The papers this week carried graphic images of a 12 year old boy being beheaded in Syria. Ghastly, I hear you cry. ISIS must be stopped. Thank God we are doing our bit by backing rebel fighters in the Free Syrian Army. Problemo: it was those rebel fighters that did the beheading.
This is no surprise to readers of this website. Back in 2012 HERE, 2013 HERE and 2014 HERE I pointed out the monstrous war crimes being committed by FSA soldiers, including throwing folks off tall buildings merely because they worked for the state...as postmen. Given the affiliation of many, but not all, FSA forces to Al-Qaeda, those chappies who carried out 9/11, their barbarity is no great shock, to me at least..
Our allies Turkey, led by the loathsome fascist Erdogan, and Saudi Arabia, a kleptocracy engaged in wholesale war crimes using British arms in the Yemen, backed the FSA against President Assad and we followed their line.
President Assad is clearly no angel but in pre war times his tolerance of Christians, relatively low level of state sponsored execution and progressive attitude to women made him one of the least bad regimes in the Middle East. Yet to appease the Saudis, arguably one of the more barbaric, we, in the West, demonised Assad. Our newspapers spun hard, the media and political classes working hand in hand to persuade we the plebs that Assad was the devil incarnate, guilty of every atrocity under the sun. Heck, if he had had the WMD that Saddam had the last time the political class and its pals in the mainstream media misled us, over Iraq, Assad would not have waited 45 minutes to use them against Britain, he was such a monster.
President Putin, rightly, recognised that of the three forces fighting in Syria, Assad was the least bad option, the other two being the Al-Qaeda dominated FSA and ISIS. W e in the West backed the wrong non ISIS option. In working with the Turks - who bomb the Kurds who are an effective anti ISIS force - our meddling has actually assisted ISIS. In forcing Assad to fight on two fronts (the FSA Islamofascists and ISIS) rather than just against ISIS, we have also assisted ISIS. Our actions have prolonged the war because quite simply we have backed the wrong side.
In an ideal world folks like crooked Hillary Clinton, David Cameron, Francois Hollande would not act as recruiting sergeants for radical Islam by intervening in the Middle East at all. But if they are going to meddle, backing the wrong side has only prolonged the reign of ISIS and thus strengthened its ability to strike back at us in the West.
The actions of our leaders have made ordinary folks in the West who don't enjoy the expensive security of our leaders, not safer, as we were told, but far less safe. Hollande, Merkel, Cameron and now May have blood on their hands, not just Syrian blood but the blood of their own innocent citizens as well.
Outrages such as those in Paris, Nice and, now, Munich were made all the more likely by the folly of our leaders.
When will they admit that they just got it wrong and just leave Syria to President Putin who is backing the right side?