Dr Alf makes a very good point, but we have been here before, in Kosovo, Iraq and in other places.

To replace Assad you have to create an air corridor, blockade the country and invade. That, as General Dempsey has already said, is an act of war and the Russians and the Chinese have said it will be a step too far.

We should not imagine that they are bluffing or that they are powerless to act and we should consider the consequences of a wider Middle East war and what that will do for our oil supplies if the Straights of Hormuz are blocked, mined or if there is a major strike on an oil tanker in retaliation.

As I’ve said in other posts, we (in the UK) are vulnerable to disruption of our electricity supply which has just 4% excess capacity; we are vulnerable to disruption of food supply because we import 80% of our food; and we are vulnerable to a balance of payments crisis because 50% of our physical exports and 95% of the things we import for resale or domestic use , come through the Port of Felixstowe.

Firing missiles from ships offshore sounds easy and again presupposes that Russia sits on its hands and does nothing.

The missiles, according to David Cameron, are designed to “Send a message to Assad”.

Given what we have seen, “the message”, will strengthen his resolve because he will feel and probably knows that the West planned to try and topple his regime anyway and try to have him tried as a war criminal at the Hague.

He will remember the fate of Gaddafi in Libya following the creation of a “humanitarian corridor”. Similarly,he will recall how, when Milosevic was being tried at the Hague and was going to call Bill Clinton and Tony Blair as witnesses in his defense because of what they knew about what was really going on in that conflict ,Milosevic became very ill and died from poison.

Parliament, even though it is powerless to stop David Cameron engaging in war, should be recalled, because things will not end with a few missile strikes.

If the West/the UK and France wants to effect regime change in Syria, there will be an inevitable escalation and there will need to be a calling to account afterwards when, as always happens, the troops are not home for Christmas.

Even if Assad was to go or be killed as collateral damage he has sons who could take his place and even if we got all of them and installed one of the Syrian rebel leaders as a puppet or used the man the UK Government has in mind who currently lives in Leicester, there is no guarantee that they would be accepted by the Syrian people.

WHAT HAS BEEN FORGOTTEN

In all the furore about the gas attacks people seem to have suspended judgement and assumed that Assad and the Syrian Army have done this.

The event could be a “False Flag” event orchestrated by us to provide the pretext for war we were looking for all along.

Or it might be a trap for us orchestrated by someone else.

Whatever it is we need to establish the facts using impartial UN weapons inspectors and then decide rationally what we can and should do,bearing in mind that these two things are not necessarily the same.

NO GUARANTEES

Assuming Assad is toppled/bribed to go into exile with his family and replaced by one of our puppets and everything works to blueprint,we have no guarantee that his replacement will be any less brutal or in favour of our interests than Assad.

Indeed we could find ourselves in a position where the person we put in as a replacement turns out to be a Muslim fanatic like Morsi in Egypt ,another Ayatollah or someone from the Wahabi sect(another Osama Bin Laden).

We are playing with fire and it is not David Cameron back from his 4th holiday this year who will end up fighting and dying if it all goes wrong,nor is it those of us who globetrot,watch the sun go down in Cyprus as we down our gin and tonic following completion of another blog.

Nor is it me operating from the rustic calm of a small North Hertfordshire town.

Certainly it isn’t the people who tell the politicians what to do who profit from warmongering and live double lives,one public one in the shadows.

No, the people will be young fighting men from different places,some of whom will never come home,others who will be coming home in body bags.

All this whilst our recalled MPs and the sanctimonious Cameron and Hague make speeches to try and justify it all.

John Gelmini

Related articles

• Syria, Chemical Weapons and Military Intervention: A Personal View – John Gelmini (dralfoldman.com)
• David Cameron urged to recall Parliament to discuss situation as missile strike against Syria looms (dailyrecord.co.uk)
• David Cameron cuts short holiday over Syria crisis (telegraph.co.uk)
• David Cameron cuts short holiday to discuss potential military action over Syria (express.co.uk)
• Report: UK’s Cameron pressing Obama for strike on Syria (jpost.com)
• Syria crisis: UN chemical weapons inspectors shot at by snipers (telegraph.co.uk)
• Britain set to bomb Syria over suspected chemical weapons atrocity which killed hundreds of children (mirror.co.uk)
• Syria: US and UK pledge military action within two weeks – Belfast Telegraph (belfasttelegraph.co.uk)
• PM clashes with Russia over Syria (standard.co.uk)
• US And UK Ready To Strike Syria Without UN Approval (thedailysheeple.com)