The moderate right, like the American Conservative, continue to charm me. They are emphatic, warmhearted people who do believe in public services.
Simon Jenkins is about the only voice of reason in the Guardian now. We have Owen Jones, a founder of Momentum, saying there is antisemitism in the Labour party and one Labour MP was suspended for referring to Jewish bankers, so this is what they mean by antisemitism.
And George Monbiot has lost the plot believing Assad's regime is brutal and so the war is justified. But Israel, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are brutal too, and at least Syria was a secular, Western style liberal society with tolerance of different religions. Could really supporting the head-chopping terrorists lead to a liberal and pleasant democratic society, George Monbiot? But he seems to have lost his mind and is playing into the hands of Western imperialism - which has murdered millions and doesn't care about human rights - which is using the fake chemical attack as an excuse to destroy the country. KV
What on earth are we doing? I have not heard a single expert on Syria explain how dropping missiles on that country will advance the cause of peace or lead its dictator, Bashar al-Assad, to back down. It will merely destroy buildings and probably kill people. It is pure populism, reflected in the hot-and-cold rhetoric of Trump’s increasingly whimsical tweets. Heaven forbid that British policy should now, as it appears, be hanging on their every word.
We can accept that the chemical attack on a Damascus suburb was probably by war-hardened Syrian airmen, though rebellions do kill their own to win sympathy. But Britain too has killed civilians in this theatre. No, we don’t poison our own people, but we somehow claim the right to blow other country’s civilians to bits. Theresa May says that the chemical attack “cannot go unchallenged”, but that is a politician’s love of intransitive verbs. Who is to be the agency and under what authority? The time to punish the Syrian leadership is when the war is over. Outside intervention will make no difference to the conflict, except to postpone its end. That is doubly cruel.
The Guardian
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