It’s almost a reflex reaction for Western powers to respond to a significant terrorist event with stepped-up air strikes, as France has done.
However, around the world more people are coming to the realisation that this isn’t the answer. On Saturday thousands of “Don’t Bomb Syria” protesters blocked London’s Whitehall in opposition to David Cameron’s plan to follow France’s lead. Cameron hasn’t yet got parliamentary backing for his plan.
It appears that the latest French air strikes have impacted on the local Syrian people more than ISIS. An anti-ISIS activist in Raqqa told Al Jazeera that while the French strikes had hit (abandoned) ISIS bases, “electricity and water have [also] been cut off as supply lines were hit too.” He went on to say that, “Last week, Russian air strikes destroyed one of the main bridges in the city in addition to the national hospital. Most hospitals in the city have been destroyed in Raqqa… The US, Russia and France are all bombing Syria. How many more countries want to bomb us?” Such destructive Western bombing, as well as being unconscionable, is counterproductive because the anger that it generates among the locals provides thousands of new recruits for ISIS.
Why, you might ask, can’t the Western powers more accurately target the “bad guys” and their military assets, and leave the innocent civilians alone.
The simple answer is that the party being bombed always disperses and hides its military assets. There are no functional barracks to bomb. For the Western bombers government buildings then become the targets, even those supplying services to the population. This has been true of every bombing campaign since Vietnam where one party has an airforce and the other party doesn’t.
Inevitably, many innocent civilians are killed in such bombing, although United States doesn’t admit to many such casualties. It has been left to NGOs to do the counting. Some American officers do admit to lack of true military targets in Iraq and Syria. In October Lt Gen. Bob Otto, a US air force deputy chief of staff, noted that the coalition was “challenged in finding enough targets that the airplanes can hit that meet the rules of engagement.” He was worried that “if you inadvertently – legally – kill innocent men, women and children, then there’s a backlash from that. And so we might kill three and create 10 terrorists.”
The message carried by the London protesters on Saturday was that there has to be a better way. One of the participants, David Beall from Croydon, told the Guardian: “Dropping bombs didn’t work in Iraq, it didn’t work in Afghanistan and it didn’t work in Libya. We’ve stoked up more extremism, more anger and more discontent among the population of those countries.”
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn rightly says that British air strikes in Syria would not help advance what is really required, and that is “a comprehensive negotiated political settlement of the Syrian civil war.” Such a settlement would isolate ISIS and stimulate more local opposition to its rule.
I don’t think that the French bombing Syria was meant to remedy anything in Syria, but was more about French internal politics. The French National Front will benefit from the recent ISIS attacks in Paris. Hollande thought that it was important to project all that “strong leader of a strong nation” crap, which never gets us anywhere.
Pah.
1. Syria is in the path of a proposed oil pipeline from Oil Arabia to Turkey, then possibly on to the EU.
2. Bombs are being dropped, supposedly on ISIS (to take them out) but really on civilians, to ‘Lybianise’ the country so US contractors can go in and get that pipeline laid. Villain of piece – Senator John McCain.
3. Russia enters fray and targets ISIS strongholds and oil tankers (enter BP) but forgets to miss them on purpose, hits thousands in 5 days. Good, we’re tackling ISIS together, great to find something we agree on at last!
4. Erm, no, you’re not getting it, we’re only Talking About taking out ISIS, not actually Doing It. As a warning from Turkey (one of the interested parties), consider one of your planes shot down. Stay out of this fight unless you are prepared to get some guts, get with the programme and lie like us.
A moral dilemma. On the one hand it’s not good to hear of civilian deaths at the hands of jihadists and one might support some protection for them from the combined military of US,Russia etc. On the other hand bombing raids might be counterproductive and boots could exacerbate the situation. Alternatives include the arranging of a series of re conciliatory talks between leaders – and strategic and massive aid programs. Perhaps look after the Sunnis in a demonstrably better way than does IS and they(ISIS) lose a lot of support. Even then it isn’t really a solution. I think humanity evolving away from (particularly)faith based religious differences would help considerably. That plus humanitarian aid and maintaining a better level of human rights. It’s becoming a world-wide problem and may require(like climate change) a world-wide solution.The times are a-changing.
The only country in Syria with legitimacy is Russia given permission by the elected govt of Syria Basha al Asaad to help intervene in their countries struggles against ISIS. The western narrative peddled by politician and MSM depicts Asaad as the tyrant but negates its(west) responsibilities to whats happening in Syria to date. The Paris shooting perpetrators where from France and Belgium they were not from Syria and my belief is that there seems to be a lot of double standards when reporting these issues and gives the public a false picture to what really happening to Syria https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms5NdKCuADE
https://www.facebook.com/ShbabNywz/videos/1050593651668370/
http://breakingnews.sy/en/article/66660.html
https://www.facebook.com/United.Syrian.Republic/videos/1731693227064837/
https://www.facebook.com/United.Syrian.Republic/videos/1731249823775844/
https://t.co/HKYAW7t2jL
I agree with you Errol T. Russia is the only one given permission to fight in Syria, I have been hoping that Russia is the answer to One World Government, but its disconcerting to see this morning on RT channel that Obama and Putin exchanged what looked like the masonic handshake. I hope I am wrong, Putin seems the only leader prepared to do the right thing.
I doubt if either Syria or Russia have “legitimate governments”. The last Russian election was so frought with corruption and so many opposition candidates harassed, injured, or murdered, that it basically made the whole process a farce.
I recall seeing a vblog report by a Russian blogger showing election officials filling out blank voting papers and stuffing them into ballot boxes.
I’m reminded of the Florida “chads” incident which resulted in a half-witted, semi-articulate war-monger being elected at President in 2000.
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