Mick Hall urges territorial sovereignty and integrity. Mick Hall is a Marxist blogger @ Organized Rage.


  • No Direct UK Military Intervention In Syria, no country should violate the territory of any other country
    

ISIL in Libya, has been carrying out public floggings

In August 2013 David Cameron failed to gain the support of a majority of MPs for UK military action against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The coalition government motion was defeated by 285-272, ruling out joining US-led strikes. At the time Cameron claimed he believed the only way to deter al-Assad's use of chemical weapons was to take military action against his regime. Looking back it was only Ed Miliband's good sense in refusing to endorse military intervention by the British military which kept the UK out of the bloody conflagration which is still engulfing Syria today.

Ever the opportunist Cameron is now using the vicious attack on the beaches of Tunisia against British tourists to justify UK military intervention in Syria. In the autumn he will in all probability return to Parliament with a motion calling for military action against ISIL within the borders of Syria.

One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry for in 2013 ISIL and similar Islamic terror groups were some of the UK's favoured fighters in the war against the Assad regime. Indeed Britain's key allies in the region, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, along with the AK Party government in Turkey were, and still are providing these groups with weaponry, logistics and money without which they would be unable to sustain their military campaigns.

One need only look at a map of the Arab world to understand Western military intervention in the region has made a bad situation worse. In Iraq, Syria and Libya far from improving life for the populations it has made it hell. All three are failed states in which the rule of the gun prevails. Gunmen who belong to organisations like ISIL have carved out fiefdoms in which today's friend becomes tomorrow's enemy.

Syria is being torn to bits in a bloody civil war. The only truly secular forces capable of returning some form of normality is the Assad regime, and in their home areas the Kurds. The Assad opposition is Islamic to the core. Their differences with each other are nothing more than turf wars.

From the so called Free Syrian Army, the al-Nusra Front, to ISIL not one could be described as secular. Were they to be victorious they all claim to wish to establish an Islamic state with Sharia law. The only difference with ISIL is it has introduced Sharia law in the territory it holds and called it an Islamic state.

As the indefatigable Coatsey wrote on his Blog:
Another foreign intervention in Syria and Iraq is a bad idea, ethically and in terms of Realpolitik. The UK and the West have not opposed support for the reactionary forces of Al Nusra and other Islamist murderers. Their allies, such as Saudi Arabia, actively back these reactionaries. They have not stood against the threat of Turkish ‘Neo-Ottoman’ policy. They had not stood against Shia sectarian killings in Iraq.
The possibility that they will encourage any kind of democratic outcome to the civil war, and a replacement for the Assad regime with a progressive alternative is non-existent.


I would go farther, its nonsensical, but sadly when did that ever stop the neo liberal fanatics who rule us doing the wrong thing? If you doubt this look at Libya today, from being one of the most secular and prosperous nations in the Arab world it has become a failed state. Chaos reigns, its without a central government and the only successful businesses are arms dealing,  people smuggling, kidnapping and highway robbery.

If Cameron had a smidgen of empathy he would get down on his knees and beg the forgiveness of the Libyan people for what he and the other NATO leaders did to their country when they intervened militarily to overthrow the Qaddafi regime.  For all Qaddafi's faults they are incomparable with those who replaced him. Today the country is in the hands of tribal leaders and gunmen. Human rights are non existent, people go to the shops in fear they may not return home. The fact the Libyan youth feel ISIL offers the only hope, speaks volumes about the failure of the UK military intervention in Libya.

No Direct UK Military Intervention In Syria ...

Mick Hall urges territorial sovereignty and integrity. Mick Hall is a Marxist blogger @ Organized Rage.


  • No Direct UK Military Intervention In Syria, no country should violate the territory of any other country
    

ISIL in Libya, has been carrying out public floggings

In August 2013 David Cameron failed to gain the support of a majority of MPs for UK military action against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The coalition government motion was defeated by 285-272, ruling out joining US-led strikes. At the time Cameron claimed he believed the only way to deter al-Assad's use of chemical weapons was to take military action against his regime. Looking back it was only Ed Miliband's good sense in refusing to endorse military intervention by the British military which kept the UK out of the bloody conflagration which is still engulfing Syria today.

Ever the opportunist Cameron is now using the vicious attack on the beaches of Tunisia against British tourists to justify UK military intervention in Syria. In the autumn he will in all probability return to Parliament with a motion calling for military action against ISIL within the borders of Syria.

One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry for in 2013 ISIL and similar Islamic terror groups were some of the UK's favoured fighters in the war against the Assad regime. Indeed Britain's key allies in the region, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, along with the AK Party government in Turkey were, and still are providing these groups with weaponry, logistics and money without which they would be unable to sustain their military campaigns.

One need only look at a map of the Arab world to understand Western military intervention in the region has made a bad situation worse. In Iraq, Syria and Libya far from improving life for the populations it has made it hell. All three are failed states in which the rule of the gun prevails. Gunmen who belong to organisations like ISIL have carved out fiefdoms in which today's friend becomes tomorrow's enemy.

Syria is being torn to bits in a bloody civil war. The only truly secular forces capable of returning some form of normality is the Assad regime, and in their home areas the Kurds. The Assad opposition is Islamic to the core. Their differences with each other are nothing more than turf wars.

From the so called Free Syrian Army, the al-Nusra Front, to ISIL not one could be described as secular. Were they to be victorious they all claim to wish to establish an Islamic state with Sharia law. The only difference with ISIL is it has introduced Sharia law in the territory it holds and called it an Islamic state.

As the indefatigable Coatsey wrote on his Blog:
Another foreign intervention in Syria and Iraq is a bad idea, ethically and in terms of Realpolitik. The UK and the West have not opposed support for the reactionary forces of Al Nusra and other Islamist murderers. Their allies, such as Saudi Arabia, actively back these reactionaries. They have not stood against the threat of Turkish ‘Neo-Ottoman’ policy. They had not stood against Shia sectarian killings in Iraq.
The possibility that they will encourage any kind of democratic outcome to the civil war, and a replacement for the Assad regime with a progressive alternative is non-existent.


I would go farther, its nonsensical, but sadly when did that ever stop the neo liberal fanatics who rule us doing the wrong thing? If you doubt this look at Libya today, from being one of the most secular and prosperous nations in the Arab world it has become a failed state. Chaos reigns, its without a central government and the only successful businesses are arms dealing,  people smuggling, kidnapping and highway robbery.

If Cameron had a smidgen of empathy he would get down on his knees and beg the forgiveness of the Libyan people for what he and the other NATO leaders did to their country when they intervened militarily to overthrow the Qaddafi regime.  For all Qaddafi's faults they are incomparable with those who replaced him. Today the country is in the hands of tribal leaders and gunmen. Human rights are non existent, people go to the shops in fear they may not return home. The fact the Libyan youth feel ISIL offers the only hope, speaks volumes about the failure of the UK military intervention in Libya.

3 comments:

  1. This pottage of half-baked analysis makes no mention of how the Syrian conflict started in the first pLace which was the brutal suppression of peaceful protestors demanding democratic rights as other movements did throughout the Arab Spring which then moved onto full scale war waged by the brutal national security regime of Assad against their own people through barrel bombs,sectarian massacres by the Sha'hib paramilitaries and of course the sarin gas attack at Gouta in August 2013. Rather than too much intervention, the problem was too little as successive UN resolutions to stop the slaughter was stymied by Russian and Chinese vetoes. Enforcement of a no-fly zone might just have prevented the uprising morphing into the current sectarian and regional war and the vacuum now filled by ISIS (who respect no territorial boundaries or sovereignty of states). ISIS by the way has been quite keen to trade oil with Assad. On Libya, the intervention to stop the threatened massacre of the civilian population of Benghazi by the Gaddafi regime was authorized by the United Nations under its Responsibility to Protect doctrine. Yes the aftermath has been chaotic and the world should not have taken its eye off the ball but the intervention was fully justified in the past. Please don't tell me that a regime that murdered 1,220 prisoners in Abu Salim prison (to mention one of its numerous atrocities) and became the personal fiefdom of an oil-soaked dictator and his clan was in some way secular and progressive; the absence of a civil society due to Ghadaffi's tyranny is partially responsible for the failed state that Libya has become.

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  2. Iraq Syria under the dissecting table is Israel preparing for an exit strategy out of palistine and preparing the ground for a move to Iraq Syria well they want have to take over another country by force if they don't exist anymore

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  3. And the point you are making, Nicola Kerr, is?

    ReplyDelete