Use words, not weapons to bring peace to Syria

AT the latest meeting of the Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group there was huge anxiety about the outcome of the cabinet meeting that was due to take place the following day.

A decision will have been taken there that could embroil our country once again in a war.

Yes, we all condemn the use of chemical weapons, they are a hideous misuse of a science that should be used to improve the lives of human beings not end them in dreadful suffering.

But if the west reacts to their use by bombing Syria with conventional weapons we know too that there will be deaths in agonising pain for children, women and men.

Experience has shown us that there is no such thing as a smart missile, a precision bombing, a surgical strike.

Whatever the intentions of the bombers and the politicians who give them their orders, ordinary people die.

Many that don’t die will have their lives blighted by terrible injuries and their homes and infrastructure such as power stations, waterworks or transport systems will be irreparably damaged.

Worse still, such an attack, however limited in intention, risks leading the world to a third world war.

Russia will not just shrug its shoulders if its personnel or aircraft are hit.

They will respond, just as Trump would to the deaths of US soldiers.

Our fear is that any response could escalate and with two leaders who have already started the ‘my weapon is bigger than your weapon’ game, any perceived failure to win with conventional arms could so easily lead to the use of nuclear weapons.

After all it would not be the first time the US has used them.

We know the tragic consequences of that use, but today’s weapons are on such a vastly more powerful, more deadly scale that the world as we know it could not survive.

For that reason we beg our politicians to use words, not weapons.

We plead with them for restraint, for the wisdom to reject the knee jerk reaction of missile strikes.

What is needed are clear heads and a commitment to find the facts, the evidence of wrong doing.

Then that evidence has to be dealt with through the international legal channels that exist.

After the Second World War and the evidence of the terrible atrocities that had been taking place in the death camps we didn’t raze Germany to the ground, we didn’t wipe out the whole nation whose politicians had led to those atrocities.

We set up courts, international bodies to deal with the criminals and establish rules to govern how we conduct ourselves in times of peace or war, rules we all agreed with.

We have not always respected those international bodies since then, we have not honoured the commitments we made then or since in various treaties. That does not mean they were wrong.

We urge our politicians to step back from the brink, to remember our duties to not only our own country but to the millions who would be affected by a reckless decision today.

There is still time to return to a more decent, honourable way of conducting world affairs.

A way that will bring ●●Peace campaigner Pat Sanchez is calling for restraint rather than air strikes in the aftermath of the alleged chemical attack in Syria peace, not the terrible deaths, suffering and devastation that military action will inevitably bring about. Pat Sanchez for Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group

TOO MANY EATING PLACES

SO the historic GPO building has been turned into a bar/restaurant.

This building should have been adapted to a combination of theatre, concert hall, ballroom with facilities for assorted workshops such as music, drama etc.

This town is overcrowded with eating venues. Passerby

WRONG WAY TO KEEP HERITAGE

VIRGIN Media saga part two.

Since when were the spaces beside our British roads known as FOOTWAYS?

Yes we have WAYS but these are the Pennine Way, bridleways and such like; the way being the way of the route.

Outside my house is a FOOTPATH.

As far as I can remember nowhere in England have I seen footpaths referred to as a footway.

Virgin Media have not only left a mess behind but disquiet at their heritage meddling. An old English teacher