A nuclear Syria?

David Lindsay

Is there any country in the Middle East that the War Party does NOT believe has nuclear weapons? Oh yes, of course there is. The one that really does have them.

On and on Israelis and their yes men go about how backward Israel's neighbours are. Yet they allegedly have nuclear weapons facilities all over the place.

My bet is that what was actually bombed was a bus shelter, although a comment on my website says that I am wrong and that it was in fact a warehouse.

Everyone laughed at the cack-handed attempts engineer a war against Iran. But a war against somewhere has to have been launched too early for President Obama (or President McCain, no warmonger he, I suspect) to be able to prevent it.

So it looks like it's going to be Syria that does the honours, despite its large Christian population (much swelled by refugees from Iraq), its British-educated President, the fact that even Tony Blair used to quite like it, and the inescapable reality that secular authoritarian regimes in the Middle East are better bulwarks against Islamic fundamentalism than are arrangements such as we might prefer closer to home.

Has the War Party learned anything from Iraq? No, of course not.

And just how anti-British does a country have to be before the War Party stops doing its bidding? Compared to hanging teenage British conscripts with barbed wire and photographing it, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson seem almost anglophile. Though not quite.

Dr Lewis Davidson

Regarding whether or not Syria has a British-educated Prime Minister or a Christian majority: why is the relevant to the discussion?

The difference between Israel on the one hand and Syria and Iran, etc. on the other, is that Syria and Iran are more likely to obliterate Israel in a pre-emptive nuclear strike, or to aid and abet those bent on the destruction of Israel, than Israel is to obliterate its neighbours. Its not therefore simply a matter of saying Israel has nuclear weapons, so lets allow Iran, Syria, North Korea etc to obtain them as well. You don't explicitly argue for this, though the logic of your argument is unclear; what precisely are you arguing for?

Who is the War Party?

Stephen Rothbart

I guess having your opponents killed in Lebanon,being involved in numerous terrorist activities around the globe, and acting as a proxy for Iran's bellicose intentions towards Israel makes Syria a wondeful and trustworthy state, especially as its President was educated in Britain. Oh and Blair liked it. So that is OK then.

What a fatuous comment. Oh and does the War Party now include the Democrats now the Hilary has warned Iran she will nuke them if they attack Israel?

Sadly, if the Middle Eastern States spent half their money they spend on arming themselves to keep their enemies and their own people in check, on educating them and providing them with jobs, perhaps the whole place would be more stable.

Only one country in the region tries to do that for all its people, men, women and non Jews alike and that is Mr.Lindsay's pariah state of Israel.

David Lindsay

Syria does not have a Christian majority, although it would matter enormously if it did. How, exactly, would Bush sell bombing a predominantly Christian country on behlaf of an overwhelmingly non-Christian one? Mercifully, we will never know.

But Syria does have a large Christian population, much swelled by refugees from Iraq, on which and on much else see Robin Harris of Politeia: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/features/opinion/o0000248.shtml

As Harris writes:

"The oppressive Syrian regime, which continues to make trouble in Lebanon, has, like Jordan, provided safe haven for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christians. Indeed, secular authoritarian regimes may in such countries be preferable to weak, more open governments that allow Islamic extremists to flourish."

Quite.

I ask again, has the War Party learned nothing from Iraq?

Ann

And yet another laughable and ignorant anti-Israel rant by David 'The Evil Israelis and their Tentacles Strangling the World' Lindsay, or should it perhaps be David 'I have my own private satellite reconnaissance intelligence system and I know it was an empty warehouse oops no it was a baby-milk factory destroyed by the Israeli Nazis' Lindsay?

Educated in Britain, eh? Lots of fascist mass murderers were educated in Britain. So? Please, please, do stop making such an utter silly fool of yourself in public, David. It is painful to watch.

TGF UKIP

Given the nexus of Iran, North Korea and Syria and the degree of watch the US must exercise over all their activities, particularly shipping, it is hard to believe that NASA did not have an inkling of what was going on. If it didn't US taxpayers should be asking for their billions back.

Max Kaye

What is it about Israel-haters that curdles their brains and disallows any clear thinking?

Just the possibility of countries such as Iran or Syria possessing nuclear weapons should scare the daylights out of any right-thinking person.

Does any sensible person really want nuclear weapons in the hands of the messianic mullahs of Iran, or the 'secular authoritarian' paradise of Syria? (Where that nice 'British-educated President' just happened to get the job because his daddy was dictator there for over 30 years. This was, of course, old Hafez al-Assad who, amongst other pleasantries, killed nearly 20,000 of his fellow countrymen in Hama in 1982. But not many on the left care about that.... it didn't involve nasty Israel ).

Israel has allegedly had nuclear capability since the 1960s. Even their enemies knew that this was only ever likely to be a weapon of last resort. Can the same ever be said about the Iran and Syria? Would you risk it if your country was in the firing line of such regimes?

We all sleep safer in our beds in the knowledge that Israel will not allow these madmen to possess nuclear arms.

David Lindsay

"Just the possibility of countries such as Iran or Syria possessing nuclear weapons should scare the daylights out of any right-thinking person."

And it would, if there were anything in it.

What have the Isrealis ever done for us? Why can't they look after themselves, since they always make a great show of saying that they can? Have you learned nothing from Iraq about what replecaes a secular regime in the Middle East if you take it out?

And why is TGF UKIP still in his anti-war, paleocon party?

Ian C

David Lindsay, your incoherence is incoherent. You are all over the place. Bet you win lots of seats at the next election.

David Lindsay

Why won't you answer any of my points, particularly the questions of what the Israelis have ever done for us, and of why we should repeat the mistake of removing a secular Arab regime, just as we did in Iraq? Look how that has turned out.

Of course, our three Likud parties out of three are determined to have a war against Syria. People talk about that lobby in the US. It exists, but it is a small-time, amateur operation compared to its British counterpart.

Max Kaye

David Lindsay,

What have the Israelis ever done for us? Nothing intentionally. Why should they? What have the Swiss, the Swedes, the Norwegians, the Thais, the Zambians, the Sri Lankans, the Peruvians.... I think you get the point.

As for the mistake of removing a secular Arab regime: These regimes will, ultimately, be removed by their own people anyway - either by radical Islamists (as in Iran - although they are not Arab), or by the democratic process (highly unlikely, I know - but we said that about the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc right up until the Wall crumbled).

What I really object to is the inherent racism in your view that it's OK for these barbarian people to be subjugated to authoritarian, murderous regimes as they are not really 'like us' and culturally incapable - and thus unworthy - of developing liberal democratic societies. We should therefore deal with the likes of Saddam because they may be murdering bastards, but they're secular murdering bastards who don't profess to hate us as much as the religious murdering bastards do. This will come back to haunt as the fall of the Shah did.

There are no easy solutions. The secular regimes are just as bad - and evil - as the religious nutters. Hitler or Khomeni: under who's thumb would you prefer to live under? Ah, you wouldn't chose to live under either? Right, then why do you think it is OK for the Arabs and other 'inferior' people to have to make that kind of limited choice?

The US neo-cons who seek regime change in the Middle East and elsewhere may be amateurish and over-optimistic, but they're morally in the right.

David Lindsay

"What have the Swiss, the Swedes, the Norwegians, the Thais, the Zambians, the Sri Lankans, the Peruvians...."

We've fought wars alongside some of those. But it is really you who is making my point.

"Right, then why do you think it is OK for the Arabs and other 'inferior' people to have to make that kind of limited choice?"

I don't. But we've tried to improve matters in one case, and I think it is fair to say that, at the very least, that hasn't turned out quite as we might have hoped.

"The US neo-cons who seek regime change in the Middle East and elsewhere may be amateurish and over-optimistic, but they're morally in the right."

Where? In 1980s Afghanistan? In 1990s Yugoslavia? In Chechnya, Turkey, Kosovo and the Gulf monarchies today?

Look at the Saudi, Kuwaiti and UAE allies of Hillary Clinton (a woman, for pity's sake) and George Waterboarding Bush against a country with more women than men at university, and with the most acclaimed cinema in the world today.

Like Iran, Syria, for all its many faults, is in fact positively benign compared to them, compared to what Turkey is busily becoming (under the Tories' sister-party in the EPP), compared to what Kosovo will become, and compared to what the separatists want Chechnya to become, all backed up to the hilt by the "morally in the right" neocons.

Stephen Rothbart

Mr.Lindsay, if we are going to talk about the Allies who fought alongside us, the Palestine Regiments that fought with Montgomery's army in Africa and the Middle East, and later in Europe, consisted entirely of Palestinian Jews, who fought against the Nazis, while many Arabs, including the Mufti of Jerusalem and his hundreds of thousands of supporters, openly fought alongside and supported the Nazis.

Many Muslim leaders were feted by Hitler and his regime.

In the end this has little or nothing to do with Syria and Iran having the bomb and being no threat and Israel having the bomb and being a threat, which appears to be your thesis.

Israel accepts the staus quo of a Middle East in which Iran, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, and even the two state Palestinain entity have the right to exist, while most of the above do not recognize Israel's right to exist and two of those entities have sworn to obliterate her.

So, just as during the Six Day War of 1967, Israel may be the first to attack, and possibly even use nuclear solution, the fact is that she does not seek to do so, while her enemies do.

I am suprised that anyone with intelligence can not see this difference. You are obviously an intelligent person, but your views are conditioned by something that leads you to a bias that causes you to ignore the obvious.

David Lindsay

The obvious is that we have a greater strategic interest in shoring up a regime which might be nasty but is no threat to us, than in removing it in order that it might be replaced by a regime which was at least as nasty and did pose a threat to us.

And those are the options. There si no Third Way. An Islamist state with a Mediterranean coastline, anyone? Mind you, there's already Turkey.

Syria is bad, but there are worse, including in the Middle East, where, bizarrely and disgracefully, we are particularly fond of them.