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Suddenly here
we are again. Everyone seems to agree that it seems inevitable that the
government will try (again) to persuade the House of Commons that we should bomb
Syria. The general view seems to be that there are Labour MPs who will
support this. How can this possibly be? Let us quickly
review the situation. Probably something over half of Syria is controlled by
President Assad, a nasty thug who seems very happy to bomb his own people. We
do not support Assad, we want him out. Around 20% of the country is now held
by IS, a really nasty group who we now see as being an existential threat to
the UK. Other bits of the country are controlled by the Syrian Al Quaida and other Islamic groups. I believe we are backing
one or more of these groups, which have a zero chance of actually winning
this multi-faceted civil war. Currently
Assad’s army is bombing pretty much everyone including civilians. IS
bombs pretty much everyone including civilians. Al Quaida tries to stage occasional massacres to show they
are still in the game. The US is bombing IS and occasionally civilians by
mistake. The Russians are bombing everyone who is opposed to Assad including
civilians. Clearly the government feels there is still room for more bombs to
be dropped on someone – and civilians, as is bound to happen. We will
be told that this will, in some obscure way, make us safer, and that the
massacre in Paris justifies this; many will feel that we will be acting like
a strong country again. Inevitably
this is all being presented as a patriotic move, and Corbyn’s
refusal to join in this lie will be seen by our ludicrous press as a sign of
his lack of patriotism. All very predictable, all very depressing. But it has
to be challenged. The real thing that tips the whole affair into farce is
that two years ago we wanted to bomb Assad rather than Assad’s
enemies. Over the
weekend the people who know what they are talking about have been queuing up
to tell us that bombing will not work alone, The most succinct was this
morning when some General or other said that “bombing prepares the
battlefield but doesn’t win you an inch of territory.” In other
words (assuming we can find anywhere left to bomb) all we can do is prepare
the way for some ground troops. Who are these to be? But even more
seriously, if we can do some bombing and if we can find some ground forces we
want to work with and if they wipe out IS…. What then? What we actually
need is not another excuse to drop bombs but
a foreign policy. What exactly do we want to happen to the landmass of
Iraq/Syria? This is a big question. And the main players are Saudi Arabia and
Iran, followed by Russia and Turkey. And this is where we could actually do
something useful. These are the players that need to be brought round the table
to agree how this tract of land can be governed with some stability. We could
broker such talks and that would be a positive mood. But drop more
bombs, kill more people? Stupid, wasteful but (relatively) easy. |
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Blog #28 |
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If
you would like to comment on any of these Blog pieces please email me on: bjc@briancreese.co.uk