Back in 2013, David Cameron, pictured with Barack Obama, couldn't be honest about his intention for Syria. (Credit: Ken Cedeno/Corbis Getty)
Old grievances in Western politics have been reopened by the sudden fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. And they are as dispiriting in their dishonesty as they are myopic in their self-interest. On the one hand, we have the unrepentant interventionists convinced that the tyrant’s fall would have happened years earlier were it not for Ed Miliband’s recklessness in 2013, when he blocked British airstrikes. On the other, we have the unrepentant anti-interventionists, led by Miliband himself, who say the real criminals are those who recklessly pursued the Iraq war a decade earlier. To paraphrase Henry Kissinger, it’s a pity that both sides can’t lose this tedious and tendentious war of history that reveals far more about the failures of our political class than either side appears to understand.
To take the interventionists at face value, you would think the fall of Assad in 2024 is somehow proof of their own wisdom in supporting airstrikes on his regime 11 years earlier in response to his use of chemical weapons. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, said last week that “if the West had acted faster, Assad would have been gone”. By not intervening when it had the chance, the West “created a vacuum that Russia moved into and kept Assad in power for much longer”, Streeting argued. It’s a neat story with a pleasingly simple moral at its core: take action or somebody else will.
Streeting’s account of recent history — notably far from his health brief — is the conventional view in London, Paris and Washington; the view of what Barack Obama once described as “the blob”. It is no surprise, then, that it was echoed by George Osborne on his podcast, Political Currency, last week. Osborne described David Cameron’s failure to win parliamentary authorisation for military action in 2013 – inadvertently setting off a train of events culminating in Barack Obama’s decision not to impose his red line against chemical weapons — as one of his greatest regrets from government. “Forget about the suffering the Syrian people have endured for the past 10 years as a result [of non intervention], look at the massive migration flows into Germany, the pressures that put on European governments, the collapse of more moderate centrist administrations, ultimately the small boats that come across the English Channel,” Osborne explained. All could be traced back to the West’s failure to take control back in 2013 when it had the chance.
To support Osborne’s case, he played a clip of the British diplomat Hugh Powell reflecting on the lost parliamentary vote a decade in.
Powell was Cameron’s deputy national security adviser in 2013, and scion of Britain’s greatest diplomatic family. He is the son of Margaret Thatcher’s former foreign affairs adviser, Charles Powell, and nephew of Keir Starmer’s national security adviser, Jonathan. In Hugh’s view, the 2013 vote against intervention was “a massive mistake”. The key point, he said, was that the Assad regime was always fragile and could have been knocked out of power with more forceful Western intervention. “2013 was an opportunity to help crack it well before Hezbollah and Russia came to its rescue,” Powell told Osborne and his podcast partner, Ed Balls. “And with Assad gone we had a good chance of installing a power-sharing government in Damascus that might well have prevented the hidden expansion of ISIS.” It’s a neat story.
The thing is, though, Powell’s explanation is exactly the opposite of what David Cameron insisted was the case at the time. In 2013, Cameron told MPs that he was seeking parliamentary approval for military action for one reason alone: to deter the use of chemical weapons. “The question before the House today is how to respond to one of the most abhorrent uses of chemical weapons in a century,” Cameron began in his statement pleading for their support. “It is not about taking sides in the Syrian conflict, it is not about invading, it is not about regime change, and it is not even about working more closely with the opposition; it is about the large-scale use of chemical weapons and our response to a war crime — nothing else.”
So, which is it? Was it a missed opportunity for regime change, as we are now led to believe. Or was it a failure to punish the use of chemical weapons that had nothing to do with regime change, as Cameron insisted then?
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SubscribeSo, ethnic and religious diversity clearly not always a strength. Another fantastical tale. Just one more unexamined theory.
It’s funny isn’t it. So many people. Supposedly clever people cling onto the ‘diversity is our strength’ message. As if it’s some kind of national superpower.
On the one hand it’s super cringy. And on the other it’s actually rather sinister. As if a catchy strapline can remap peoples brains and convince them it’s true.
Allowing people opportunities irrespective of their background is what a decent society does.
However, the is not the same as valuing diversity for its own sake which is exactly what the West has been doing for a couple of decades.
Absolutely. Very well put!
Do people’s backgrounds have any effect on them? On their worldview, perspectives, opinions, assumptions, dispositions? Oddly, people’s backgrounds are very often excellent predictors of these opaque yet crucially important corners of the human mind.
Are Arab doctors as good as British doctors? Perhaps in an exam, but the Arabs will not co-operate with female staff – much beneath their dignity. I lost a relative because of this closed-mindedness. Now I am very suspicious of Muslim doctors. Their religious beliefs take precedence over your health.
Of course Arab doctors are not as good as British doctors.
Why would all the rich Arabs attend clinics in Harley Street?
Promoting a one-eyed lesbian beyond their capabilities because you are short of that demographic in the team does no favour to the team nor the employee.
Wouldn’t that depend on whether being one-eyed or being lesbian was seen in general experience to correlate with the outcomes your team is trying to achieve?
Including that a****le on the throne
Unexamined theory sounds like one of those made up progressive nonsense terms like persons of color or those assigned female at birth. There is a proper term for such “unexamined theories.” That word is ‘dogma’, a belief held definitively and without possibility of reform. (According to Wikipedia). For example, one might say that it is globalist dogma that migrants cannot be denied entry into whatever nation they wish regardless of national laws or the will of the people. Perhaps Tom forgot to bring his thesaurus yesterday.
Nell’s theory: 87% of “theories” are actually conjectures.
100% of theories are conjecture = Pragmatism (the philosophical type).
The Left’s ‘Theory’ is something else entirely.
No ond knows any philosophy in UK.
You all know the Left’s Theory, you are its living receptacle. Its petri dish.
All theories are just ‘theories’
Theory is examined: most diverse in culture and immigration are US and Canada and no one is saying it didn’t work! Most religion diversity is Singapore! Speaks for itself!
USA may be diverse in culture but it is still made up of “the Black vote”, “the Latino vote”, etc, so not exactly mixing as much as diversity’s champions like to think.
The point for “diversity’s champions” in the U.S. is preventing the mixing that might cause various “votes” to go to He who must not be named.
After an election in which the majority of Latino men went for Trump, thinking of these group as voting blocks may be on its way out.
The vote against UK intervention in Syria is the only time Miliband has made a correct decision.
British politicians are there to benefit the British people. Who rules Syria does not concern Britain at all; Syria poses no threat to it.
What complete ignorance. Those little boats are filled with persons, and many are Syrians.
Those Syrians are fleeing Syria because of a decade of Western intervention – look up Timber Sycamore, for example – not despite it
There was no Western intervention in Syria, unlike Iraq and Libia.
We should accept Syrian Christians and clear Muslims out to Muslim countries.
Miliband had told Cameron that he would support the Government in bombing Syria. What changed his mind was the opposition expressed to Labour MPs by their constituents. After Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, the public could see what the political class could not: that the US and its allies were unable to control the aftermath of their interventions.
It appears that representing the views of the voters is still not an acceptable explanation for policy.
Just as it is wrong for Britain to steal the supposed best and brightest of a foreign country to work in our hospitals it is wrong of us to let all the dissidents from a troubled country flee to Britsin. Both groups should stay in their country and resolve its problems just as we should sort out our NHS recruitment problems from our own people.
Spot on.
UK governments of every hue have deliberately denied the British people the opportunity to train and work in NHS roles, assuming it was cheaper to recruit already (half) trained from abroad. It is time the nursing bursaries were reinstated and the BMA had its wings clipped and told they will no longer be able to define the number of medical training places available to Brits.
The BMA certainly has no control over training numbers.
It managed to prevent May carrying out her promise to train another 1500 doctors a year, by simply saying that there would not be enough senior staff to train the new junior doctors. Tha5 has been the BMA stance for decades.
The low number of places available for those who wish to train as doctors in this country is nothing short of scandalous. It has been the case for at least two decades now.
The reason we didn’t intervene in Syria is because of the pathetic ‘depose the leader and walk away’ interventions in Iraq and Libya – there was little public support for intervention by 2013. Whilst intervening might have had a better outcome than what happened (given how bad it became), it would likely have just been a case of losing 5-0 instead of 6-0.
You could argue that the primary role of our politicians is to re-invent the past to excuse things not done or excuse things that shouldn’t have been done.
They are effectively the PR team for the Blob. Debates and law making are sideshows.
While it’s important to make sense of how we got to this place, I did stop reading this article halfway through because I think the most important thing to be thinking about right now is how to deal with the present situation rather than how past events caused it/aggravated it in some kind of neverending British political version of Sliding Doors.
The meaning of 2013 and the end of the Age of Intervention can and will be sorted out by historians at a (much) later point.
I honestly don’t know what to think about possible ways forward for Syria now, but these messy conflicts packed with ethnic/sectarian divisions tend to end up with solutions and settlement which are just as messy. See: Northern Ireland and Bosnia.
Syria will have its own version of the GFA or the Dayton Accords and Europe (meaning primarily the EU, but also Britain) at least should make sure it is a major player in facilitating that process. But whatever they end up with, Syria is not going to function in a way which we think of as “normal”. Any path to a peace that holds at this point should be taken and tried.
Britain is a small, near bankrupt archipelago in the North sea. It’s beyond time our politicians stopped poncing around the globe pretending to be statesmen and started doing what we pay them to do.
Fix the f**king potholes.
Britain still has nukes….
But which can’t be used without the consent of the USA. No it isn’t “written down” but that’s the reality.
So, are you saying that if Britain “pushes the button”, the nukes don’t work, or are you saying the Americans will be annoyed. Big difference.
Remember that whatever Russia does is fine with MC.
Whatever West does is wrong.
According to Sir Humohrey Appleby in Yes Minister, they are to protect us from the French.
Perfidious Albion needs protection from the forces of the Little corporal? Back to the 17th century
I can understand the point that if the French has nukes, Britain must.
What’s that got to do with it?
If anything, it means we can rely on our moat, trim the military and let foreigners get on with the business of killing each other without our (almost always disastrous) involvement
The difficulty is that they aren’t looking after the interests of those who currently pay them ie the British people but those they expect will pay them in the future ie those who will profit greatly from the meddling in other countries and those countries effectively becoming their colonies.
It is notable that British politicians used not to become rich by being in politics. They were either already rich ( usually Tories) or they were people who sought to improve the conditions for the “masses” and wouldn’t become rich by doing so (usually Labour).
Prime Ministers becoming colossally wealthy started with Major (Bush family, Carlyle Group connections) and has continued ever since. Truss probably hasn’t benefited much (went rogue…) but the rest surely have.
Thatcher didn’t end up rich and had to rely on the Barclay family to even die with some dignity. Harold Wilson was in a dire financial situation.
Go figure, as is said…also follow the money.
I’m not sure which is worse; people becoming politicians out of venality, or out of (almost always naive) do-gooderism.
And even if I could make my mind up on that point, it would be irrelevant because the former always pretend to be the latter anyway.
Absolutely. The terrifying thing about British politicians’ infantile desire to be filmed strutting on the world stage and posing next to the big guys is that they will drag us into any situation, regardless of catastrophic consequences, just so they can make that irritating declaration that they are ‘showing leadership’. We are merely there to vote them into such heights, fund them and their fancies, and shut the F up.
While I agree that the govt should ‘fix the f**king potholes, the idea that Britain is ‘near bankrupt’ is nonsense. The UK has the 6th highest GDP in the world, and a state income that could be increased with investment in corporate tax recovery, in parallel with more support for capital investment to reduce the vast amount of UK wealth dumped in tax havens.
More than half a century ago, when the news claimed that Britain was bankrupt, my History master said the claims were nonsense. He slammed the board rubber on the blackboard and exclaimed “This blackboard is wealth! Every JCB is wealth! Every bus, ship and plane is wealth!”
It seems that this History lesson needs to be repeated. Yes, we have collectively spent a lot of money and borrowed more – but Britain is far from bankrupt.
Every year for more than twenty years the government has spent more than its revenues. You just need to watch France to see where that is going to end.
Btw: you should pay more attention to GDP per capita than GDP, a metric which is largely meaningless as a measure of the well-being of a population
Good to see that you have a realistic idea of what can be achieved, but still think that we should give it a go and try to influence outcomes. When off the topic of Trump you are still as sensible as I remember you.
It’s more than a little worrying that our current political establishment is so consistently wrong about everything. Do they really think, after all the experience of recent decades, that what follows Assad will be better?
Maybe they think that, and maybe they don’t, but it is clear that Assad was truly awful. My only regret about his toppling is that he and his family escaped to Russia. It would have been good if they met the same fate as Gaddafi and Saddam. Plus, his toppling was a setback for two of the most disgusting regimes on earth (Iran and Russia).
OK, punishing tyrants is fine in theory but we should consider future as well.
Is Libya better governed now?
I mean from perspective of European interests?
Is Iraq better from the same perspective?
Is Egypt better under Sisi or under Muslim Brotherhood theocracy?
Is Iran better off than under Shah?
Syria might turn our better but I doubt it.
Absent from both sides of the debate (although they are but two faces of the same base coin) is any sustained awareness that the actors in these regional struggles may have any interests, motivations, hopes, dreams or ideals which are in any way distinguishable from our own Western categories.
Al Jolani being presented as a sort of New-Labour moderate version of Jihadism is particularly grim example of this tendency. As if the eschewing of a systematic persecution of Christians was his ‘Clause Four Moment’.
Utterly sophomoric, even at this late stage.
I personally find these macro statements tiresome. The interests, motivations, hopes, dreams, and ideals are overwhelmingly the same for all peoples of all races and all creeds since time immemorial: to get paid and not die, as some old soldier once said. People may hold different instances of that litany of near-synonyms I find myself unable to repeat, but in most cases most people will find the desire to “get paid and not die” supercedes any other consideration. It follows logically that by placing ourselves between people and these non-negotiable desires, we enter into competition with whatever system of [insert litany here] it is they espouse. By failing to fulfill these basic needs, we expose fundamental problems within our social system. Put simply, if our system is superior in the first place, from where comes the very impetus to reject it? Without fundamental problems therein, everyone is getting paid and no-one is dying.
I believe that what we see is not an invasion or a cultural usurpation but perhaps a sign that the Western social experiment is undergoing a very natural challenge. In a Dawkinsian sense, if culture is a collection of memes tantamount to mental genes, then it makes sense that these memes must undergo competition to remain viable in the ongoing great cultural discourse.
It may be of greater utility to focus on improving society such that no one needs be forced into one ideology, religion, or culture; the goal should be simply to have a system such that despite its inevitable flaws it is so observably superior to all social strata that rejection is ridiculous and iteration the only rational action.
‘The interests, motivations, hopes, dreams, and ideals are overwhelmingly the same for all peoples of all races and all creeds since time immemorial:’ Your childish naivety is staggering. You really, really, need to get out more.
What you see as naivety is not an ignorance of other concepts — it is a measured and rational rejection thereof in lieu of ideas I can (and will, if prompted to do so with anything logically stronger than ad hom) defend. I just can’t do so unless you provide me with logic; I won’t bother defending myself, only my ideas.
Regardless of whether most people just want “to get paid and not die” (surely you mean “get paid and not be killed”, unless you think most people don’t recognise their own mortality), countries aren’t run by most people.
They certainly don’t run Western foreign policy departments, which appear to be the exclusive playpens of psychopaths.
History is one long tableau of “most people” being persuaded to lay down life & limb to further their Elites’ foreign policy goals.
Unless “most people” start taking a much keener interest in foreign policy and start strongly expressing their preferences at the ballot box, I don’t see this changing.
Thank you for your response.
I have had the pleasure of reading Bentham in the original, so to speak, and like many others have found Utilitarianism unconvincing in its own words and on its own terms. Your lively gloss of the Benthamite programme, i’m afraid, leaves me unmoved.
Your last paragraph, however and in particular, shows the frightful tendency of many Utilitarian thinkers – society must be made to know what is good for it.
“…rejection is ridiculous and iteration the only rational action.”
That, to me, is chilling. It is the sort of thinking that imagined we could plant a secular pluralist, western-style democarcy in Mesopotamia at the point of a gun.
Okay, I hear you about your (ultimately unrelated) beef with utilitarianism. I personally find debates about ideologies to be pretty boring, and since I have no horse in that particular race, I’m just going to thank you for your thoughts on Bentham, apropos of nothing.
Either way, you misunderstand my point: it may be of more utility to focus on improving society in tangible ways than to dive into tribal conflict. Research shows that housed, well-fed people with realistic optimism for the future tend to commit fewer crimes. Maybe outcomes will be better for all involved — Christian and Muslim alike — if we focus on improving mechanisms of government such that more people have more opportunity.
The idea isn’t to somehow force people into thinking one way or another. It’s quite the opposite, actually: we should improve the way society works such that thinking that way is the only rational course.
I urge you to re-read Bentham in a good edition. Because you may be unaware of the gensis and lineage of some of the ideas you conjure with. These arguments are very fine prose in the original but the debate is an old one, as below –
“The principle of utility judges any action to be right by the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interests are in question”
“No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion”
For me, at least, the last two decades have shown that the Utilitarian man, like Homo Economicus, is the most implausible chimera of all.
“Man shall not live by bread alone.”
.”
Okay but I’m not using the word “utility” to invoke Bentham or utilitarianism or any ‘ism at all… save maybe pragmatism. It feels like you’re trying to browbeat me with sophistry and gestures towards a broader consensus that sees (the way you frame) this argument as settled. Instead of trying to read between the lines and sniff out which Great Thinker it is to whom I’m subservient, it might be of more utility to address ideas as they exist in the strict capacity by which they’re represented… and not what you want them to be.
I’m frankly unconcerned with how old the debate is. What’s vexing is that you want to try to box me into defending Bentham and the “tenets of utilitarianism” instead of engaging in a discussion in good faith. I don’t know how many other ways I can say that I’m not Liturgizing The Tenets. I’m trying to talk about today’s issues in today’s context; not from the perspective of a textbook on 18th century philosophy.
I’m sure it’s a rhetorical tactic that might cow some people into submission, but some of us have seen that song and dance a time or two in our lives.
I’m sorry to have given you that impression and meant no offense, friend.
You are of course entitled to your views which you express with great vigour.
My own view is that one needn’t reinvent the epistemological wheel in every age, and that identifying the genealogy of received ideas (which we all traffick in, make no mistake) can be a tool for expedited understanding, especially as these debates re-occur cyclically.
Mr Blair and President Clinton were very much of the view that the only explanation for wickedness in the world was economic. And many would argue that the last 25 years have been a painful exposition of the emptiness of that argument.
I cannot speak to the profile of the average terrorist in the United States (although the recent New York Midtown Assassin does not appear to have conspicuously lacked ‘the worlds goods’) but in the United Kingdom the profile is almost invariably that of a materially comfortable, not to say spoilt, yet spiritually sick graduate.
It is very hard for the materialist to accept the reality of human wickedness and depravity.
The former head of the Islamic Society at my own University College, for instance, is currently incarcerated at His Majesty’s pleasure for having conspired in the prepartion of acts of terrorist violence. No impoverishd herdsman, he.
This isn’t about recycling concepts in the idea space. When an idea occurs at a given part in an arbitrary “cycle,” its failure or success is always due so much to the circumstances of the time that it makes more sense to address the circumstances from a pragmatic standpoint than it does to try to divine an idea sufficiently pure or original that it’s “correct” or new enough that we can’t point back in history and identify a point in time it’s been tried and failed.
I get that it’s “been tried before.” My only points here are that:
– human beings are human beings before they are anything else
– human beings, while diverse, have a discrete set of universal concerns (which I reduced to getting paid and not dying as shorthand)
– it makes more sense to address people from the standpoint of the universals rather than the differences where possible
– core universals can be vaguely gestured towards in the form of something like Maslow’s pyramid in very broad strokes with much wiggle-room for specifics
We’re never going to eliminate radicalism or crime or whatever individual variance there is in our species which results in antisocial behavior. There will always be radicals and outliers of some kind or another; that’s human nature, and we can’t control that. What we can try to influence is the vulnerability of people in economic trouble — those whose core needs are not being met because those needs are gated behind some arbitrary economic quantity — to these things. There is a large and broad body of research which supports this approach.
A couple guys a few decades ago may very well have believed in some version of what I’m saying here. Their failure to address the vulnerability of individuals on an economic basis could just as easily be due to more banal mechanisms of partisan politics and self-interest than their approaches being incorrect. I believe that this is, in fact, the stance which is best supported not by references to ideological structures or a grand discourse of ideas but the data… which hasn’t changed.
Just not true. The Islamist view of death in the service of Allah is nothing at all like “get paid and not die”. Have you been living in a cave?
The trouble is for Islamist societies ” most people” doesn’t actually include half of us, and some see martyrdom as preferable to survival. There are fundamental differences in our worldviews, and whilst it’s right to try and build on our shared humanity, ignoring these differences is suicidal.
Speaking of suicide, I grew up in San Francisco. For context, there was a big problem with people jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. I don’t live there anymore, so it may still be a problem; I don’t know. Either way, you know what the single common thread is among the few to survive? Almost all of them immediately regret it. When faced with imminent death, they no longer want to die.
They think they want to die until death actually comes knocking at the door. My point here is that there exist aspects of our nature which are hidden from us as we layer on more and more complexity. We convince or allow ourselves to be convinced that reality is something different than what it is.
Muslims are human beings, too; there are fundamental aspects to the human experience which transcend race, religion, and culture.
Another example feels salient here: radical Muslim suicide bombers. While in the West, the common understanding is that they are predominantly religious fanatics. In reality, many (if not most) were simply disadvantaged. AQ, the Taliban, and ISIS would take care of bombers’ families afterwards with relatively extraordinary sums being paid out. In a similar vein, most of the Taliban were professionals in a similar way that were. Most of their combatants weren’t fanatics but the poor and destitute — the Taliban would pay them wages which eclipse in a year what they’d otherwise make in their entire lives.
It is all fundamentally economic. These are economic transactions occurring against the backdrop of religion and culture. Yes, these religions and cultures matter, but people tend to be most vulnerable to extremist versions of these things when economically disadvantaged… to the point where the most utile actions have nothing to do with religion or creed and everything to do with simply improving people’s lives.
By focusing on tribal conflicts instead of root causes, we limit ourselves to mitigating symptoms instead of working towards flawed cures. I don’t think it’s effective or ethical to continue disadvantaging people and satisfying ourselves with placing limits on their ability to fight back. The more elegant solution is to take care of people.
What follows Assad might well be better in terms of whether they bend the knee to Israel, which appears to be how we judge whether a “tyrant” is good (the Arab “monarchies” for instance) or bad (Assad… despite that tyrant getting voted back into power in 2024, 2020, and 2016).
Yes, Syria had elections! Who knew? I mean, apart from the many, many world leaders who called Assad to send him congratulations?
Were those elections flawed? I’m sure they were… having said that, I seem to recall our own recent show of democracy delivered 63% of voting power in parliament to the party that only got 34% of the vote. And a party that got 14% of the votes wound up with less than 1% of the voting power.
Anyway, all this harking back to 2013 ignores the fact that Syria only fell now after years of sanctions, the US illegally occupying the North-Eastern third of the country (depriving the Syrian government of grain and oil revenues) and Israel bombing Assad’s military sites practically every other day with complete impunity. And the US attacking Shiite militias crossing the Iraqi border when they attempted to come to Assad’s aid.
And – by the sounds of it – years of the CIA/MI6/MIT bribing the SAA officer class to melt away after Al-Qaeda… oops sorry, HTS… started their recent offensive.
Well done the Western Empire! Years of scheming and plotting and funding jihadis has finally paid off! I’m not sure how it’s paid off, exactly, besides allowing Israel to make yet another Arab land grab.
Now let’s see what’s left of Syria turns into another Lebanon… or Libya
The reason we didn’t intervene in Syria is because of the pathetic ‘depose the leader and walk away’ interventions in Iraq and Libya – there was little public support for intervention by 2013. Whilst intervening might have had a better outcome than what happened (given how bad it became), it would likely have just been a case of losing 5-0 instead of 6-0.
Isaiah xxix.14.
Jeremiah 5:31
Koran 2;193
Well played sir!
Mornington Crescent!
The “unexamined faith” so pertinent in this sphere, yet not mentioned in the article is Islamism. It is not the creation of Western thought, it is a product of the region, and left untrammeled, it’s fruits are beheadings and people burnt alive in cages. This is the enemy. This is what needs to be opposed. It is like a terminator. It cannot be reasoned with, argued with, and absolutely will not stop until the last perfect Muslim stands upon a mountain of skulls.
Rather than oppose it – which could lead to escalation, any power we have should be used to help enable the muslim community to neutralise it from within.
Good luck with that.
A plague on all there houses. In the meantime, the British taxpayer picks up the tab for their ongoing policy failure. Lamentable.
But we’re punching above our weight! Aren’t you proud to be British??
Now pay your tax like a good fellow, and don’t forget to teach your sons Dulce et decorum est etc.
Allow me to say it blandly dear Brits and all. The west, very much including the UK, has a post colonial and post imperial attitude that aims to rule and control. Democracy, “human rights” and the like, are only food for the fool, or/and plain lies every “decent citizen” can self consume..!
Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Yugoslavia, Ukraine, are places of an ongoing war for western dominion..! We, Greeks, lively (or servicing) on the very frontier between east and west, have been under western dominion-therapy for centuries..!
Well.. I said it..! Why the bitterness one may wander. Because the fall of Assad, a strong and possibly authoritarian leader is not good news. This “good news” is fake and rotten. The sad truth is, more pain for the people of Syria, more pressure on the Christians of this land, continuous support of Turkish greed and a deep looniness of everything that may be Hellenic. Either Greek Hellenic, or Hellenic of the globe..! Not an imperialist Hellenic but one that serves..! Until better days, we, the Greek Hellenic will be offering this service in its humble form, of serving tourists and guests..! Though be aware.. we can’t hold much longer..! If the West keeps on betraying itself, its people and, allow me to say, it’s Hellenic heart, then we are doomed..!
I understand that this sad note while nearing Christmas sounds a little off..! But let’s face it. One of the best Christmas one may have, is the bare naked truth..! Wouldn’t you agree..?
Glory to God on high and peace on Earth..!
Amen..!
May we all have a very Merry Christmas..!
Our “Christian” leaders dislike Christianity, as it provides (albeit poorly) a moral compass that is at odds with their goals.
I don’t for a second think Kier Starmer (or Sunak, or BoJo, etc) give a tinker’s cuss for the wellbeing of the British; so I find it hard to believe they care about Syrians (or Ukrainians, for that matter).
Well, the West hell bend on domination in your telling, released Greece from Turkish yoke.
OK, it would be great to free more lands including Constantinopol from Turkish occupation but Attaturk counter attacked successfully against Greek army in Anatolia.
I am not optimistic about future of Syria and its Christians.
We should accept them if they wish to come instead of Muslim immigrants.
But keeping tyrant in power was never long term solution to Syria’s problems.
A McTague was, I’ve heard, responsible for a monumental balls up on the Hong Kong frontier in 1982. A Chieftain Tank was supporting Gurkhas in a show of strength. It moved up over a bridge, which collapsed. A recovery Tank was sent for, which ended up in the river too. – All in the full view of the PLA who couldn’t believe the shambles. Whether this had any bearing on the diplomatic rout that followed in Honkers is a moot point. Was this the same dynasty? Or perhaps it was a MacTake? It was a long time ago after all.
It is in fact too early to tell whether the fall of the ghastly Assad regime won’t lead to an even ghastlier ISIS-like regime (Afghanistan is obviously a sobering example in this regard). And thus, it is certainly too early to tell whether if Assad had fallen in 2013, that the alternative might have been better.
What can be said, now that the horrors of the Assad regime are in the news – horrors that were known before to anyone who wanted to know – is how utterly feckless the international institutions have been, first and foremost the UN, in normalizing these horrors, and appointing Assad’s Syria e.g. to the UNESCO committee in 2020, and to the WHO executive board and the UN decolonization committee in 2021. To top it off, in 2022, a majority of speakers at the UN Human Rights Council Syria review praised Syria’s human rights record.
Maybe Syria’s human rights record looks pretty good for the region.
What was the situation in Syria before the so called Arab Spring? If I remember the west backed Assad as he was keeping the nasties at bay (similar to the way we backed Sadam Husain before we turned against him)
We backed these dictators because it was useful to us and then we turned against them with some high minded notion that the populations would embrace a liberal democracy.
Looks like we lost on both fronts, not saying either dictator should have survived but we didn’t need to upset the apple cart in the way we did.
Assad was an ally in the GWoT, and his torture chambers were used in the West’s “extraordinary rendition” programs. Quite useful… if you think torture is OK.
As for
Can you honestly say you believe spreading “liberal democracy” was anything other than a pretext? If we’re so keen on spreading “liberal democracy” why don’t we ever overthrow West-friendly Gulf “monarchies” or pay Al-Qaeda affiliates to attack them?
Why should West overthrow Gulf monarchs or pay Al-Qaeda?
Surely Arab Spring taught us that cure is worse than disease?
West nr1 objective should be end of Muslim immigration and remigrating those already here.
The thing is that none of the political class, domestic or foreign policy is pro-humanity, domestic or foreign. They might mention people suffering or dying, but only the right people and when its convenient to their overarching anti-human agenda.
The fact is that the West is led mainly by the US, and all of that is controlled by the billionaire class behind the multi-national corporations who fund the think tanks, and the think tanks produce policy papers that lawyers turn into bills, and then lobbyists present those to the Washington machine which rubber-stamps it, and then the corporate and controlled media pushes it out to the masses.
Then there are groups like the Atlantic Counsel that help determine the policies and therefore the thinking for the NATO member states via the global nudge network of censorship and information control, and if that doesn’t work and the wrong people get elected in countries, we have a whole group for that through the NGOs, or if that doesn’t work we bring criminal charges, and if assassinating peoples character doesn’t work, then there are other levels…
The whole thing is a rigged machine that no matter which side gets in, (other than the populists, they can be troublesome) it all stays on track. This Syrian overthrow took a lot longer than when they stated they were going to do it. They tried to overthrow Kiev in 2004 and it took them only 10 years to get it done.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa
Once you see it, it can’t be unseen.
But it can take a long time to remove the blinders resulting from being bombarded, year after year, with pro-Western propaganda
‘two crises in an epoch of Western failure that has given us the world of Donald Trump and Abu Mohammed al-Julani in which we live today.’ No, it is Islam which has given us Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, Turkey, et al. They are all characterised by ethnic, tribal, etc tensions, but it is a dogmatic, irrational, inflexible, murderously intolerant supremacist religion which amplifies and cements those division in place, and drives the conflicts within and around them.
Afghanistan was developing reasonably well until the West funded and supplied weapons to Jihadis to destabilise its pro-USSR government in the hope the USSR would intervene (which it did, after being asked in by the government at the time) and get bogged-down in a Vietnam-style quagmire.
But who “gave” us all these supposedly Islam-ruined countries? Countries that have almost all been subject to extensive Western efforts aimed at destabilising them so they’ll become Western vassals, eg all the Muslim countries you don’t mention, because those are ruled by compradors, or at least, rulers who allow US bases on “their” territory?
Some people on here know history of Afghanistan as quite different from your retelling.
So Soviet backed communist coup against Afghan King was fine but USA intervention against it was wrong?
For a start, cost of Afghan adventure was contributing factor in collapse of Soviet Union, so clear positive for the West.
Soviet intervention was to overthrow Afghan government at the time.
You surely know about Soviet special forces attack on presidential Palace?
I never understood the eagerness to topple the Assad dynasty. Syria, like all the Sykes-Picot defined “countries”, is not really a single cohesive country the way we Europeans would understand it.
Prior to 1971, Syria had frequent regime changes (seemed like every 9 months!), mostly drawn from Sunni Muslims (the largest creed in Syria) who would dominate and persecute the minorities. Then Hafez al-Assad created a coalition of minorities which managed to hold power more-or-less stably for the next 40 years until the “Arab Spring” in 2011.
However the Civil War ended, there was going to be a nasty blood-letting. If the Sunnis won, there would be a bloody revenge-purge of Alawis and other minorities. If Assad’s side won, there would be a bloody punishment for the Sunni rebels. The correct course for the west should have been complete neutrality.
If neutrality was not tenable, Assad was preferable to ISIS. From a humanitarian point of view, a quick overwhelming victory by Assadr would limit the damage. A short conflict would limit the need for reprisals; and a decisive victory by either side would prevent a bloody resurgence of violence.
In the middle-east, the possibility of military success is enough to spark a bloody challenge. That is why all the enablers, who push for premature cease-fire leaving no decisive result, are blood guilty for setting up the next round of violence. Peace is not the mere absence of shooting in the moment.
I don’t think the West ever intended for there to be peace in Syria as long as the country’s leadership didn’t bend the knee to Western interests.
The current situation is in line with Israel’s “Clean Break” strategy. And as this is a result of a decade’s worth of Western and Israeli interventions, it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that this was their goal all along.
You shouldn’t lump Israel in with the rest of the west, because Israel’s interest in her northern neighbour is direct and potentially existential.
I am sure there was great ambivalence about the Assad regime in Israel. On the one hand, The Assad’s pretty much kept to the separation agreement for 50 years post 1973.
On the other hand, Syria’s “Greater Syria ambitions” (along with the PLO’s state-within-a-state presence) in the 1970s destabilised Lebanon into a civil war. That paved the way for Hezbollah to be a power. And then Assad provided a corridor for Iran to supply Hezbollah and promote the decades of war with Israel, that became its most intense from October 2023.
The west (especially the U.S. State Department and the British Foreign office) has never been supportive of Israel’s security. Rather, all western policies have supported a teetering survival while making sure that security should never be achieved.
Don’t let the “western ally” rhetoric from western governments deceive you. Israel is every bit as much the victim of foreign interference as Syria and the other countries of the middle-east.
I dont remember the unity government idea. Unity of whom with whom? Assad’s Syria was strictly secular. With freedom for minorities and equal rights for wonen. Was he to have unified with people like the boss of Idlib, who ran a sharia law governnent? Assad did respond to the Arab Spring and the 2011 start of the civil war. He rewrote the Constitution. It renained secular,but Syria ceased to be a one party state . However it blocked religious parties from standing , very undemocratic, and the preamble remained unchanged, a virulently anti Zionist document.
Maybe more of a ‘wee beastie’ than a big beast but didn’t Florence of Belgravia a.k.a. Rory Stewart do just that after he called the US election so wrong, saying it was because he was “too much of an optimist” or something like that? In his own mind he’s too much of a good person to think that someone like Orange Man could win the presidency.
Seeing how the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Sadam Hussein a decade earlier had plunged the whole region into chaos it must have seemed quite prudent not to repeat the exercise in Syria.
Now Assad has gone we will find out what happens next, maybe a theocracy, further chaos and civil war? However, the establishment of a plauralist democracy still looks something of a longshot.
One thing which should be obvious to all by now is that Western intervention is unlikely to have any positive impact and any solution lies with the people of the region.
McTague is wrong: it’s not complex, it really is very simple. Obama made the use of chemical weapons by Assad a red line and then, influenced by the UK HoC vote, failed to follow through. Result, a decade of US foreign policy weakness and blunders.
It may well be true that Obama made a mistake by setting out this red line but, having done so, he had to follow through. As any teacher of an unruly class can tell you, don’t make a threat you can’t deliver.
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Powell and Osborne looked at this purely through Western Neocon, globalist eyes and refused to take into account the views of 90% of Syrians. I was on sabbatical study there the last quarter of 2010 when already the CIA and others were at work: you could spot them by their boots and their cigarette packets. Our Foreign Office gave in tamely to the Yanks against reason and the facts on the ground. The influence of US Zionists in creating Western foreign policy triumphed yet again. Powell and Osborne simply lied: the massive immigration began because of the West’s intervention, that and the sanctions on the Syrian people. There was NEVER any possibility of Powell’s solution of a democratic govt: every Syrian knew that the Assads were the ONLY bulwark against an Islamist theocracy summed up in their strapline ‘One man, one vote, once.’ I had found a country in which the freedoms to associate, worship, climb to the top in every government department – the army, education, medicine, etc were open to all and of all religions: the one thing you did not do was mess with the Assads. But the US Neocons and Zionists wanted to destabilise the countries around Israel, always leaving the opportunity for another ‘war on terror’ and more profits for the US arms industry on the boards of which you will find them. The Western public swallow too readily the propaganda rather than do some research and analysis for themselves – which this article does so well. I also remember Lebanon in the 70s and the West’s intervention on behalf of the Zionists there. Most especially I remember the CIA station chief’s advice to me at a drinks party when I mentioned that I was thinking of joining the Foreign Office. He said, ‘Let me give you just one piece of advice if you want to get on: DFWTZ (Z pronounced Zee) Don’t F*** With The Zionists.’ Ever since I have seen their tentacles and claws in everything in the area. My religious Jewish friends confirm this and they too are ashamed of what has happened. Wes Streeting is simply an opportunist like so many of them, profiting from their messes or virtue-signalling but actually either disingenuous or simply ignorant and stupid.
Utter nonsense.
What destabilised Lebanon was Palestinian meddling.
They did it previously in Jordan.
Israel was happy with Assad in charge.
The comments about everyone being allowed to succeed in Syria are a sick joke.
It was dictatorships, no different from communist regimes (I was born in one and know people who worked in Syria in 70s and 80s).
Based on historical evidence of Middle East coups Syria is nor going to be success, but it has nothing to do with Zionists or USA.
You spot antisemites when they mention their supposed Jewish religious friends who are ashamed of Israel.
The bit about CIA guys being easily noticed by their boots and cigarette packets are quite hilarious.
I guess it was not only Kier Starmer father who was toolmaker and produced total tool.
“Miliband’s account is just as lamentably dishonest as Cameron’s.”
What a bunch of creeps!
Face it, the West has had the most incompetent and inept leaders in our history during the last 60 years. Failure after failure in every facet of governing and the price is being paid by the citizens of the West as well as the innocent civilians of the rest of the world. There is vat loads of needless bloodshed and financially broken hard working folks sacrificed by these sleazebags and nothing has changed. No one is at fault, especially me, has been the mantra for these educated idiots and still continues. It is complicated but not that complicated and hopefully in the US, we will start to “restructure” these idiots into the unemployment line soon. Time for England to do the same.
There’s still no evidence proving that it was Assad who used the chemical weapons in that incident. And quite frankly plenty of evidence pointing to the “moderate” rebels culpability. And no this not a defense of Assad who was obviously a tyrant. We’re probably looking at another failed state along the lines of Libya. Blowback is most likely on the way now and that’s never a good thing.
When does breaking something require the retail equivalent of buying it? Iraq, Libya, and now Syria. Same song, third verse. A dictator with whom we sometimes made common cause, depending on the new enemy was, is deposed and we pretend that euphoria will follow. Can anyone credibly claim that Iraq and Libya are better post-Saddam and Qaddafi? Why will Syria after Assad be better?
One nation drives the agenda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks0l_Zpt1xA
I occasionally click on these links, but stop immediately I see Tucker Carlson’s face.
even by describing the issues the article leans towards it’s bias. Of course it wasn’t “framed” as regime change – that’s a no-no and the other reasons were exaggerated.
What’s missing here is whether the intervention would actually have disposed the Assads and what would it have been replaced with? Maybe – aside from wishful thinking – the outcome is best (in the long run) as they declare they don’t want war with anyone. But many had to suffer as a result. Bottom line – it’s the opulent rich at fault – as it always is.
Did anyone mention that there was no legal right to bomb anyone? Politically bankrupt criminality.
I thought Assad’s Syria was a unity government. He ruled the whole country, not like now: and if the elections were rigged at least there was a Parliament where female MPs could walk in normal dress. The fall of the one party state in the constitution of 2012 and the introduction of competing political parties ( two left wing ones) became acceptable, but no religious parties were permitted. When I read thecWest’s call for a constitution I am tempted to point out that there is one, secular, and full of human rights and female emancipation clauses. Why shouldn’t the former head of the Idlib terrorists simply adopt it, abandoning the anti Zionist preamble, for preference. The West’s aim in fomenting the civil war was to fragment Syria into what they considered was the only reasonable model for a Middle Eastern state, with different religious ‘communities,’as we call them in Bradford, living peaceful separate lives. I am still waiting for the vast caches of chemical weapons to be discovered. The author has forgotten that thec OSCE found no evidence Assad used them, and once again the one room grandiosely named Syrian Observatory for z human Rights, of Coventry, is claiming special knowledge. Yes, history is remade very rapidly.