Syria and the warmongers

For what it is worth, here is my letter to my MP today. For me, the prospect of war, already having dreadful consequences, is too horrific for words. What can be going on in the heads of  politicians? I urge you to write to yours too and to join all anti-war activity taking place this weekend and in future.

“Dear Geraint

I strongly urge you to oppose and vote against Tory proposals to escalate military intervention in the middle east.

You have children. Surely the sight of literally millions of children and young people being driven from their homes and communities by military action, now sheltering in refugee camps, if they are lucky, without education, social support, basic daily needs, homes, and a stable family environment, must cause you doubts as to the longer term impact of these military actions on their fragile lives. Their experience can only breed alienation.

Just today reports are coming in that French action has resulted in the deaths of 12 children in an attack on an Iraqi school. in October, the Americans bombed a hospital in Afghanistan, ‘in error’. Civilians are the main casualties of military interventions. The myths of ‘precision bombing’ and drones are all over the media.

Has military action over the past three decades increased or decreased the threat and actuality of terrorism on home soil? Beyond question, the threat is now an established reality.

The UN resolution being cited to justify military action, says no such thing. To use words from the Telegraph, of all sources, “It does not invoke Chapter VII of the UN charter which can be used to authorise military action in order to restore peace and security”. The resolution is being used as justification based on ‘self-defence’ as if even these horrendous terrorist attacks were remotely comparable with the scale of interventions taking place and being mooted in Syria and elsewhere. Britain is not under threat from military invasion, despite the cancer of terrorism.

The successes of these decades of bombing and military intervention are certainly far from evident in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Lebanon, not to mention Palestine, or indeed several African countries. There is more, rather than less, instability and acts of terror. Only in Kosovo, under quite different circumstances, has there been a ‘positive’ result and even there, and throughout the east European states, the main threat, including war, now comes from the extreme right.

These deeply worrying proposals are conceived, in part, as with the Trident debate, to exacerbate divisions in the parliamentary Labour Party at the expense of the membership and the wider public. This is no way to pursue and justify policies of this magnitude on the world stage.

I urge you to stand strongly against all such proposals and would appreciate a personal and committed response.

Yours sincerely,

Gordon