Capitalism never likes to waste a crisis. So in the aftermath of the terrorist outrages in Paris, David Cameron is planning to come back to parliament with a motion to authorise British bombing in Syria. In this he is backed by many Labour MPs and aided by the weak-willed hints from all parts of the shadow cabinet about a “free vote”.
We said in October that talk of the RAF bombing Syria to defeat ISIS is a sham. The clear aim is to shore up the crumbling “opposition”, which includes the al-Qaeda affiliate the al-Nusra front – the recent recipient of 500 antitank missiles from the US via Saudi Arabia, among other munitions.
Any British intervention could only be part of NATO’s aim of ousting Syria’s government. That would not only be a breach of the United Nations Charter, it would be an assault on the Syrian people’s right to determine their own country’s future.
Syria doesn’t want it
The Syrian government is certainly not asking for British intervention, particularly as Cameron repeatedly says that its president, Bashar al-Assad, must resign. “What gives the British foreign secretary the right to decide for Syrians how long their president should stay in power?” information minister Omran al-Zoubi told The Guardian in September.
“My message to Britain is that their deeds must match their words,” al-Zoubi said. “If they are really against terrorism let them act accordingly and genuinely confront ISIS. The way to do that is by not ignoring those who are really fighting ISIS.”
“We will not allow Syria to become an extremist emirate,” he said. “It will not be another Saudi Arabia,” a kingdom he described as “the General Motors of terrorism which exports it to the rest of the world”.
As we said in October, the British people have no national interest in turning Syria into another Libya – now a country with no government, lawless, borderless, and a breeding ground for jihadists. No British intervention in Syria!