Inner Quests

There are many things on my mind this morning; what I can and will share is my concern over the looming crisis in Syria. Of course there is no ‘looming’ about it for the people of Syria who have been caught in the middle of a civil war for the past two years but for those of us in the comfort of the western world what is looming is the sickening prospect of watching the US bombard another Middle East country and knowing for certain that it is as immoral as anything the Nazis did.

A few days ago British MPs stood up to their Prime Minister and voted against British military involvement. They voted against both Cameron’s motion to approve military action and the amendment of the opposition leader, Ed Miliband, to delay approval pending further conditions being met. Both motions were unacceptable to me and, fortunately, to a majority of MPs. A Labour shadow minister, Jim Fitzpatrick, resigned saying that he could not support the opposition amendment as “it essentially endorses the same principle: ‘If we can address certain issues, if certain conditions are met, military action can happen’. I don’t believe that it should under any circumstances.” Respect to Jim for that. Unfortunately I can’t give the same respect to my own MP Stephen Timms who replied to my email saying “Thank you for getting in touch about this. I don’t rule out that military action may be needed to deter the Syrian Government from using more chemical weapons on its own people. However, I agree with Ed Miliband that we need to proceed with care and caution. I shall therefore be supporting Ed’s amendment tonight”. Stephen’s reply was disappointing, not least because of his assumption that the Syrian government actually did use chemical weapons against their people.

Nevertheless Cameron has said that he accepts the verdict of the British Parliament and that there will be no British involvement and some people assume that’s the end of the matter. There are those, Like Boris Johnson, who are saying however that there should be another vote and that Britain should intervene if the situation changes:

We should be concerned about this but we should be concerned about American intervention in any case. We should be concerned because intervention is being sold on two contentious premises and one that is patently false. The contentious premises are:

1. That of the two sides in the Syrian conflict the Assad government is the worse, and

2. That the Assad government responsible or is the prime suspect for the use of chemical weapons in Ghouta.

The patently false premise is

3. That military intervention will do more good than harm.

It is this third premise that we should be concerned about. Assad has his supporters inside and outside of Syria and there is propaganda for and against him but when the missiles are launched it will not only be Assad and the Syrian government who suffer it will be ordinary Syrian people. Should the Syrian government retaliate, as they have threatened, they will be further attacked and Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah will be obliged to fight on their side. What Russia does is an unknown. But Russia and China can see where this is headed. There is NO good outcome for anyone apart from the global elites in beginning direct military intervention and if people are not very concerned about this then they need to become so before it is too late.

Compare Johnson’s political gibbering with what this American woman has to say in this video:

and in this:

Who are we in the west to ‘punish’ another nation she asks. I like what she says and the clarity and passion with which she articulates the rationally and morally obvious. We should be listening to her and to each other rather than to the politicians and mainstream media who, with some honourable exceptions, have lost all credibility.

The demo was small, maybe 150 people gathered at fairly short notice. I raised my voice with them in some anti-war chants directed at the doubtless sound proofed edifice that is the American embassy in Grovsenor Square. The protesters fitted the stereotype, passionate young women from the SWP and old men with beards and sandals. There were some Syrian Assad supporters, some of whom became very upset when a speaker said something negative about Assad. The key speaker was Jeremy Corbyn MP. I wish we had more MPs like him.