Bombing ISIS won’t fix a mess of our own making
The headlines say 60 per cent of Britons now want the UK to bomb Syria (Mail). This must be a gross mistake. I would guess only 600 of our total population say bomb Syria.
Who are the 60 per cent? Do they even know where Syria is? What is the origin of Islamic State or ISIS? Might it have been formed after Bush and Blair bombed and invaded Iraq on the evidence of a pack of lies?
What has been the result of the U.S.’s constant interference in the Middle east? What did David Cameron achieve by bombing Libya? It’s now a chaotic, lawless country.
The only people who can overcome ISIS are the Arab states themselves. We praised and encouraged the ‘Arab Spring’, then uprisings occurred and thousands of innocent civilians were killed.
how can you bomb an enemy you can’t recognise? Mr Cameron should realise our actions have already alienated millions of people, and bombing will only make it worse.
PETER BENNISON, Whitley Bay, Tyne & Wear.
Keep our soldiers here
IT DIDn’T take long for whoever is pulling our Prime Minister’s strings to jerk him to his feet in Parliament to cash in on the Paris bloodbath by asking for the vote against bombing ISIS targets in Syria to be rescinded.
We now need more of our military resources at home than ever before. Why should we bomb Syria or, in the future, consider sending in troops to complete the destruction of that benighted country?
The Paris horror emphasises the necessity for Britain to use every means possible to defend our civilians on our streets.
This will require not only many more armed patrols, but a complete change of mind-set by european governments, which have, for decades, enforced by law a dangerously destructive level of toleration of radicalised young men.
We didn’t fight two world wars, losing millions of our young men, so our politicians could send our Armed Forces (or what remains of them after severe cutbacks) to overseas conflicts, leaving our cities and population undefended against any terrorism our enemies devise. BARBARA MERRIOTT,
Plymouth, Devon
Time to go in
The dreadful attacks in Paris make the case even clearer for broadening Britain’s military involvement in the Middle east.
We should intervene militarily in Syria to avoid a situation in which we’re placed at a disadvantage strategically, diplomatically and morally. The legacy of the Iraq War has limited public and political appetite to get involved, but several aspects necessitate British military involvement.
Syrian ‘rebels’ are now mostly linked to, or part of, ISIS, shifting the balance of power. The war by President Assad’s forces against moderate and extremist rebels has ended in military stalemate.
Russia’s actions in Syria are directed at protecting Assad, with whom it sees its own security interests intertwined, while targeting ISIS.
Diplomatically, the UK is at risk of losing the moral high ground if it doesn’t get involved while other permanent members of the Un Security Council, including France, the U.S. and Russia, fight jihadis.
We might not agree with the Assad regime, or Russia, but we all have the common goal of destroying ISIS. Instead of demonising Assad, we need to work with him.
OLIVER B. STEWARD, Norwich.
Every family’s fear
We’Re told that in areas under their control, ISIS armed militias take great care to spread themselves widely, among the generally innocent and oppressed native Syrians. Their ‘army’ appears to have few conspicuous fixed targets, just anti-personnel weapons on unarmoured pick-up trucks. The idea of raining death from powerful warplanes on the ISIS forces without killing Syrian civilians seems unrealistic.
every family living in Syria, of any of the many contesting factions, allies and enemies, must live in desperate fear that those they love will soon die.
That fear isn’t likely to make them love the U.S. or Britain. It’s more likely to persuade them their Muslim lives mean nothing to the cowardly technological masters of the sky, the pitiless, push-button warriors of the West. C.N. WESTERMAN, Brynna, Mid Glam.
How can bombs work?
LABoUR leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has been savaged by many of his own MPs, most of the media and millions of armchair warriors, is a lone figure cautioning against a bloodthirsty desire to bomb countries such as Syria in retaliation for the terrorist murders in Paris.
The Paris killings were an abomination, but Corbyn is right to warn against a knee-jerk reaction in the aftermath of such a tragedy that would end up destroying our hard-won freedoms in exchange for feeble promises of protection. ISIS isn’t a despotic rogue state, but a misguided ideology that ultimately can be defeated only by its condemnation and ostracisation by the wider Muslim world. Indiscriminate bombing raids will not achieve this.
Indeed, bombing raids on ISIS targets in the Middle east will probably kill as many, if not more, innocent people than were killed in Paris. Such ‘collateral damage’ is not justifiable: it makes us little better than the terrorists.
ALAN CARTER, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Counting the dead
We ALWAyS have precise numbers of those killed here in the West, all the way back to 9/11, but we never seem to be given the numbers of those killed by the West’s policy of flattening any country where it believes ‘regime change’ should be implemented.
Is it tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocents?
no doubt Bush Jnr and his mate Tony Blair (both conspicuous by their absence these days) can reflect on the mess they created.
NEIL HARRISON, Stokesley, North Yorks.
Price of life
In ABU Ghraib prison a decade ago, people were raped, tortured, humiliated and butchered by the U.S. army. now John Kerry, the U.S. Secretary of State, calls the Paris murderers ‘psychopathic monsters.’ The pot appears to be calling the kettle black.
Murder is heinous and wicked, and I can’t imagine what the relatives and friends of the victims of the Paris killings are going through. But there’s a problem with the moral high ground the politicians and media now claim, fuelling self-righteous jingoistic sabre-rattling.
how many wreaths were laid for the victims of Abu Ghraib? how many minutes of silent shame were held in Washington for the victims? how many people have been killed in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan since then? The West values the lives of its own above the lives of people who are different — the same attitude as ISIS extremists, except they are fuelled by religious delusion rather than self-righteous hypocrisy.
DANIEL EMLYN-JONES, Oxford.
Do we want to end it?
DoeS David Cameron believe the U.S. and Russia, with their powerful regional allies, couldn’t enforce a ceasefire between Assad and the moderate rebels soon if they wanted to? Among other things, they supply maybe 80 per cent of the weaponry used in the Syrian civil war.
If so, why is it not happening? If such a ceasefire were achieved, the Syrian army, backed by the full panoply of American/Russian war technology, could lead the assault on ISIS in their country.
no other army can do that in a way that ensures stability after ISIS has gone. All outside armies would be occupiers.
BRENDAN O’BRIEN, London N21.
Don’t play into their hands
IT’S understandable that our Prime Minister wishes to join the bombing campaign in Syria to show solidarity with France after the atrocities there, but such actions won’t increase Britain’s security against extremists.
It was widely said that Russia joining the bombing campaign in Syria would bring retaliation, and so it proved with the downing of a Russian passenger aircraft.
France’s participation in the bombing in Syria brought about the horrors experienced in Paris.
The best way out is for the U.S. and Russia to combine to bring peace to Syria — the most effective way of cutting off the head of the snake that is ISIS.
There’s nothing ISIS wants more than for its actions to spread terror and destruction.
VALERIE CREWS, Beckenham, Kent.