Right. So Parliament has just voted to send airstrikes to bomb Syria in the hope of obliterating the disgusting totalitarian fascist monsters that are Daesh/Isis. I do hope their information is right and that we don’t live to regret it. I hope that airstrikes and more bombs falling on innocent civilians as well as terrorist targets don’t end up doing more harm than good in both the short and the longer term. My fear is that this escalation will make the conflict and bloodshed worse and further drawn out.
I am not a pacifist, as you know, but I had severe misgivings about this airstrike policy. It doesn’t seem to have done much good wherever we’ve engaged in it in the Middle East in the last few years. I’m not anti-war per se, I can see why military action is sometimes necessary. Sometimes it is impossible to reason with people but if we came across one of these people on an individual level, we’d walk away. I don’t really think that doing nothing and pretending that it’s someone else’s problem is an option for us but it’s difficult to know exactly what to do for the best.
There are no guarantees that even the best thought-through strategy would work to destroy these people and my sneaking suspicion is that airstrikes, far from being a strategy considered in depth at length, is clutching at straws. And I hugely resent being labelled a terrorist sympathiser for having misgivings, for a lack of blind faith in the pronouncements of any political party.
I also feel disgust for people who are calling people on “the other side” names and making threats against them. To me, the decision seems finely balanced and there is no justification for taking an extreme view to the extent that one insults the other side. After all, the other side is supposed to be those bloodthirsty murderous hoodlums, isn’t it?
I’m sorry for the lack of coherence of this post. My mind has been on other things this week, as you know. I wanted to say something, but it’s late and I’m tired.
Your post is completely coherent Gita and makes absolute sense. Given events of the last decade, I believe that these airstrikes will do more harm than good. They will continue to hurt civilians and create chaos, on which ISIS thrives. They will also be useful propaganda for recruitment to ISIS. And no, they will not make us safer. Last month’s Paris attacks show this. Home grown fanatics will have more excuses to carry out atrocities.
This is very much how I feel. I don’t have any answers but I don’t feel Cameron has presented a coherent plan or compelling case that this will help or solve anything. I fear James is right and this will escalate matters as well as serving to push more marginalised Britons towards supporting Daesh.
I’m sure doing nothing isn’t an option just don’t think rushing in to get involved in this way is right. It worries me.
Sadly, rationality isn’t an option for governments keen to be rated as decisive and cohesive on the world stage. Time is weak, diplomacy is sissy, education, sanctions and security are cowardly. So we bomb in haste and flex our political muscles. How can you dispel an ideology that is scattered globally by taking out a few oilfields? Hate breeds hate. Shut down the propaganda. Close off the communications. Stop recruitment and invest more in intelligence. Suicide bombers are cheap. These atrocities do not depend on enormous funds. They depend on anonymity and persuasion. We have just fed IS a fresh source of recruitment material.
Thank you all of you for your comments.
Now that this has been decided by our democracy we can only sit tight and hope for effective surgical strikes fed with good intelligence that produce the minimum amount of collateral damage. Which is easy to say fro the comfort of my Beckenham bedroom, and that’s really what fills me with so much trepidation. I think we all need to remind ourselves here: collateral damage means people, just like you and me, trying to live their already ruined lives in already desperate conditions. My thoughts are with them, as well as the members of our Armed Forces who are charged with carrying out political orders.
The other thing I wanted to say was this on the terrorist sympathiser comment, which I thought was vile, insulting and another example of the airheadedness of our Prime Minister: one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter; and look at our supine attitude to some of the vilest Governments on earth: Saudi Arabia springs to mind immediately.
Gita, it’s the collateral damage that fills me with horror and I’m surprised at the amount and variety of people I’ve come across who feel similarly. As the world gets smaller I think there are fewer people who see victims of strikes as far off foreign numbers. I don’t suppose it’s the most sensible of comparisons but I wonder how many people and MPs would have felt comfortable precision bombing Belfast to eliminate the IRA
David x
Exactly this. x
I doubt anyone finds this easy, and we don’t know how it will end, which is one of the hardest things about it, but I think on balance Parliament voted the right way. It is only an extension of bombing that is already being carried out in Iraq anyway. Now that the decision has been made I wish our RAF pilots godspeed.
On the “terrorist sympathisers” comment: it was leaked from a meeting of MPs, and it is clear the PM was not referring to all those who oppose air strikes, but to a certain couple of men currently at the top of the Labour Party who very definitely are terrorist sympathisers. They’ve always supported the IRA and have spoken out in support of other terrorist groups in the past. That’s a matter of record. I simply do not understand why those who wanted Jeremy Corbyn to lead Labour don’t care about that aspect of his politics. It’s vile.
I’m not a fan of Corbyn and some of his activities, Annette, though I do find myself appreciating the sense of some of the things he says. But Cameron MUST have known what he was saying and he refused to apologise or clarify even though he had ample opportunity. A lot of people will have been hugely annoyed and alienated by those remarks which appeared to equate those of us who are less gung-ho about the airstrikes with terrorist sympathisers. It is just not on for a Prime Minister to say things like this.
I’m sure he did know what he was saying: that Corbyn and McDonnell (and he may also have meant Ken Livingstone and one or two others close to Jeremy Corbyn) are terrorist sympathisers. He only said it to a group of his own MPs and since it’s true, I don’t have a problem with that. But I can also see why it was probably ill advised. It was leaked, inevitably, and his opponents used it and twisted it to mean something it didn’t (that anyone opposed to air strikes was a terrorist sympathiser).
Interesting comments on Question Time last night. The numbers on recruitment to IS have more than doubled since the Iraq air strikes commenced. If this is not proof that this is an ill-advised strategy, what is?
Hm.