PETER HITCHENS: We set Syria ablaze... now we're hurling in explosives

[-:Undertaker:-]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ar...xplosives.html

PETER HITCHENS: We set Syria ablaze... Now we're hurling in explosives

Imagine this: newspapers and broadcasters in China suddenly start to denounce the British Government.

They call it a ‘regime’. They say that its treatment of its Muslim minority is cruel and unjust.

Soon, their views are echoed by the Chinese foreign minister, who in a speech at the United Nations says that Britain’s treatment of its minorities is a disgrace, and calls for sanctions against this country.

Violence: Peter Hitchens says that arming the rebels against forces loyal to President Assad (pictured) is a recipe for starting a major war

The Chinese ambassador turns up as an ‘observer’ at an Islamist demonstration in Birmingham.

Some protesters are injured. Carefully-edited footage of the occasion is shown on global TV stations, in which the police are made to look brutal and the provocations against them are not shown.

Soon after this, armed attacks are made on police stations and on Army barracks. People begin to notice the presence in British cities of foreign-looking men, sometimes armed.

Within a matter of months, the country is plunged into a civil war. A place known for stability, order and prosperity descends with amazing speed into a violent, rubble-strewn chaos, complete with refugees, plumes of oily smoke and soup-kitchens.

The bewildered inhabitants shrug with hopeless bafflement when they read foreign accounts of events, encouraging the rebels, even though nobody really knows who they are. They just long for the fighting to be over.

All the time, foreign media report in a wholly one-sided way, credulously trumpeting British Government ‘atrocities’ without verification. And then all the major countries in the world agree to permit the direct supply of weapons to the rebels.

Absurd? Wait and see. Something quite like this actually happened on a small scale in Northern Ireland, where American individuals helped buy guns and bombs for the IRA, and the US government put huge pressure on us to give in to the terrorists.

And China, on the verge of becoming a global power, is watching carefully all the precedents we set, in Yugoslavia, in Iraq and now in Syria.

I apologise to the real Chinese ambassador for inventing this particular story. But the events I imagine here are based on the actual behaviour of Western powers in Syria. And what nations do to others is usually, in the end, done to them in turn.

I do not like the Syrian government. Why should I? It is not much different from most Middle Eastern nations, in that it stays in power by fear. The same is true of countries we support, such as Saudi Arabia, recently honoured with a lengthy visit by Prince Charles.

In fact Saudi Arabia is so repressive that it makes Assad’s Syria look like Switzerland. And don’t forget the places we liberated earlier – Iraq, Libya – which are now sinks of violence and chaos.

So many high ideals, so much misery and destruction. My old foe Mehdi Hasan (who understands the Muslim world better than most British journalists) rightly pointed out on Question Time on Thursday that our policy of backing the Syrian rebels is clinically mad.

These are the very same Islamists against whom – if they are on British soil – Government Ministers posture and froth, demanding that they are deported, silenced, put under surveillance and the rest.

But when we meet the same people in Syria, we want to give them advanced weapons. One of these ‘activists’, a gentleman called Abu Sakkar, recently publicly sank his teeth into the bleeding heart of a freshly slain government soldier.

I confess that I used to think highly of William Hague. I now freely admit that I was hopelessly wrong.

The man has no judgment, no common sense, and is one of the worst Foreign Secretaries we have ever had, which is saying something.

His policies – disgracefully egged on by a BBC that has lost all sense of impartiality – are crazily creating war where there was peace.

Syria for all its faults was the last place in the region where Arab Christians were safe. Now it never will be again. Who benefits from this? Not Britain, for certain.

Arms: Foreign Secretary William Hague pushed for the EU's embargo on Syria to be lifted to enable the supply of weapons to forces opposed to President Assad

Now, Mr Hague’s strange zeal for lifting the EU arms embargo has caused Moscow to promise a delivery of advanced anti-aircraft missiles to Syria. Israel has threatened to destroy them if deployed. Syria has said it will respond with force.

This is exactly how major wars start. Mr Hague is not just pouring petrol into a blazing house full of screaming people. He is hurling in high explosives as well. It may even be that some people actually want such a war, with Iran as its true target.

They know that ‘weapons of mass destruction’ will not work again as propaganda. So they claim to be fighting for ‘democracy’ in Syria.

It is a grisly lie. Unless this stupidity is brought to an end, the world may be about to take another major step down the stairway that leads to barbarism.

This business is now so urgent that I beg you to ask your MPs what they propose to do to halt this wilful slither into a war almost nobody wants, and which could easily ruin the civilised world.

When the Arab Spring started I was cautiously optimistic but still maintained (to the outrage of many on this forum) that we ought to stay out of it as getting involved in these conflicts which we little understand, of which my first impression of the Arab Spring proved, often backfires on both us and the people in those countries. In Libya for example, even those who opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan like me strangely supported sending in expensive weapons to rebel fighters and providing air cover for the rebel groups (a de facto declaration of war against a sovereign state in Northern Africa). I argued at the time using multiple examples that whilst it may seem a good idea on the face of it, events always bring about unintended consquences - something that happened sooner than I thought possible when those arms made it southwards into Mali and into the hands of Al-Qaeda factions who seized half of Mali using those same weapons.

And here we are again. The difference being that many more people (those who don't rely on the BBC for their foreign coverage) now realise that the rebels aren't what they are being portrayed to be by the media and are very, very questionable - with numerous accounts of acts of violence being committed by the 'rebels' rather than the Syrian Government. With a bit of homework over the past few months also, it's now apparent to people following Middle Eastern politics that what is happening isn't a democracy vs regime battle - it's a complex regional war between Sunni-dominated Saudi Kingdom and it's allies (including the West) vs Shia dominated Islamo-Republican Iran and it's allies. Just examine Iraq post-invasion and its politics to see the war in 'mini-version' between the factions which even includes the formation of the de facto Kurdish State which is about the only bonus I have seen arise out of turmoil in the Arabian world in recent years.

So again - let's keep our noses out of it and listen a lot less to Mr Hague, the Prime Minister, Mrs Clinton and President Obama ...and a lot more to the likes of Ron Paul. It may not sound appealing to listen to an old man who can't make as vacuous and empty a speeches as Obama, but had we listened to him and others like him we wouldn't be repeating the same mistakes over and over and over again - not to mention brewing a toxic cocktail in the Middle East.

Thoughts?

[-:Undertaker:-]

I just came across this Rand Paul video on the topic, pretty much sums up what i've added to the bottom.

I'd be interested to hear what people think on becoming involved in Syria/whether they've changed their minds on the Arab Spring.