So the parliament has, to everyone’s shock, voted against
military adventures in Syria.
That’s a relief.
As to “intelligence reports” that they keep waving us
saying that they prove whatever? I don’t care.
I don’t care because I am unable to believe them. They could be true. They could be false. They could be created from sheer ineptitude. They could be deliberately falsified to deceive us. The “intelligence services” have no credibility
We went to war in Iraq – an utter debacle – because of
the peddled words of the “intelligence services.” In the aftermath no-one has
faced any public consequences for the lying or (if I’m giving them vast benefit
of the doubt) extreme incompetence. Without that I cannot assume any
significant change has taken place – so the words of the intelligence services
become meaningless. There is no point in listening to a liar – and it is an act
of utter foolishness to trust one.
But surely I cannot doubt chemical weapons have been
used?
True, I don’t. But nor do I think that the US & UK
swooping in dropping bombs on people is actually going to make that better. I
desperately want chemical weapons not to exist, I desperately want the war to
end and I do wish we could intervene – but I
do not trust us to do so!
Through ineptitude, malice, selfishness or a complete
inability to examine the world through any other lenses than our own, our “intervention”
is hardly the benevolent force we seem to think. I do not think we are CAPABLE
of making things better. I also doubt very much whether our leaders WANT to
make things better – at least for the people of Syria. We use words like “democracy”,
“freedom” and “human rights” a lot and leave bodies, dictators and torture in
our wake.
As to this somehow doing terribad damage to Britain’s “reputation”
or making us look “weak”.
Really?
On reputation – our military adventurism (both on our own
and, in latter decades, in the US shadow) has left nations in ruins,
slaughtered more people than I can imagine and left untold destruction as we
continually think in the short term and see all sides in highly monochrome good
vs evil (where “good” means “is willing to do what we want”). When we leave –
if we leave – it’s usually with a pro-us puppet with precious little claim to legitimacy
leading the country which will, inevitably, then become unstable, cause a backlash
rise in extremism or lead said puppet to become more and more repressive Or, BONUS! – ALL OF THE ABOVE!
The idea that our reputation is damaged by us deciding
not to do this YET AGAIN is laughable.
As to this being a sign of weakness – are you kidding me?
How much “strength” does it take to carpet bomb a country already ravaged by civil war?
If you want to talk “weakness”, let’s talk about the
weakness of our democracy that can so easily be trampled by jingoistic talk of
war that opposition parties nearly always feel the need to support any
conflict, no matter how dubious. Let us
talk about how our democracy has been amazingly strengthened with this no vote –
that for once the war drums didn’t drown out any opposition.
Let’s talk about the “weakness” caused by the “special relationship” which means virtually every time the US blows their dog whistle we come yapping to whatever military disaster they’re trying to drag us into. Let us talk how, before this vote, the American government and officials were talking as if Britain had already agreed to join them in military action. Now tell me this vote hasn’t strengthened our democracy.
And this is before we go into issues that are being very
glossed over – like the disparate rebel factions and the decent possibility
that we may be looking at a Soviets vs Afghanistan “why yes Bin Laden, of
course we’ll give you big guns and money to fight the evil USSR, this could
never come back to bite us on the arse” situation.
