David Cameron shouldn't be given a mandate to extend war into Syria

Eurofighter Typhoon

Eurofighter Typhoon
The RAF's Eurofighter Typhoon

David Cameron is seeking to extend the UK's bombing campaign of ISIS from Iraq and into Syria.

I will ignore the issues of international law (No Syria invitation, no UN mandate) for the simple reason that international law is a joke and might is often right.

The question is a simple one: should the UK bomb (ISIS in) Syria. The answer is even simpler: No.

A major argument used to support such an idea is a flawed one: By definition any individual attacking people in the UK will not be in Syria.

If that individual was in Syria, at that point in time they wouldnt be a threat to us in the UK.

The use of the attacks in Paris are just a ruse, a useful excuse to push an interventionist policy and one that should be countered.

Unfortunately, our political leaders seem to have lost their sense and think it would look good in their CV's and the history books should they be linked to military intervention and if it doesn't succees they could always lie and say they didn't know better like they do about Iraq in 2003.

Syria is a mess, but while ISIS may be the international bogeyman, they are not the biggest threat in Syria, nor responsible for the largest number of casualties or even the refugee crisis. The Syrian regime led by Assad is responsible for the vast majority of deaths in Syria, more than all the other groups combined.

It is the brutality of the Syrian regime (along with disenfranchisement in Iraq) that led to ISIS being strengthened and gaining ground. Cameron's war will not solve this problem - but it will create others.

Such actions will incerase the likelihood of deranged individuals attacking us. This is not a new risk - we have plenty of intervention and destruction of civil societies on our hands already: stoking revolution in Syria as a long term foreign policy objective, sucking up to the brutal military coup in Egypt, destroying Libya and attacking ISIS in Iraq.

However extending the bombing campaign into Syria increases the risks of blowback and the Muslims in the UK will be the victims of any attrocity and then once again the victims of any retaliation along with being seen as responsible for not condemning the attrocities enough.

The right answer here is to avoid escalation and joining the war on ISIS in Syria and telling our MP's what our views are.

The Leader of the labout party has after finding many treacherous MP's in his own party unwilling to oppose extension of this war. Please use this consultation along with other means to inform the powers that be that should they support war, it is their hands that will be bloody.

Comments

A bit late in the day for my comments, but i do agree with your article.

People have written to MP's and some MP's have put these views strongly in Westminster.

A short speech from Frank Skinner {MP} a MP of the old school, youngsters could learn a lot about british politics listening/watching Frank Skinner in action.

 

It is interesting to see how this turned out from the 4 years later angle.

I have no idea what the better option would have been.

"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.