The UK under Tony Blair followed blindly (hung on the coat-tails?) where the US led in invading Iraq – ostensibly to get rid of weapons of mass destruction (which anybody with the slightest understanding of Saddam Hussein’s psychology knew didn’t exist – though he wanted us, but more especially Iran, to think they did) but really simply to be seen to be doing something about the attacks on the World Trade Center (which Saddam Hussein had not a thing to do with; Al Qaida had no presence in Iraq before the war precisely because he had such a firm grip on things they weren’t allowed one) the operations in Afghanistan not being satisfactory in rooting out Osama Bin Laden, or just possibly to “secure” oil supplies.

Now that all worked out terribly well, didn’t it?

About two years ago some of the blowback from the mistakes of those adventures resulted in a vote in the UK Parliament on bombing Syria. No consensus on such action could be found.

Yesterday, more or less prompted by the murders committed by Isis/Isil/Daesh in Paris, a measure to bomb Syria was passed by that Parliament’s successor. This time, though, the target is different. Not the forces of President Assad, but those of Daesh.

The decision seems to be from the “grab at a false syllogism” school. This goes along the lines of, “The events in Paris were terrible. Something must be done about the perpetrators. Bombing is something. Therefore we must bomb.”

The fact that bombing Syria is against international law, notwithstanding the recent UN resolution, that bombing by near enough everybody else has had absolutely no effect in reducing Daesh’s activities does not seem to count against this argument. The facts that it won’t defeat them, that it won’t make us any safer, that it will only increase their appeal to potential adherents, that such a response is precisely what they look for when planning their atrocities weighed nothing against the apparent need to be seen to be doing something. Anything.

I had to give a hollow laugh when in the run-up to the vote Mr Irresponsible, aka David Cameron, havered on about outsourcing our security to others. If the UK is not outsourcing its security to others why, exactly, is it a member of NATO? (And, as a by-the by, what exactly is the purpose of the nuclear deterrent? France’s Force de Frappe didn’t prevent the Charlie Hebdo attacks nor those of this November. Trident didn’t stop the IRA nor 7/7 bombers.)

He also said that opponents of the bombing were terrorist sympathisers. Language such as that proves once again that the man is unfit to be Prime Minister.

Yes Daesh is a murdering, barbaric organisation utterly antithetical to freedom. But, Mr Cameron. Isn’t it possible conscientiously to think that bombing is a strategic mistake? That it will only encourage Daesh that it has got under our skin? That it will be profoundly counter-productive? That it will cause civilian casualties far in excess of any damage it might do to Daesh? That it will not bring about an end to Daesh? That it will not reassure Muslims in Britain that war is not being waged against their religion? That it makes us even more of a target than we were already? That it can only strengthen the position of the man the original bombing was supposed to help oust?

The history of British interference in the Middle East goes back a long way. The Sykes-Picot Agreement carved the area up between Britain and France, becoming effective after the Great War. In the 1920s the RAF (in Iraq) was the first air-force in the world to bomb indigenous rebels though it’s likely civilians bore the brunt as usual. The UK mandate in Palestine led (in)directly to the formation of Israel. Along with the US Britain was instrumental in removing the Mossadeq regime from Iran in the 1950s. Then there was the chaos we recently left behind in Iraq and contributed to in Libya.

Our politicians seem to have forgotten all this. Unlike them, the locals have long memories.

I can’t see anything good coming out of this at all.

There was an interesting article in the Guardian of 16/9/15 where Timothy Snyder argued that the conditions necessary for the Holocaust of Jews (and others, but mainly Jews) by the Nazis to take place have largely been misunderstood.

Snyder sees it as crucial that in the areas where most killings occurred, principally in the lands of pre-war Poland, the Baltic States and what had been Soviet Belarus and Ukraine, the apparatus of the state was no longer functioning – had indeed been deliberately destroyed. This was the necessary precondition for the activities of the Einsatzgruppen and the SS to be so unconstrained.

Though Snyder’s focus is on Eastern Europe I found myself thinking that in Western Europe too the absence of state institutions was a factor contributing to whether or not transportations to the killing zones of those whom the Nazis saw as undesirables came about. In Denmark, where the king remained and most institutions stayed intact (at least until 1943,) most of the Jews escaped or survived. By contrast in the Netherlands, whose monarch went into exile in Britain, and in France, where the Third Republic collapsed and Vichy was a puppet, deportations were much easier and in some cases even facilitated.

We have seen the consequences of the absence of the state relatively recently in Afghanistan – the Taliban would not have come to power there if not for the chaos engendered by, first, the Soviet presence and then its retreat (effectively driven out by a mujahideen aided and abetted via US and Western support) – in the disarray of Libya and now in Iraq and Syria where ISIS/ISIL/Daesh would not have had the opportunity to grow as quickly or at all if there had not been the vacuum created by the destruction of the Iraqi state and the failure to replace it.

Contrary to what some libertarians appear to think it seems the state really is a force for good.

Postscript:- While looking over the above it also occurred to me that the killing fields in Cambodia, while a consequence of Pol Pot’s take-over, were also due to state collapse, in this case that of the pre-revolutionary government. I suppose too that La Terreur in revolutionary France and the turmoil in the former Russian Empire after the Bolshevik coup are examples of what happens when state organisation suffers disruption. To avoid chaos a polity requires not people with guns but checks and balances; plus a functional judicial system capable of holding those in power to account.

I don’t usually watch the ITN news but I caught the bulletin at 6.40 yesterday and was reminded why.

Their lead story was “Lockerbie Bomber Escapes Justice Again.”

Really?

Escapes justice?

Again?

Apparently the new Libyan regime will not extradite Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet Al Megrahi to the West.

And why should they?

ITN was peddling utter tosh. Twice over.

Even putting aside the fact that he is almost certainly innocent, Megrahi has not escaped justice. He was convicted, and served a term of imprisonment from which he was released on compassionate grounds under the terms of the justice system concerned.

So he did not “escape justice” even once: still less once more.

The BBC news earlier in the week wasn’t much better, though. A reporter knocked on his door in Tripoli and received no answer and on these grounds decided Megrahi had fled and had thereby broken the terms of his release.

Now, if you lived in Tripoli would you have answered your door this past week? And, if he has fled, wouldn’t you have in his place?

While he has survived way longer than we were led to expect he would, the man is still clearly ill. Given that he has already been duly processed, if under extraordinary provisions, it would be a crime to subject him to further detention.

And let’s have none of this “the victims want this to happen.” (That is to say the victims’ relatives.) They most certainly do not – or at least not all of them do.

That there is talk of US snatch squads apprehending him is an outrage. To do so would be a clear breach of international law and would put the perpetrators on an equal footing with any other law breaker.

Edited to add:-
It seems Megrahi is now at death’s door and has been found in his family home so perhaps we’ll hear an end of this.

Off to Dunfermline for this adaptation of Rosemary Sutcliff‘s novel The Eagle of the Ninth. I don€’t remember if I’€™ve read the book; if so it was as a child. I have a vague recall of a television production of the story in my youth but forgot all the details except that it involved the legend of the loss of a Roman legion, complete with imperial eagle, in the wilds north of Hadrian€’s Wall (or would it be the Antonine Wall?)

I read recently the latest historical thinking is that the legion may never actually have been lost, just absent from the records. It might simply have been redeployed elsewhere in the Roman Empire. Still, print the legend, eh?

The film’s plot is simple. Marcus Aquila, the son of the lost (and hence disgraced) legion commander comes to Britain, is wounded, saves the life of a gladiatorial combatant who becomes his slave and the pair go off to search for the lost eagle. Cue male bonding and the dawning of mutual warmth and respect. There was a strong Breakback Mountain type of undertone towards the end.

Echoes of current imperial adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan (now add Libya?) are of course present – especially in the patrician Romans’ lack of understanding of the ways of the indigenous population.

The scenery was stunning – even if it was shot in Super Gloom-o-Vision. Lowering clouds and twilight vistas abounded. Plus lots of rain.

It may seem silly but I could have done with a little less violence; not that there was much actual blood spurting. Why must the cinema sound be so loud, though? This was particularly true of the adverts and trailers beforehand – almost deafening.

The acting was convincing enough throughout. I had never seen either of the leads, Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell before. Donald Sutherland was spectacularly ill cast, though, as Marcus Aquila’€™s uncle.

So we are at war. Again.

It may not be declared as a war but that’s what it is. Deployment of armed forces against those of another sovereign state is war by definition.

I doubt whether this will have the effect intended. It didn’t work in Kosovo nor against Saddam Hussein. Only ground troops did.

It’s also playing into Colonel Gaddafi’s hands. This can be spun as exactly what he is trying to assert, the insurrection is a neo-colonial endeavour on behalf of the Western powers, perhaps a grab for oil. It would have been far better for us to abstain from military force and, if we want to give material help to the rebels, grant them belligerent status (as we did not in Bosnia) and supply them with the means to succeed – ie arms. Granted, that would probably lead to a civil war and many deaths but it would clearly be a matter of Libyans against Libyans – among whom deaths are occurring anyway.

Or else Libya’s Arab neighbours could have taken up the cudgels alongside the rebels. (But that too would have been a violation of Libyan sovereignty.)

I happen to dislike the man and all he stands for and wish him gone, but up until a few weeks ago Colonel Gaddafi was regarded as the legitimate ruler of Libya.

He is only doing what each one of the leaders involved in this action, Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy, etc etc would do if faced with an armed insurrection, which is to send in the troops.

And where, by the way, is the UN resolution targetting Bahrain for doing exactly the same as Gaddafi has, or Saudi Arabia for its intervention there? I think we know the answer to that one.

What is true for Gaddafi is true for all non-democratic Arab states. What applies to him ought to apply to all. Or else we are mere hypocrites and our action illegitimate, even if sanctioned by the UN.

I also don’t quite follow the complaints of the Arab League about these air strikes. (Russia’s attitude is explicable since it abstained in the UN vote.)

To be policed, a No-Fly zone requires interdiction/nullification of the air defences/anti-aircraft capability of the region concerned and hence attacks on any such targets within the zone.

The Arab League called for the No-Fly zone. It can’t then deride the necessary precautions.

But this is international politics. Lewis Carroll couldn’t do them justice.

I see our PM, the inestimable Mr Irresponsible wants to use our already overstretched military forces to become embroiled in the situation in Libya. (There is by the way a fantastic typo in the headline of that link.)

Has he learned nothing from our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan? And he’s just downscaled the RAF’s training programme, the very service whose input will be most required in the most likely operations in Libya.

Any use of UK military force in Libya is liable to backfire as it did in those other countries. Can DC guarantee no innocent casualties from such a development? Even deaths or injuries to those loyal to Gaddafi, those in the firing line in other words, could be a provocation too far.

If Gadaffi subsequently goes their families will resent the fact they were killed/injured by foreigners. If he stays his regime is not going to be enamoured of us. Either way our national interest is weakened.

While I personally would like to see him gone Gadaffi’s destiny ought to lie in the hands of Libyans.

DC’s survival is unfortunately not in the hands of us Britons. We won’t get the chance to chuck him out for another four years (think about it) by which time the damage he and his smirking side-kick George Osborne – have you ever seen such a smug, irritating so-and-so, he outranks even Kenneth Baker in that regard – will have done to the fabric of British life will be unrepairable.

Where are the Lib Dems when you need them?

Forgotten they’re supposed to be jointly in charge, it would seem.

Sometimes I feel that we live in a Chinese curse.

Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and now Libya. Where will it end?

Of course I thought the world had gone to hell in a handcart when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands (Las Malvinas if you prefer.) In my whole memory up to then the British Army had not been involved in a full blown shooting war. (Now it seems they’ll never be out of one.)

Then there was the fall of the Berlin Wall and all that followed.

I remember once seeing Enoch Powell on Parkinson and laughing at the old codger when he referred to the “Dutch East Indies.”

Now it’s me who is a bit of an old codger. I still think of St Petersburg as Leningrad as that was its name when I visited on a school cruise in the 1970s.

I have to scoff though when Mr Irresponsible and his sidekick William Hague stand up for the rights of street protestors.

That’ll be fine except when it occurs in the UK then, eh?

OK, arrest people who break the law by smashing windows or throw stuff and the like, but what is kettling and thumps on the head or back with a truncheon if not repression?

And kettles boil, do they not? Or is that the object of the exercise?