The New War Against Terror

Battles beget battles; wars beget wars; simply, violence begets violence. And this is something politicians have learned but choose to ignore, despite the fact that millions died in two world wars and in the factional fighting in so many theatres of combat still ongoing today.

Remember when Blair and Bush became all pally wally and a spurious case was made to challenge Saddam Hussain about his claim that he had no weapons of mass destruction – all in retaliation for the attack on the twin towers in New York by al qaeda that really had nothing to do with Saddam, I, too, was partially convinced that this was the right action against this dictator. 

How wrong I was.

 Steve Bell

OK.  Defence against an aggressor at the time seems to be the only choice to make.  But the maxim of attack being the best defence just doesn’t seem to ring true.

The most recent events in Mali and Paris have brought home the horrors of violence and it’s accellerated precipitation as a aresult of rhetoric:  We must bomb isis!   

Who are they and where are they?  You can’t cherry pick who these people are from amongst a population on the ground.  They exist amongst ordinary, peace-loving Muslims who most probably just want to get on with their lives, have a family, provide their children with an education.

To bomb or not to bomb  - whether it is nobler in the mind to bomb Isis along with some thousands of civilians, or to take arms against a sea of Islamists and thus, by opposing, end them?  That’s the real question.

So far, the political edging in favour of bombing the Islamists, wherever they are, though we’re not quite sure, is rapidly becoming the dictate of David Cameron.  We know that these terrorists, whoever they are, are the curse of the earth, the devil incarnate, barbaric scum, a personification of evil, or maybe they’re just human beings, like us, who have chosen a different though wrong path and must be given a good talking to, or at least a slap on the wrist.

On that hotbed of predictable opinion, Any Questions, someone had a brilliant idea of in some way corralling returnees from Syria and giving them guns and training to return to Syria to confront someone – not quite sure who.  So we round up the refugees and load them up with weaponry and send them back; and those who refuse are not genuine refugees but just want to exploit our generosity by us giving them houses and benefits.

Another bright idea came from a man who thought that anyone knowing a terrorist should be imprisoned in a concentration camp on some island in Scotland, getting the inhabitants to clear off, I suppose, to the mainland where they’ll be safe, no doubt.  Oh yes!  Kasper, who used to pick potatoes for £1 an hour for a slave master knows Jacek who went off to fight for IS,  send him immediately to Granny McSporran’s croft – move over granny.  You can join your daughter in Glasgow.  

There are people, on the streets of Paris, defiantly buying coffee in cafes and 

showing that they'll not be cowed by any terrorist, if there are any left in the city or in neighbouring Belgium.

And do we feel safe here in Britain?  Well, of course we do.  But the pollys don’t want us to feel safe.  They (the Tories) want us to feel threatened as well as distracted from unpopular schemes like the cutting of tax credits by taking away housing benefits from those same people.

Like Margaret Thatcher and her rallying cry to defend that little island, the Falklands, Cameron, though taking a softer tone, is more or less doing the same thing but in a less screechy voice sort of way.

So, despite the fact that paranoia did not set in on a mass scale, the media tried hard in wily ways to induce fear in the public.  My goodness, you went to a concert even after 132 people were killed by terrorists in Paris?  How could you?  Oh, I see, you were defying the terrorists.  Ah, that’s bravery personified.  You should be awarded some kind of specially minted chocolate medal with the motto embossed on it – for enjoyment in the face of death. 

Now we have the performance of the Michael Fallon, Secretary of State for Offence, gloating over the £12b being willy nilly poured into the defence budget to buy weaponry and to strengthen troops who will be on the ground after the success of the air strikes with a little left over if you’re lucky to pay for the physical and psychological care of the war widows, the amputees and trauma therapists employed for those who didn’t quite make the grade.

Dave Brown

And I just wonder, if only five people had been killed in the Paris attack, would the reaction still have been so extreme – closing down Belgium for three days, increasing the number of police on the beat in France, going to war?

Back to what exactly will they bomb? The air force, according to Fallon, has precision guided Paveway bombs which are so precise they can pick out a terrorist without disturbing the dust around his feet. And the increase in the number of war ships to be added to the navy’s fleet? That should defeat the terrorists when the try to escape a precision missile fired from the Med.

Who is fighting whom?  Here’s a piece by Aubrey Bailey:

And wasn’t Assad the devil incarnate, the personification of evil bombing his own people at one time with the result that the jihadists have the weapons we gave to Saddam in the first place?

With this switching in loyalties, perhaps it would be wise to have our soldiers on zero contract hours so we can call them up whenever they are needed.

Bombing one more country should ameliorate all the bad that’s been done in the past using the same strategy.  And when we’re eventually bombed by terrorists of whatever ilk, let’s hope we don’t revert to singing the praises of Lizzie II with our pathetic national anthem. 

Instead of controlling events, our leaders are being controlled by events.  Maybe it’s time to fly in Tony from wherever he is making money these days and help us to get out of this mess that he and Bush helped to create.  Or maybe he’s caused enough trouble and he should be left to make his fortune from investments in speeches and Saudi oil.