fahrenheit451:096

A lot of people, especially the rabble of benchwarmers of all parties in the House of Commons chamber,have been getting rather upset these last few days about yet another issue they can do nothing about other than have a collective pseudo-moral hissy fit over.  To put the aforementioned's hissy fit in context; The US and its NATO satrapies have, one recalls this past quarter century, pretty much screwed things up royally in a whole host of formerly stable, sovereign nation states. Iraq,Yugoslavia, Afghanistan,Iraq a second time,Libya and Syria. I exclude the Ukraine from this inglorious litany for the simple reason that NATO hasn't actually bombed anyone or anything as yet in that particular theatre of operations. Back to Syria. Said H.o.C. benchwarmers in August 29.2013 REJECTED a government motion that Parliament authorise UK military intervention in Syria in response to the alleged use by the Syrian government of chemical weapons against civilians. Fast forward to December 2 2015 and this time said H.o.C. AUTHORISED UK military airstrikes in Syria directed exclusively against ISIS/DAESH. As the former Head of MI6 observed whilst appearing of BBC Radio4's " Today " program, you can't really fight against both sides at once in a conflict. He ought to have added especially in a three plus sided conflict at that. The much vaunted and lauded sanctioned airstrikes in 2015, with the involvement of 2 planes and no actual effective strikes have been just a waste of effort. All the planning and conspiratorial shenanigans of the EU and NATO in their various forums trying to cajole the myriad hornets' nests of " moderate " i.e. non-ISIS opposition forces in Syria including Al Qaeda to evolve into something that can be financed and supplied with weapons-that too hasn't really worked for the US and its grandiose designs on a post-Assad Syria. And so we come to the five years long siege of Aleppo. Only this time, the faux wrath and ire of the H.o.C. benchwarmers is directed at Russia because it has been lending military assistance to the constitutional government of Syria.  How odd it appears that in International Law, let alone accepted norms of global diplomacy and peacetime relationships between Sovereign states,that the parliamentary body of one state whose armed forces are operating in and across Syria openly and covertly WITHOUT the permission of Damascus, denounces the actions of another state who ARE operating  in Syria WITH the permission of Damascus. Odder still, that the legally legitimate actions of Russia in conjunction with Syria are deemed to constitute a war crime comparable with Nazi Germany's use of the Luftwaffe in Civil War Spain of the 1930's.  Such is the destitution of learning and paucity of historic fact checking within the House of Commons that they are ignorant of when the term War Crimes actually entered the lexicon. Germany's intervention in 1930's Spain was never characterised by contemporary sources as a " war crime ". Whilst at the time Britain and France observed a strict neutrality that included a refusal to render any assistance whatsoever to the besieged, legitimate Republican Spanish government. Foreign Secretary Johnson's wantonly provocative call for demonstrations in front of the Russian Embassy in London are the classic tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing; as for Johnson himself, he is a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more..

Footnote:-

see also this blog #081 on 25 August 2016