Last night President
Trump took military action against Syria. His previous assertion that
ISIS was the real enemy, out of the window. Of course he backed
himself into a corner by ridiculing Obama for not taking action last
time Assad used chemical weapons. The British Bulldog Puppy has
promptly come to heel wagging it's tail in the form of Michael
Fallon.
The British media
especially the BBC has a long established air of credibility, but the
idea that we know everything that's going on is of course laughable.
So lets make some speculation and at least try to read between the
lines. I think, on balance of probability that President Assad, whom,
and to be clear where I stand, I detest, probably did use chemical
weapons on his own people and not for the first time. He probably
thinks that with Putin's Russia in his corner and the Russian veto at
the UN in his pocket that he can act with impunity.
However, there has to
be a few percentage points of doubt. Assad will have known that Trump
had backed himself into a corner and would be forced to take action,
or to look weak, so even with the Russian UN veto in his pocket the
likelihood of a unilateral strike against him by the USA if he used
nerve gas must surely have entered even his twisted mind. Then there
is the official Syrian line that they have enough conventional
weapons to get the job done in Idlib without resorting to chemical
weapons. You'd have to say that they certainly do.
There have been reports
that conventional munitions hit a chemical weapons dump belonging to
the rebels, it's unlikely, but not inconceivable that the rebels got
their hands on some Sarin formerly belonging to Assad, it may even be
that Assad had some hidden Sarin in the area. He was supposed to have
got rid of all his chemical weapons but we know what these people are
like. There are a number of possibilities even before wandering into
the realm of conspiracy theories.
Sadly, there are in
this world people who think military action away from their borders
is good business, especially those with shares in munitions
manufacturers, like certain politicians. So a set up, a framing of
Assad if you like, whilst being the least likely possibility is at
least a possibility.
We don't know what the
CIA, GCHQ etc know, maybe Trump didn't need to wait for an inquiry,
perhaps he should have. Impossible for me to say. If the Austro
Hungarians had dealt with the assassins of Archduke Ferdinand
precipitately instead of waiting they'd have presented the Russians
with a fait accompli and just maybe we wouldn't have had World War
One.
The difficulty with
hindsight is that we know what did happen after a certain action, we
cannot be sure what the final outcome would have been from an
alternative action, or even inaction. For example we know that
Blair's British Bulldog puppy came to heel for Bush, the so called
Arab Spring followed, with chaos and rebellions everywhere and a huge
migrant crisis. Regime change in Iraq did not turn out so well.
Russia accuses the USA
of using the Syrian crisis to deflect attention from civilian
casualties in Iraq. It seems to me that British and Western media
generally has never given us an accurate picture of the numbers of
Iraqi civilian deaths either in the invasion of Iraq or since. More
than eighty to ninety people though, maybe eighty to ninety thousand
people, maybe many more even. How can we know? The Russians have
certainly killed many more than eighty to ninety innocent men women
and children in Syria and recently at that.
Of course, seeing
people die in agony, foaming at the mouth adds another dimension to
the horror, but the people blown up the Russians or by Western forces
are just as dead. Russia says Trump's actions amount to an illegal
attack on a sovereign country, technically that's true. Given that
deposing Saddam Hussein went so well I do worry, as much as I detest
Assad, about what will happen if we don't learn anything from
deposing Saddam who I also detested.
There is also something
to be said for maintaining the moral high ground and not killing more
people yourself. From where I sit one of the biggest problems is the
UN, when did the UN really achieve anything more than spreading
disease through unsanitary military camps, letting down the people
of Bosnia, failing to defend innocent victims half an hours drive
from one of their bases and relying on Wonder Woman to bail them out.
OK that's unfair, they
have distributed aid and responded to natural disasters and the front
line people in those situations are heroes and heroines it is
undeniable. However, what is the prime purpose of the UN? Surely it
must be to end conflict between nation states and to that end it has
failed utterly and continues to fail utterly.
The United Nations is
constitutionally flawed, it was created in a post World War Two,
emerging Cold War era with a Security Council of the world's so
called Great Powers. Five nations who punch above their weight, have
an unfair and unreasonable veto and who cling to it because they and
their politicians cannot bear not to be Great Powers.
The UN could actually
learn a lot from the EU, flawed as that is. What about a rotating
presidency and what about an equal say for everyone? Responding to
this atrocity but not that one, acting with UN approval when it suits
and without when you can't get it is no way forward. The UN has to
change and become effective or throw the towel in and become a
disasters charity.
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