This has to be the most unconvincing argument to launch a military campaign I have ever heard. David Cameron’s comments branding those who oppose bombing Syria as ‘terrorist sympathisers’ borders on contemptible and desperate. The British public are not with the government on this and he knows it. When Tony Blair took the UK to war in Iraq at least he went to the effort of producing a ‘sexed up’ dossier to delude us all.

In David Cameron’s case we are to believe that 70,000 ‘moderates’ in Syria will be there to work in coordination with the RAF in the defeat of ISIS. What wishful thinking. The shameful irony of it all, is that we have seen this all before in the bombing of Libya. In an excellent article in the New York Times titled ‘ISIS’ Grip on Libyan City Gives It a Fallback Option‘

“…an actively managed colony of the central Islamic State, crowded with foreign fighters from around the region”

We invaded Iraq with no ‘Plan ‘B”, we bombed Libya with no ‘Plan ‘B”. Have we not learned from our past mistakes? In Libya’s case, the militia’s that help overthrow the government split into multiple factions and continue to fight amongst themselves. Libya was once one of the wealthiest countries in Africa, now it is a failed state with ISIS playing a growing role in the country, exporting its terror elsewhere.

David Cameron simply does not know enough about his phantom army of 70,000 ‘moderates’ in Syria. During the Defence Select Committee meeting on December 1st Defence Secretary Michael Fallon and a military General were waffling on about a ‘spectrum of extremism’. Meaning there are very few ‘moderates’ that actually exist. These ‘moderates’, are not moderates at all and are therefore untrustworthy. In most cases their enemy is not ISIS but the Assad regime. So unconvincing was their display during the committee meeting, it has to be seen to be believed. Full credit to Julian Lewis, Conservative MP, for holding them accountable and showing his utter contempt.

Mary Creagh, on Newsnight (December 1st) spoke of the bombing of ISIS command and control centres. In the real world of global terrorism such things do not exist, when an enemy like ISIS can spread their online propaganda to the smartphones of vulnerable people in homes throughout the UK from laptops in the living rooms of places like Islamabad, Surt, Brussels, or Mosul. Bombing alone may restrict ISIS’s movements but without ground forces, will stay intact. Continued bombing will also create ‘collateral damage’ and will only foster more hate on the West.

If the UK wants to take a leading role in the fight against ISIS it has to be smart. Follow the money… follow the weapons supply… launch sanctions, and it will not be long before you will see the diminishing of ISIS’s capability. This is wishful thinking as some of our allies in the Middle-East finance and arm our enemy, but this is something you will hear little of in a country with a very pro-Conservative press.

Unfortunately, the political reality is that there is a fight going on in Syria without David Cameron in it. He wants to be in it, and he wants to be part of a post-Assad Syrian settlement. This is not a good enough justification for me.

As the drums of war beat ever louder, I fear that this is another foreign policy disaster for David Cameron, and for the UK.

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