of the hatred amongst followers of Islam and perpetrator of outrages every bit as heinous as Assad, Daesh/ISIS, Al Quaeda, Hussein or Gaddafi.
Let’s either do the job properly or let’s get out of the Middle East entirely.
Cameron, The Warmonger. How Did Saving Refugees Turn Into Dropping More Bombs?
Kobane, Syria, Hometown of Aylan Kurdi, Just One Boy Who Drowned.
It’s amazing and frightening. Two days ago, Cameron wasn’t interested in the plight of the refugees. He and his crony government didn’t even have the decency to recognise them as refugees, they were migrants. They weren’t leaving the sort of desolation and destruction seen above, they were ‘economic migrants’ about to “swarm” onto our shores and “swamp” our hospitals, GPs, social services with nasty, dirty foreigners.
Walk On By Dave. You Know That’s What You Really Want.
Then, with the tragic picture of a little boy dead on a Turkish beach and, unusually, the supine, brainwashed, British public actually getting off their backsides and signing a petition in massive numbers (now over 400,000), he had to do something. Democracy and public opinion is not a force that can be allowed to gain strength in the UK. It is the very opposite of what the increasingly corrupt Tory government wants. Its new petitions website is biting back hard. Its been a major mistake. More than 200,000 want cannabis legalised, nearly 220,000 want a vote of no confidence in the Health Secretary, over 100,000 want the war criminal Netanyahu arrested when he arrives in London.
This all sounds frightfully like democracy and it has to be nipped in the bud!
So now he’s posturing with weasel words about the millions of refugees but simultaneously ramping up for war on Syria and IS, just as the USA confirms that Russian jets are fighting on behalf of Assad.
I think Cameron is a puppet: an anodyne, oleaginous creep with a shiny face for inane grins into the camera and a Goldilocks wifelet (not too gorgeous, just enough) to portray the mythical British family that we’re all supposed to aspire to. Who is pulling his strings?A conspiracy of bankers, arms manufacturers, the alcohol industry and press barons.
Fleet Street Fox makes frightening predicitions about war today. It comes to something when a tabloid like the Daily Mirror presents more challenging, insightful reporting than what used to be called the quality press, now disgraced by the Murdoch and Barclay Brothers comics. The Times and The Daily Telegraph now represent vested interests, mainly supportive of Tory repression but ready to exercise their own muscle when inconvenient subjects like press regulation or BBC charter renewal come along. Fleet Street clears its throat and Cameron succumbs. Big Booze complains about overregulation, Cameron drops his trousers and says ‘How do you want me?’
I am horrified about the reality of Britain. The disgusting cover-ups of wrongdoing in high places that we now know has been going on forever. We have laughed about Nigeria, about tin pot South American regimes but we are every bit as bad, worse in some ways, more secretive, deceptive, corrupt and rotten to the core in police, civil service and throughout the establishment.
It’s a truism that it is the internet that has let all this truth out. That’s how we know that cannabis is pretty much harmless for 99% of people, while Big Booze is responsible for 1.25 million hospital admissions each years. That’s how we know that the Israeli regime is composed entirely of brutal, sadistic war criminals intent on becoming the new Nazi power and igniting nuclear conflagration in the Middle East. That’s why your internet connection is increasingly censored, monitored and everything possible is being done to turn it against you, to become an instrument of oppression rather than a gateway to truth and knowledge.
I have no answers. What I know is that increasingly often, as I chat with my 80-year old mother, we say to each other how glad we are we won’t be around to see it.
Cameron And His Inhumane, Crony Government Disgraces Britain And Destroys Our Values.
Any one of us could become a refugee. Just pray that if it happens to you it won’t be the cruel, heartless, despicable UK government that you have to turn to.
Cut Off His Head.
I am relieved that Britain pulled back from the brink yesterday and Cameron was curbed in his self-serving, warmongering ambition.
Assad is a monster but he’s also a puppet. He is simply a figurehead in a Saville Row suit. The Syrian regime is a paranoid, myopic, self-serving bunch of gangsters, nothing more. It doesn’t have anything to do with Islam, it’s about tribalism and grudges and greed.
Assad is not that different from Cameron. The oligarchy that runs Britain is also composed of gangsters. They oppress but in more subtle ways. They cause huge harm and exploit individuals for their own ends. They do it with the deception that we live in a fair and just democracy. There is death and deprivation and injustice in Britain as well. It is the scale that is different.
I can see no benefit to anyone in the sort of limited military intervention that is proposed. The Syrian army is hugely powerful and well equipped. Russia has a financial interest in continuing to supply it with weapons just as America has with Israel. The US momentum for action is insincere and driven by the arms industry and its massive financial and employment interests
There is a better argument for outright invasion and regime change but that is a huge step which I don’t believe we should take – yet.
A better solution would be special forces-led assassination squads targeting the ruling elite. It may be costly in casualties but better a few dozen volunteer soldiers should die doing their job than the collateral damage inevitable in air and missile strikes. I don’t want our soldiers to die for politicians’ weakness. Let them be given a clear objective for death or glory, not sent to the modern version of the trenches as in Iraq or Afghanistan.
The moral question is easy in my view. Any justification for launching a cruise missile is better justification for targeted assassination. Use drones, even use cruise missiles as assassination weapons but we have to be much, much smarter than the dumb George Bush ‘shock and awe’ tactic that is as much about grandstanding as doing anything effective.
Take out the leadership, one by one. Decapitate the beast.
Peter Reynolds 