Tendring Topics……..on line
SURELY NOT AGAIN!
For
more than two centuries the United Kingdom
has again and again been involved in armed conflict in North Africa and the Middle East . Empire building during the 19th
century we twice tried, and failed, to occupy and subdue Afghanistan by
force. In that same century we were
involved with Egypt and the Sudan as well as with southern Africa . During World War I, since Turkey was an ally
of Germany, we were involved with the whole of the Near and Middle East from
the Balkans and Egypt to what was then called Mesopotamia (now Iraq). Conflict during World War II involved both the whole of the Middle East and the
whole of North Africa. During that war I
was a gunner in the Royal Artillery and was in action in the frontier area of Egypt and Libya throughout the winter, spring
and early summer of 1941 and 1942. My
active military career came to an abrupt end when Tobruk in Libya fell to
Rommel’s Afrikakorps on 21st June 1942!
In
recent years the pace has accelerated.
To our shame the UK and the USA supported the ‘gallant Afghan Mojihadin’ in their armed resistance to Soviet
occupation in the 1980s – thereby financing, training and encouraging the ‘terrorist extremists’, still killing
‘our boys’ in Afghanistan who for the past ten years have been engaged in a
mission similar to that of the Soviets in an earlier decade. All British and other NATO troops are to be
withdrawn in the near future. My guess
is that, after an initial blood-bath of Afghans who are considered to have
helped the NATO forces, within a year Afghanistan will be as it was
before either the Soviet or the NATO interventions.
The Gulf Wars and Iraq
In
the meantime the UK has been
involved in two Iraq
or ‘Gulf’ wars. We became a combatant in
the second bloodier one as a result of false claims that the Iraqi government
had been somehow involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack, and that they possessed
concealed ‘weapons of mass destruction’ threatening the peace of the region and
of the whole world. What nonsense! And I believe that those who deceived
Parliament and much of the Press into supporting the invasion of Iraq were well
aware that both claims were nonsense! On the eve of the invasion millions of Brits
protested – in vain! I am proud of the
fact that both my sons and daughters in law, and my grandchildren (by then, children no more!) were among the
protesters.
Could
it be said that the end has justified the means? Our invasion gained hundreds of recruits for
El Qaeda, who had been responsible
for the 9/11 terrorist attack and who had hardly had a foothold in Iraq prior to
our action there! Nowadays scarcely a week goes by without news of a terrorist
bomb attack by one or other of the country’s warring factions killing scores of
innocent Iraqi civilians. The Iraqi
Christian community, once an influential and tolerated minority, has been
subject to constant attacks by Islamist zealots. Those of them who can get out of the country have done so. It would surprise me if today there are not
thousands of Iraqis who look back on the rule of Saddam Hussein as a golden
age! There’s certainly no sign of any
benefit that might have arisen from that ill-considered and illegal invasion.
‘The Arab Spring’ – in Libya and Egypt
Next
came Libya . Our involvement started innocently enough
with the enforcement of a ‘no fly zone’ to prevent Colonel Gaddafi’s forces
from bombing innocent civilians. Soon
we were offering every kind of help short of of troops on the ground, to the
rebels. Any bombing of innocent civilians was being done by us! The government
forces were defeated and Colonel Gaddafi murdered. At least that prevented him from
telling the world at his trial all about Tony Blair and the other dear friends
in ‘the west’ who had supported him while it had suited them to do so!
It is now over
a year since Gaddafi was overthrown and the elected government hasn’t yet
managed to rule and control the country effectively. Corruption is rife. Benghazi ,
where the rebellion against Gaddafi began, is said to be ruled by armed militia
and militant Islamists. Cemeteries of
our dead from World War II have been vandalised and desecrated, and Libya isn’t
considered to be a safe destination for British travellers. It is hardly the outcome for which Cameron,
Haig and Co did battle from their comfortable Whitehall armchairs!
Then there’s Egypt . There, many people in Britain who
wished the Egyptians well had high hopes.
A bloodless revolution of ordinary people overthrew an unpopular
autocratic President and democratic elections were held. The new elected
President represented the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt ’s largest single political
party but by no means representative of the majority of the Egyptian people. A great many Egyptians (in particular Egypt ’s Coptic
Christians, long established - longer than Islam in fact - and ten percent of the
total population) feared the outcome.
They did so
with good reason. Just like Hitler (who also was democratically elected in the
first instance) Morsi, the new President, began to appoint members of his own
party, the Muslim Brotherhood, into positions of power and influence and to
transform Egypt from a tolerant liberal multi-faith democracy into an Islamic
State, introducing the Muslim Brotherhood’s version of Sharia law. Attacks on Christian
Churches and individuals increased,
though the British
Church
This was
emphatically not what those tens of thousands of Egyptians who had toppled
the Mubarak regime had wanted. They
gathered once again in their thousands to protest at the democratically elected
President whom they believed was abusing his position of power. At the same time there were mass
demonstrations supporting President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptian Army came down on the side of
those opposing a Muslim Brotherhood takeover.
They arrested President Morsi and created a new interim Government. Demonstration sit-downs by thousands of
Muslim Brotherhood supporters threatened to bring life in Cairo to a stand-still.. The army claims, probably truthfully, that
they tried to persuade the demonstrators to disperse peacefully – and
failed. They then resorted to what
armies are best at – the use of force! They opened fire on the demonstrators,
killing or wounding hundreds of them. The
demonstrators were dispersed. They had
achieved their objectives though. Scores
– perhaps hundreds – of innocent victims were proclaimed to be ‘martyrs’. The
Muslim Brotherhood gained the sympathy and verbal support of the Western World.
And that’s
where the situation remains today. I can’t see any solution. I am sure that supporters of the Muslim
Brotherhood will refuse to accept the result of any new election producing a
non-Brotherhood President, and they are sufficiently numerous and resolute to
sabotage any attempt to liberalise Egypt into a freedom-loving parliamentary
democracy. Fortunately there has so far
been no suggestion that the UK ,
the USA ,
or NATO should intervene in this conflict.
I am delighted
that Britain will not now be
joining the USA and France in bringing even more death and
destruction to unhappy Syria
in the guise of ‘punishing a war crime’. Thursday 29th August 2013 will
surely go into the history books as the day when, through their elected MPs in
the House of Commons, the British public made it clear that the UK had meddled militarily in Middle
East politics long enough. Since
the beginning of the armed rebellion against the Syrian government our
government has been giving moral and practical support to the rebels, despite the
fact that among them are committed terrorists including members of El Qaeda. Would
the revelation, on our tv screens, of a particularly horrifying incident in
which scores of civilians – men, women and little children - had died in agony
as a result of what appeared to be a ‘chemical weapons attack’ provide
justification for British military intervention together with the USA and France?.
The Prime
Minister recalled MPs from their summer holidays to consider the issue. At
first he had hoped to get, on 29th August, approval from parliament
for immediate military action. That was
modified so as to delay a final decision until after the report of the United
Nations’ Inspectors, currently investigating the incident, had been received. Our Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary were
quite sure that a chemical attack had taken place and that the Assad government
was responsible. Many others were far less
certain. Yet others believed that, even
if all the allegations were true, our military intervention would be more
likely to add to the toll of slaughtered innocent civilians than to stop the
killing.
Was the Syrian
government responsible for that particular atrocity? I don’t know.
It is difficult to believe though that, at the precise moment when UN
weapons inspectors had arrived in Damascus
to investigate alleged chemical attacks, the Syrian Government would launch a
very conspicuous and well-publicised attack of the very kind the inspectors
were investigating. As George Galloway,
Respect MP, said at the debate – President Assad may be bad but he’s surely not mad! Even
if the Syrian government was wicked enough to launch such an attack upon
civilians, can they possibly have been so stupid as to provoke the righteous
anger of the whole world without gaining any
discernible military advantage?
Certainly
it is the rebels who have benefited from the attack. It seems probable that the USA and France
– even without the UK
– will launch punishing blows on their enemies, possibly altering the course of
the war and bringing defeat on the Syrian government.. It has been said that it couldn’t possibly
have been the rebels who used the lethal substances because they don’t possess
the capability of manufacturing or buying them and, in any case, they would
surely not use them against civilians who may have been their supporters.
Perhaps they
couldn’t have bought or manufactured those materials themselves, but they
undoubtedly have powerful and wealthy friends and allies (Saudi Arabia for
instance and other of the Gulf States ) who
could have obtained them and smuggled them into Syria . I don’t think they’d have been deterred by
the thought of causing a few score – or even a few hundred – civilian
deaths. They would be just collateral
damage on the way to final victory – and in any case, they’d all be martyrs
and, as such, assured of a place in Heaven.
Much has been
made of the claim that prior to the latest most serious attack there had been
14 other incidents in which chemical weapons had been used by government forces. Did those alleged incidents occur before or
after President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron had publicly declared that the
use of chemical weapons would change their whole attitude towards the conflict?
If after
then the rebels are clearly suspect.
In the end the debate back-fired
spectacularly onto the government. Parliament didn’t decide to postpone a final
decision until the weapons inspectors had made their report. They made a decision there and then that they
didn’t want military action – and the Prime Minister, however reluctantly, has
accepted that decision.
Will the UKs
decision not to join with the USA
in a punitive action against the Syrian government reduce Britain ’s
status in the world and harm the ‘special relationship’. It is surely more important to do what is
right – and refrain from doing what is clearly wrong, than to gain
international popularity. As for the ‘special relationship’ it has always
surely been understood that the USA
and the UK
do not necessarily always have identical objectives and priorities.
Despite the ‘special relationship’ Britain did not
join with the USA in its
campaign in Vietnam . In Harold Wilson we had a Prime Minister with
sufficient strength of character to refuse Britain ’s support for what proved to
be a disastrous American adventure. Neither did the USA
support Britain in the Falklands . In
October 1983 (almost exactly twenty years ago) the USA
led an unprovoked invasion of the Caribbean island state of Grenada to unseat an elected
socialist government that was in danger of setting a good/bad (delete as
preferred) example to its south and central American neighbours. The USA
President (Ronald Regan) didn’t even bother to notify Grenada ’s Head
of State of his intention to invade that island and enforce a ‘regime change’. Grenada was part of the British
Commonwealth and its Head of State was our Queen, Her Majesty
Queen Elizabeth II. Mrs Thatcher was her
Prime Minister. She seems to have been
more of a ’tinfoil’ than an ‘iron lady’ on that occasion!
Since those
incidents don’t appear to have damaged transatlantic friendship I don’t see why our present disinclination to
join with the USA
in its ‘punishment’ of the Syrian Government should do so.
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