WEST SHOULD STAY AWAY FROM SYRIAN CONFLICT.

Despite the lessons of recent history, national leaders such as Barack Obama, David Cameron and Francois Hollande seem desperate to sign up for yet another foreign war. As if Iraq, twice, and Afghanistan were not enough, they now want to declare war on Syria.

 

In the UK, the House of Commons had the sense to tell Cameron to get lost; he's now hamstrung in his attempts to have more of our troops killed in a pointless foreign conflict which has nothing to do with us. In the US, Obama has possibly put himself in a difficult position by asking Congress to approve the deployment of US forces though he'll probably get the necessary backing in the end. In France, President Hollande appears to have no such issues and is itching for war.

 

While the claimed actions of the Assad regime are horrible, it is a civil war; the opposition forces are probably guilty of much the same atrocities as are the government side. What it all has to do with the USA, UK, France or any other country has yet to be adequately explained. If any international body should be taking action, it is the United Nations, for they, alone, have the authority to act if their members so decide. At present, the principal members of this august assembly cannot agree, so the UN does very little.

 

This situation is not dissimilar to those which existed in Iraq and Afghanistan and it is, essentially, insoluble by any western power. Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria are Islamic nations which operate under different social arrangements than does the West; while we may not like these arrangements, it is not for us to interfere. Sadly, we have and we've encouraged dissident groups to attack their legally constituted governments which have then responded with massive force; this does not justify the use of means that are banned by international agreements such as chemical weapons, but it is for the sanctioning bodies to act in such cases and not for individual war-mongering countries.

 

Following the nonsense of the western inspired 'Arab Spring', Iraq is still a mess, Egypt is in chaos  and Syria is in bloody civil war. God, or Allah, save us from yet more interference from arrogant and self-serving western nations.