Friday, October 16, 2015 

Corbyn's shit and you can't take it!

It's over lads.  Time to go home.  Rob Marchant on Labour Uncut has spoken:

It is now taken as accepted everywhere in British politics, with the exception of some parts of the Labour Party’s rank and file, that Labour cannot win an election with Corbyn at the helm.

Yes.  We cannot possibly wait for as long as say next May, and see whether there is any sort of uptick in Labour's fortunes in Scotland or in the local elections.  Barely two months into Corbyn's leadership, it's accepted everywhere that he cannot win an election.  Why, he's been denounced by everyone other than the Corbynistas, who will Corbsplain to you precisely why it is he will take 100% of the vote in 2020 and lead us all to the promised land of facial hair and teetotalism.  He will wipe away every fear of austerity from our minds, and there will be no more Cameron, or Farage or Sturgeon or Kendall anymore, for the former things will have passed away.

Everything, you see, is either Corbyn or McDonnell's fault.  No one can deny that  Monday's u-turn on the fiscal charter reflected extremely badly on the leadership, suggesting that McDonnell had not so much as read the document itself.  Yet, rather than vote with the new leadership once they had made the right decision, 21 MPs abstained for reasons of pure spite.  If only, some ought to reflect, there had been a similar near riot akin to the one at Monday's meeting of the parliamentary Labour party after Harriet Harman's fuckwitted we cannot oppose the welfare bill epiphany, Corbyn might not be leader now.

Besides, I realise we all have ten second memories, but I do recall that Miliband's first choice as shadow chancellor was only half joking when he said the first thing he needed to do was get an economics for beginners primer.  I'd rather have someone who admits his mistake, embarrassing as it was, than someone who doesn't have a clue.

Worth recalling also is what the Labour whips thought of Corbyn and McDonnell's own rebellions.  Corbyn was a "lost cause", while McDonnell was a "shit".  At the moment, Corbyn's opponents for opposition's sake are acting like the latter.  It isn't a good look.

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10/16/2015 01:54:00 p.m. | | | links to this post

Thursday, October 15, 2015 

Us and them.

Being away last week I missed the fun of the Conservative party conference.  Opening with the grand spectacle of the hoi polloi daring to invade the personal space of Tories and journalists, and closing with David Cameron's 5th reuse of the speech he first gave to the conference in 2010 as prime minister, it went almost exactly as expected.  Theresa May set about trying to banish memories of the days when she thought her party could use some lessons in detoxification by out nastying those she once lectured, Boris Johnson once again enthralled his audience by doing everything other than whipping his cock out and stroking it right in front of them, and George Osborne was, well, George Osborne.

It was all in all very comforting for both the delegates and media.  Getting eggs thrown at them, being spat at and denounced as "Tory scum" means they're doing something right, at least in their eyes.  The usual suspects immediately demanded that Jeremy Corbyn condemn anyone who so much as gave evils in the general direction of right-wing sixth formers in their first suits, because obviously the left, and these protesters were demonstrably of the left, are all one and the same.  It was rather strange then that the hacks couldn't seem to get their heads round why it was they were subject to the same treatment as the people they were covering; perhaps their disgust influenced their subsequent reports of the speeches, which were almost entirely positive, some even adulatory.  Perhaps they genuinely thought that Osborne and Cameron meant what they said about becoming the true party of working people, Cameron claiming that he would be spending the rest of his time as prime minister trying to force social reform.

Alternatively, they might have seen right through it, as anyone with the slightest knowledge of what the Tories have spent the last five years doing, what their manifesto promised to and what their policies currently going through parliament will do did, and just barely bothered to point it out anyway.  Cameron's address was all but a carbon copy of his past conference speeches, and yet no one felt it polite to say so.  It was all there: the faux-furious denunciation of Labour for daring to consider itself the protectors of the poor, the terrible jokes, the claims to being the true believers in equality and drivers of social mobility, just slightly updated and with the added attack on Corbyn hating his own country.

The myriad contradictions in the speech, from how in one breath Cameron lambasted continuing discrimination, especially against Muslims, then in practically the next went on about madrasas and FGM, as though the latter is in some way a religious rather than a cultural problem, were deemed unimportant.  The BBC didn't so much as bother to point out Cameron's quote of Corbyn's statement on the death of bin Laden was only part of what he said; that was left to Have I Got News for You.  Also few and far between was any reference to how Cameron didn't so much as mention tax credits, despite Boris Johnson having alluded to the controversy over the cuts the previous day.  Anyone expecting a repeat of the deservedly sniffy reaction to Corbyn's speech was to be disappointed, with any criticism mainly focusing on Theresa May's claims about immigration.

You could call it the Ian Hislop deficiency: there he was on HIGNFY, outraged that Lord Ashcroft's smear on David Cameron had been the subject of such mirth and frivolity, rather than treated as a despicable piece of score settling.  He didn't seem to understand that it was as much a reaction to how there had been months of smears and personal attacks on first Ed Miliband and then Corbyn; hypocrisy mattered less to the boot finally being on the other foot.  That it was the hated Mail that had serialised Ashcroft's book only made it all the sweeter, rather than making it less believable.

The fact is that as Ian Dunt recognises, the relationship between the media and the consumer has fundamentally shifted.  No longer are many prepared to remain passive when it's so easy to let journalists know precisely how they feel; that they tend to target not the "enemy", as it were, but hacks ostensibly on the same side, or those who are required to be impartial, is down to how they feel they aren't playing the role they should be.

This is not by any means an entirely positive development.  Demagogues can quicker than ever whip up the sort of atmosphere that leads to marches like the one seen against BBC Scotland, orchestrated by Alex Salmond.  Intimidation is still intimidation regardless of whether it's a self-styled anti-Westminster movement doing it or the government.  The effect is the same.  The rise in the number of those who are wilfully blind to "their" side's deficiencies, or alternatively spend much time rebutting that there is anything remiss at all is as worrying as it is discombobulating.  The response it invites is not one of reconsideration on the part of the target, but of doubling down.  Unless of course it's a broadcaster like the BBC, which is damned if it is and damned if it doesn't.

Nonetheless, it's easy to understand why this is happening now, particularly to members of the commentariat, when you read articles like yesterday's by Rafael Behr in the Graun.  Superciliousness, complacency and snobbery drip from every paragraph.  Behr sneers at amateurs, specifically Nigel Farage, who in Behr's view was seen off by Cameron in the same way as Miliband.  Farage failed as "enough people recognised that the limit of his capabilities was channelling anger not crafting solutions".  And it's true, in terms of actually winning his own parliamentary seat or UKIP making the same breakthrough as it did at the European elections a year earlier, Farage did fail.

Except on practically every other measure, far from being a failure Farage has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.  Behr is so set on making the point that it's professionals who play by the approved rules who win in the end that he refuses to see how Farage pulled the Tories and the political centre ground to the right.  Without Farage, the wider UKIP threat and the constant need to appease his backbenchers as a result Cameron would not have been forced into promising a referendum on our membership of the EU, a referendum it is by no means certain the remain campaign can win.  The debate on immigration has been made all the more toxic by UKIP's unanswerable point that we simply cannot control the numbers that come here from the EU, exacerbated further by the Tories' ridiculous decision not to drop their unachievable tens of thousands target.  Moreover, as though it needs stating again, UKIP won 4 million votes at the general election, a remarkable performance that only didn't result in substantial representation in parliament because of the bankruptcy of our electoral system.  Farage lost, and yet was victorious.

Rather than look at the two biggest shocks of this year, the Tories winning a majority and Jeremy Corbyn becoming Labour leader, neither of which almost any commentator predicted, and seeing if there isn't something they've missed, the response on the whole has been to carry on regardless.  We're not wrong, it's politics at the moment that it is in flux, and very shortly the equilibrium will be restored.  Perhaps it will.  Alternatively, the changes that have been threatened since the crash coupled with the retreat into personal echo chambers on social media might have altered the landscape if not permanently, then for years to come.  The best, like John Harris, at the same as noting that something new is happening are asking whether it can be sustained or if the approach taken by Corbyn and his supporters can truly work.  As for the rest, if nothing else there will always be a need for someone to cheer on our current overlords.

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10/15/2015 01:01:00 p.m. | | | links to this post

Wednesday, October 14, 2015 

If Tom Watson should apologise, then so must plenty of others.

Tom Watson is a self-publicising tool, never happier than when he is at the very centre of attention.  Until that is he resigns in a huff, as he has done more than once previously.

The above could easily have been written before he had so much as voiced any sort of opinion on child sexual abuse.  More than anyone else Watson coat-tailed on the work of Nick Davies on phone hacking, and he did very well out of it.  Taking on Rupert Murdoch and News International was as righteous a cause as any, even if the motivation behind doing so was party political, having seen what the Sun did to Gordon Brown.  He also though has a habit of making an arse of himself, as he did when questioning James Murdoch, referring to him as a "mafia boss".  It took effort to make Murdoch junior look human, but Watson almost managed it, undermining at the same time his otherwise forensic attempts to get at the truth.

Having established himself as this crusader for the underdog, it's not surprising that he became the go to man for anyone who felt their problems had been ignored, their cause shat upon, their battle with the state and/or anyone else covered up.  Nor is it surprising that thanks to this new status and what must also be damn hard work, his efforts in encouraging victims of abuse to come forward have resulted in three convictions, and that's only so far.

You do then have to wonder if, more than anything, Watson's real failure is one of spreading himself too thinly, difficult as that is to imagine.  His doors have been so open that it reached the point where he either couldn't keep up, or he was so overwhelmed that he wasn't able to differentiate between all the accounts he kept on being given.  He might well have taken extra pleasure in how the claims he first raised at prime minister's questions of a Westminster paedophile ring mainly involved Conservative MPs of the Thatcher era, but he was also involved in the campaign to get the (Labour) Lord Janner to at least face a trial of the facts.

Watson is after all very far from the only person to have reported the claims of abuse victims as though they were incontrovertible.  Watson's main accuser since last week's Panorama, the Mail, has done a very abrupt about turn from revelling in the allegations being made to now declaring them without any hesitation a "witch-hunt".  The home secretary, Theresa May, apparently in reference to the claims being made by the likes of "Nick", said that "only the tip of the iceberg" of the extent of abuse had thus far come to light.  A very different attitude to the one of the prime minister, who on Monday invited Watson to "examine his conscience".  Simon Danczuk, who if anything has been even more vocal than Watson about cover-ups and was at the forefront of demanding that anyone with the slightest link to Leon Brittan be excluded from the overarching inquiry, now claims that he always felt Chris Fay, one of the key links between the actual accusers and the allegations about the Elm Guest House, was "wholly unbelievable and some sort of fantasist".  At the same time as Watson was penning his "close to evil" piece on Brittan, Danczuk was exclaiming on how he feared Brittan's death would mean an end to any answers on the whereabouts of the Dickens dossier.

The response to last Tuesday's Panorama has shown in microcosm everything wrong with the media, social media, the police and politics in their current state.  To start with, it should not take a taxpayer funded broadcaster to point out the gaping flaws in a police investigation so well resourced and funded.  Daniel Foggo's hour-long report was not sensational; it was even-handed, and did not reach conclusions.  They were left for the viewer to draw.  For the Metropolitan police to do their hardest to try and stop the programme from being shown, as they did, and to essentially criticise the BBC for doing their job for them was quite incredible.  The message from both the police (and Exaro News for that matter) was that only they were capable of investigating these cases, and for anyone else to do so would only confuse and potentially damage the chances of justice being done.

Second, where has the rest of the media been in all this?  They've known just as well as the BBC of the questions over "Nick's" credibility, and it's only been as the much-advertised Panorama approached that the likes of the Mail and Telegraph started to raise doubts also.  It's almost as though it needed one respected outlet to break the silence before anyone else would.  We know these are not new allegations; Chris Fay has been bandying his supposed list from the Elm Guest House around since the late 80s.  Nick's claim of a friend he could not so much as recall the second name of being run down by his abusers, fairly easy to check out, was left for the BBC to do.  Any fear of undermining the police investigation surely had to be measured against how in 9 months no one has been arrested despite the police declaring Nick's allegations to be "credible and true", and yet lives and reputations have been turned upside down regardless.

The fact is there has been much for some to gain from the misery of others.  I don't doubt Tom Watson started down this path with the very best of intentions; for him to use it as a reason for why he should be deputy Labour leader, as he did, and to respond to the demands for an apology by in turn asking for an apology for the previously ignored victims, as though he has been and still is their spokesman, is distasteful in the extreme.  It can be argued that by writing to the director of public prosecutions asking for a review of the decision not to charge Lord Brittan over rape allegations was overstepping the mark; presumably then the outrage that met the decision not to charge Lord Janner, from MPs and media alike, which resulted in the review that led to the upcoming trial of the facts should be judged similarly.  It's also now open season on Exaro News, which has managed to stay afloat almost solely through its claiming of exclusivity on those making the most lurid claims of abuse.  How very different from when the press and the BBC also worked through them to further publicise the allegations.

Panorama's case was that the police had gone from one extreme, from being too eager to dismiss and disbelieve, to being all too credulous, uncaring of the effect the raids, leaks and appeals for witnesses were having on those unable to clear their name.  Exactly the same could be said of the media, and indeed many on social media, all too willing to believe the worst and then claim the moral high ground.  Yes, the exposing of Savile has led to many being believed who previously weren't, of convictions of abusers thanks to other victims coming forward thanks to the publicity.  At the same time, others have been accused wrongly or acquitted in precisely the same fashion.  There is no easy balance.  For the Tories and the Mail to now attack Watson in such a hyperbolic way, partially in an effort to get Corbyn through his deputy, partially out of revenge for Watson's role in the Leveson inquiry and partially because they can, only lowers proceedings even further.  That Simon Danczuk and John Mann have been all but ignored despite playing a similar role speaks for itself.

The danger has always been that by focusing on the sensationalist, the lurid, which is subsequently disproved, you don't help survivors of abuse, you run the risk of once again returning to a situation where they are routinely belittled and ignored.  Esther Baker's allegations might also turn out to be unsubstantiated, but the Liberal Democrat MP would not have been able to dismiss them in the way he has today had it not been for the mistakes of so many.  It certainly isn't just Tom Watson who should be examining his conscience.

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10/14/2015 01:30:00 p.m. | | | links to this post

Tuesday, October 13, 2015 

Never seen a tinderbox I didn't want to light.

(This was written yesterday, but I unfortunately arrived home to find my desktop no longer so much as wants to power on.  Updates are likely to be sporadic until it's fixed, as while writing posts on a phone is fine, formatting and adding links in the usual way is an utter chore.)

Let me get this straight.

Israel looks to be in the first stages of the third intifada, the Palestinians having lost hope in either Hamas or Fatah being able to deliver their own state.  The world looks on as the Israelis themselves become ever more hardline, as ever more territory is stolen and as ever more settlements are built.  Resistance now is to throw stones, stab ordinary Israelis.  Both are responded to with bullets.

In Turkey, for the second time, a march by Kurds and socialists is attacked by suicide bombers.  As on the first occasion in Suruc, the Kurdish HDP accuses President Erodgan's AKP party of being involved, either turning a blind eye to Islamic State plotting, or actively collaborating with the jihadists.  For it to happen once can be dismissed.  For it do so again, with the AKP having embarked on a new conflict with the PKK as part of a cynical manoeuvre to try and gain a majority in the second general election in the year, the charge is all the more difficult to dismiss.

Meanwhile, in Yemen, the Saudi coalition continues under the authorisation of a UN Security Council resolution to bomb whatever it feels like, the aim supposedly being to defeat the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.  Thousands are dead, and there is practically no media coverage as it is all but impossible for reporters to gain access, not to forget the potential danger of being in what may as well be a free fire zone.

And then we have Syria and Iraq, where currently pretty much everyone and their mother is either bombing one or the other, or if not bombing then funding or funnelling arms to one side in what are both civil conflicts, but also proxy wars and grand theatres for leaders to show just how serious and tough they are by chucking high explosives at people who might be bad men but might equally be secular and moderate or civilians.

Somehow, quite incredibly, despite politicians knowing all of this, not least because some of them have been authorising the vapourising of British citizens who otherwise would have been coming right for us, one of the few people saying hang on, perhaps we shouldn't add to this chaos by getting even further involved is the one getting criticised.  According to John Woodcock MP, Diane Abbott is trolling her own party by continuing to argue that what's being proposed currently will not help Syrian civilians one iota.

The very best case currently being made for our own little intervention in Syria was set out jointly by Andrew Mitchell and Jo Cox.  According to them, Syria is our generation's test, our Rwanda, our Bosnia, our Kosovo, our responsibility.  They say we must get back to basics, that primarily Syria and the Syrians themselves are the issue.  Their first two recommendations are that both the humanitarian effort to help refugees and the diplomatic effort to try to reach a political solution must be intensified.  No one could disagree.

Then we have the proposed military component.  The word how is not used once.  It is "not ethical to wish away the barrel bombs", they write, without explaining how they can be stopped.  "We need a military component that protects civilians", they say.  They do not propose how.  Any safe havens will need to be protected by forces on the ground, and a no fly zone, which would also be needed, would have to be enforced.  They do not suggest which or whose ground forces would be used, whether it would be the Kurdish militias (now also being accused of razing villages), "moderate" rebels, Turkish troops or Western forces.  They do not explain how a no fly zone could possibly work when the skies are full of planes and drones from numerous nations, nor how the Russians would react when just this weekend they have been in talks with the Americans on how to avoid any potential misunderstandings or clashes between the two sides.

"Preventing the regime from killing civilians, and signalling intent to Russia, is far more likely to compel the regime to the negotiating table than anything currently being done or mooted," they argue.  This is about as absurd a reading of the conflict as it's possible to imagine.  They seem to imagine that if only the Syrian government was prevented from killing more civilians it would throw in the towel, when the Russian intervention makes it pretty clear it was the gains being made by the non-Islamic State rebels that were causing real concern. The Russian involvement has changed everything, and yet still they seem to think there's room for yet more slinging around of missiles, as the safe zones idea is now even more of a non-starter than it was previously.  

When those making the best possible case still can't answer the most basic questions of how and who, it makes clear just how removed from reality our discourse has become that it's the critics who get the articles written about them.  We simply cannot get used to the idea of not getting off when everyone else has already shot their bolt.  Not even the potential of an incident with the Russians and all that would involve dissuades them.  We see chaos, and the only response is to want to create more.

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10/13/2015 01:35:00 p.m. | | | links to this post

Friday, October 02, 2015 

Caged.



I'm not here next week. Enjoy it while it lasts.

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10/02/2015 12:26:00 p.m. | | | links to this post

Thursday, October 01, 2015 

Can you direct me to the nearest designated mass grave?

"In the long run," Keynes said, "we are all dead."  When it comes to any exchange of nuclear weapons, you can reverse his maxim.  Verily, in the very short term we will all be dead.  Or, if extraordinarily unlucky, still alive in a world where the living will envy the dead.

In what has already been a remarkably stupid last few weeks, the whole why-won't-that-bastard-Corbyn-incinerate-everyone-out-of-spite-if-we're-all-going-to-die-anyway debate has truly taken the cake.  Last night's Newsnight was utterly surreal: Evan Davis and Lord Falconer considering hypothetical after hypothetical, Falconer making clear that he would indeed if prime minister keep the option open of taking part in unprecedented slaughter, as that is clearly what the British people would expect.  The reaction of members of the shadow cabinet team to Jeremy Corbyn replying to a straight question with a straight answer they must have known he would give, that he cannot conceive of any circumstances in which he would ever launch nukes, has been bizarre and disloyal.  Andy Burnham, Maria Eagle and all the others are apparently perfectly happy to join in with the end of the world, so long as someone else starts it first.

As Dan Davies pointed out, Corbyn was asked entirely the wrong question.  The question should not be would you break out the nukes, as it is almost inconceivable we would ever use them without the support of the people who help to make our "independent" deterrent.  The question rather should be whether a prime minister would use them without US approval, and secondly what they think would happen if they did.  It's all but impossible to think of any scenario where potential nuclear war was imminent that would not involve a square off between the US and either Russia/China, the only other nuclear armed states that have the potential to destroy each other and much of the rest of the planet if they so wished.

In such circumstances, the NATO doctrine of an attack on one is an attack on all would come into play; there would be little effective choice in the matter unless the PM decided the whole Threads look wasn't a good one.  If nuclear holocaust happens, we're going to die.  Simple as.  If the prime minister of the day then is such an utter shitbag that his letter to the commander of the Vanguard sub says yes, please spray more nuclear megadeath around for the sheer sake of it, it's not going to make a blind bit of difference to us.  It might well to other countries without insane defence/war policies, but to a nation where Radio 4 has stopped broadcasting?  Nope.  Of course, the commander himself might in such circumstances decline to follow those orders, as who's going to know or rebuke him.  You wouldn't however put your mortgage on such a hope.

The oh, you can't say definitively you would never use nukes because you always have to make the potential enemy think you might argument is therefore bunk.  It's not about making the Russians/Chinese think twice, it's wholly about the ridiculous, yes I'm so dedicated to the security of my country that I will happily see it annihilated in a nuclear fire, my bollocks are bigger than yours political game.  It wouldn't matter as much if there was on the horizon the merest suggestion that we might be returning to a Cold War frame of mind, but there isn't.  On the contrary, the Russian intervention in Syria and the relative lack of reaction to it makes clear that the wear your mushroom with pride days are not about to make a comeback.  The Russian intervention in Afghanistan in the 80s seemed of a piece with the rise in belligerence by both sides.  Today, there is no such desire to restart the waving of ICBMs.

This doesn't mean it can't happen.  It could, not least if leaders more volatile than Obama or Putin come to power, or if China decides to further step up its militarisation of the South China Sea.  The smart money though remains on either a continued terrorist threat, as far as there is one, against which anything other than conventional forces are useless, or small scale actions like the ones in Ukraine, where irregular forces and militias are used, and so ditto.  As Diane Abbott rightly points out, some of the most respected retired generals previously made clear their opposition to Trident replacement, wanting the money to be spent instead on conventional weaponry.

The biggest obstacles to getting rid of Trident if we so wished are not so much those considerations, as politicians know full well nukes are useless militarily, but rather the "loss of standing" disarming would have. Allied with how the military-industrial complex must go on being fed, a view supported by the unions, with GMB leader Sir Paul Kenny (knighted by Cameron, natch) saying Corbyn would have to resign if he became prime minister and didn't change his stance, it's far easier to just accept that our weapons are both "independent" and a "deterrent", must be replaced, and be on the brink of being launched at all times.  Anything less is to give in to the "nirvana fallacy", to be unrealistic, to go against the accepted rules of politics.  Whether such thinking stands up in a world that moves ever further away from 1989, where the public mood is one of wanting to stop meddling as a direct result of the foreign policy failures of recent times, remains to be seen.

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10/01/2015 09:52:00 p.m. | | | links to this post

Wednesday, September 30, 2015 

Syria: hell on earth, and made worse by each successive intervention.

When it comes to the great worst place in the world to live debate, there are many favourites that immediately come to mind.  Your North Koreas, Saudi Arabias, Eritreas, Irans, etc.  All with highly oppressive authoritarian governments, all set on either outright killing their own people, or just making life as miserable as possible.  Then you have the places where plain old insecurity and crime are the main problem: countries like Honduras and El Salvador, currently battling over which has the highest murder rate per capita of population, while one of the BRICS, South Africa, is also averaging 49 murders a day.

Few though are likely to disagree (Islamic State supporting cretins excepted) that right now Syria is the closest equivalent to hell on earth.  Beyond argument is the root cause of the civil war was the reaction of the Assad regime to the protests that broke out as part of the wider Arab spring; less widely accepted is that the regime's almost immediate resort to violence was not wholly surprising considering events in Egypt.  There the Mubarak government pretty much surrendered without a fight.  It has since resurfaced in the form of the Sisi government, but whether the Ba'ath party would have been able to come back to power in the same way had Assad also quickly left the scene is dubious.

Besides, let's not indulge the view that had the initial uprising succeeded Syria would now be rivalling Tunisia in the Arab spring stakes.  That so many extreme Islamist groupings emerged as quickly as they did to fight the regime, not including either the al-Nusra Front or Islamic State, suggests there would have soon been a battle on the hands of the secularists and liberals to maintain their revolution.

In any case, the peaceful uprising quickly became an armed one.  These groups were soon funded by the usual suspects: the Saudis, the Qataris, Kuwaitis, etc.  Whether any Arab governments directly funded the most notorious jihadist groups is uncertain, but certainly the usual benefactors in their countries did.  At the same time, the Syrian government turned to its own allies, the Iranians and the Russians, both of whom have helped it to survive through direct aid, weaponry and in the case of Iran, fighters from Hezbollah.  Also helping out have been our good selves in the West: we quickly declared that Assad must go, his government was entirely illegitimate, and that the Syrian opposition, whichever group we've decided that is this week, are the only de facto representatives of the Syrian people.  As well as helping to equip the "moderate" armed groups, it's fairly apparent that our approach throughout was to let the Arab states get on with doing whatever they felt like, even if that meant funding and arming jihadists, at the same time ironically enough as the Saudis and Emirate nations were helping with the overthrow of the moderate Islamist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Confused yet?  We're only just getting started.  Ever since Islamic State took advantage of the Sunni uprising in Iraq against what they saw as the sectarian central government to take over vast swaths of the country, enabling it to also grab a massive part of western Syria, such was the collapse of government authority there, a veritable smorgasbord of nations have decided the best way to defeat them is to drop bombs from a great height on their general position.  This roll call of countries includes the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the UAE and France.  Technically we are yet to join in ourselves, but when you remember that British servicemen have taken part in sorties over the country and we felt the only way to protect ourselves from attacks on events that had already passed was to splatter some Islamic State morons across the Syrian desert via drone, you can basically include us also.

And now the Russians have joined in, only they are quite clearly intervening directly on the side of Assad.  For a few moments it looked as though the way was clearing for the sort of precursor to a peace initiative a few of us have long called for: to recognise that however terrible the crimes Assad has committed are, the only way to deal with Islamic State is to work with him and his forces, at least in the short term.  In exchange, Assad would be required to give up power once Islamic State had been defeated in Syria, but be allowed to remain a free man.  With Assad gone, a peace deal would hopefully then be easier to broker with the other rebel groups.  Free elections would follow, and so forth.  Yes, it's a plan with myriad problems that almost certainly wouldn't work, but it's a far more realistic one than all the others offered so far.  It seemed as if the arrival of new Russian weaponry and forces was to help purely with a renewed offensive against Islamic State, as suggested by the Syrians bombing targets they previously felt unable to.  That the Americans appeared to be acquiescing to this rather than complaining about it in the usual incredibly hypocritical style looked a good sign.

That today's first attacks by Russian planes seem to have targeted rebels other than IS rather undermines any lingering hopes on that score.  It could of course have been faulty intelligence, might have been merely an opening salvo designed to minimise any potential threat to the bases where the Russians are operating from, or it may be those on the ground are lying; any statement by rebel groups has to be treated with great caution, so often have they resorted to falsehoods.  More likely however is that this is just the start of a wider Russian offensive against all opposition to Assad.  Considering very few of the remaining rebel groups are "moderate" in the true sense of the word, this isn't the greatest tragedy.  What is a tragedy is the Russians have the same sense of compunction towards civilian casualties as everyone else, i.e. none.

Putin's motives are fairly transparent, as are the arguments being deployed.  All his forces are doing is going the extra mile the Americans and the rest haven't: attacking Islamic State from the air hasn't worked, so the next step has to be to coordinate with forces on the ground.  The Americans have effectively betrayed the Kurds who were playing that role, leaving only the Syrian army.  It's been apparent ever since the US airstrikes began that there is low-level plausibly deniable cooperation between the Syrians and the Americans, hence why there have been no unfortunate incidents in over a year of missions.  Why not simply make this formal, the Russians ask.

They have a point. Of course, these motives are far from pure: as much as the Russians do have more to fear from Islamic State than the Americans do, their intervention has the exact same downsides as ours in the region have.  It will likely increase the terrorist threat rather than decrease it, while the presence of Russians in the country will provide a further rallying cry for the jihadi recruiters.  Putin hopes an intervention that brings the end of the war closer will somewhat make up for the on-going conflict in Ukraine, raising the possibility of an early lifting of sanctions.  It also re-establishes Russia's influence in the region, building on the role played in the Iran nuclear programme negotiations.

Were Russia merely stepping up in this way, there would be little to protest about.  Clearly the hope of the Americans was the Russians were going to do what they weren't prepared to.  Instead, it looks as though there is no plan beyond propping up Assad indefinitely.  If there are to be joint operations with the Syrian military, there is no indication of them starting any time soon.  For a long time the harsh reality has been that we and our allies have been happy with a murderous stalemate in Syria.  Even now, as the refugee crisis is not really directly affecting us as it is the rest of Europe, we're still not especially bothered.  The only logic behind joining in with the bombing is for the sake of appearance; there's certainly no military necessity behind it.

With the Russians deciding to join the list of nationalities determined to make Syria even less liveable, the case for our getting involved becomes ever weaker.  Rarely has there been a case of a country already going through hell being fucked over so utterly by so many others.  The argument that only more war will solve the conflict applies only if that war targets Islamic State exclusively.  Russia's intervention seems likely only to result in yet more suffering.  And sadly, our hands are just as dirty as theirs.

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9/30/2015 10:32:00 p.m. | | | links to this post

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