An Aftertthought

An Afterthought

Jeremy Corbyn is currently under attack from the press and some of his Labour Party colleagues for having declared that, if he were Prime Minister, there are no circumstances under which he would authorise the firing of a nuclear weapon.

Has it not occurred to anyone that any Prime Minister who did authorise the firing of a nuclear weapon would be ordering the killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent civilians, men, women and children?  He would therefore be guilty of a war crime that makes any misdeed perpetrated by President Assad, Saddam Hussein or even the self-styled Islamic State, pale into insignificance.

Would we really prefer that kind of Prime Minister?

Another Afterthought

Mentioning President Assad above brought him to the forefront of my mind.  He is, so I have read, a cruel and despotic dictator.  He and his forces have certainly done some dreadful things in the civil war in his country – but then so have the forces of his opponents.  I have tried in vain to discover what he was like before the civil war began.  His sin appears to have been little more than that of being, ‘the wrong sort of Muslim’.

The ‘right sort’ are to be found in countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. They are Britain’s trusted allies, despite the fact that Saudi Arabia’s total lack of respect for human rights and contempt for western values provide the inspiration for the jihadist terrorists of ISIS – and Saudi Arabia’s and Qatar’s oil-rich business men have funded, and possibly still fund, the terrorist organisation’s activities.

.  We all know the USA’s and the UK’s views.  Assad might be allowed to play a part in any peace talks that eventually take place – but he must never again be the country’s President or play a leading role in its government.  Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey agree but Russia and Iran take a precisely opposite view.  Nobody has asked the Syrians!

 When the civil war comes to an end, as eventually it surely must, the question of how Syria should be governed should be left to the Syrians.  Get all the foreigners (fighters, diplomats, entrepreneurs eager to make a fortune out of reconstruction) out of the country. Let those Syrians who have remained in their war-torn country, and those who are prepared to return to help rebuild it, decide how and by whom, they wish to be ruled.  It may be that they would choose President Assad again – he must have a pretty considerable following or he wouldn’t have survived so long in the face of such ferocious opposition.  Probably not, but it isn’t for ‘us’ or the Iranians or Russians, to decide.