These Iraqi families killed by US bombs did not lead to the bombing of Britain by Russia. Conventional bombing kills in Mosul as efficiently as chemical gas in Khan Sheikhoun (Syria) and thousands have died – with little coverage by the mainstream media!
“The first thing I saw was his son Mohammed, 12, lying on the floor, writhing and screaming, he was so badly wounded it was terrifying to see…. they managed to scramble out of a blown-out window. Holding hands, the five of them stepped out of the ruins – the only survivors from 23 people who had been sleeping inside a row of three family homes, all demolished in seconds”.
Later, on 8th March 20 Syrian civilians including several children were killed by US bombing of a town near Raqqa called Hanedah.
But did we see this on US and UK television? Were tears shed by Donald Trump’s children? Were these children not “beautiful”? Should those who do such things be bombed? Apparently not because these bombs were aimed at defeating ISIS, Al Nusra, Al Qaeda etc. Well that is war. It is obnoxious, revolting, criminal – and all sides (not just enemies of the US, UK and their NATO partners) are “guilty” of what war always brings.
But the real guilt lies with those who provoke war, whose threats of war get out of hand, who blindly seek out an enemy even if he need not exist.
The chemical bombs in Idlib province, Syria, may yet be proved genuine (the UN is due to investigate) but they are consistent with so many past fraudulent “causes of war” – from Nazi Germanys’ accusation that Poland invaded Germany in 1939 (!), that the Sarajevo market bombing was carried out by Serbs, that a healthy but skeletal prisoner was proof of “Serb concentration camps” and that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction” – to mention a few.
GRAVE DOUBTS ABOUT “CHEMICAL ATTACK”
I note that a US General interviewed on the BBC said that the US attack on Syria’s airforce base specifically avoided what the military claimed were “chemical stores” – so as to avoid the release of poison. But the US and UK had specifically denied the Russian claim that a conventional bomb on rebel controlled chemical weapons stores could have poisoned anyone!
So is the USA is now admitting that the Russian explanation is perfectly feasible? After all the UN official Jerry Smith, who led operation to remove Syria’s chemical weapons (verified in 2013 by both Russia and the USA) told the UK’s Channel Four News:
“If it is Sarin that was stored there and conventional munitions were used, there is every possibility that some of those [chemical] munitions were not consumed and that the Sarin liquid was ejected and could well have affected the population”.
Before launching a devastating attack on a sovereign country and an ally of Russia (militarily the most powerful country in Europe) President Trump should have waited for independently verified evidence from experts on the ground. Indeed this was the position of the UK Government – until the US attack took place when Boris Johnson gave uncritical support! The British Foreign Office has not come out of this well! The cancellation of the Foreign Secretary’s Moscow official visit, the attempt to apply more sanctions to Russia, the abject defeat of the latter at the G7 meeting and European countries’ demand for an independent investigation of the “gas attack” claims have all made the British Foreign Office look foolish, incompetent and without friends!
Further doubts on the “gas attack” arose when the 31 year old “British” doctor Shajul Islam, (who documented on the internet his apparent treatment of victims of the “chemical weapons” attack in Syria) was considered a “committed jihadist” by MI6 and was struck off the General Medical Council in 2016.
He first travelled to Syria in 2012 and was wanted by MI6 for his alleged role in the kidnapping of British photojournalist John Cantlie and his Dutch colleague Jeroen Oerlemans.
DANGEROUS FALSE NEWS ON RUSSIAN REACTION TO US BOMBING
One disturbing aspect of the whole Saga was the propagation of a false news story which could have led to a serious clash between Russia and the US, despite there being no grounds for the “news”.
Reuters and the UK’s Independent newspaper reported that Russia, Iran and Syria had issued a statement saying that if there were any further US attack they would respond with great force against US military assets. In fact the story was false. No such statement had been made and the use of the term “crossing red lines” is not a term used other than by British and American speakers!
As the Russian website The Duran reported, there was mention in the false news report of a Russian Iranian Syrian ‘joint command centre’ but
“No such body as the ‘joint operations room’ in this context appears to exist nor has it ever existed according to any source, dating from the beginning of Russian involvement in the civil war in September of 2015 up until today.”
and:
“The actual content of the well documented phone call between the Russian and Iranian Presidents entirely contradicts the dubious document and is totally in line with official and de-facto Russian and Iranian policy.”
These are dangerous times. Russophobia, abysmal western ignorance of the Middle East and Eastern Europe, the mobilisation of NATO forces to within 450 miles of Moscow and the hysteria of a few NATO generals (one even writing a book on the “coming war with Russia”) have taken East West relations to a knife edge level of tension which is neither historically nor ideologically justified.
Indeed had it not been for the measured and controlled reactions of Vladimir Putin, whose rational realpolitik and real ideological and geopolitical depth contrast with the hysterical rank amateurs in Washington, an exchange of fire between Russia and the USA might have taken place.
We in the West live in unstable times because we have unstable leaders with a blind belief in the comfortable certainties of the cold war and foreign policies driven by the cause of the war before that – German Europe’s internal political weakness and external aggression – and America’s willingness to appease that aggression.
