PETER HITCHENS: We set Syria ablaze... Now we're hurling in explosives



Imagine this: newspapers and broadcasters in China suddenly start to denounce the British Government.



They call it a ‘regime’. They say that its treatment of its Muslim minority is cruel and unjust.



Soon, their views are echoed by the Chinese foreign minister, who in a speech at the United Nations says that Britain’s treatment of its minorities is a disgrace, and calls for sanctions against this country.

Violence: Peter Hitchens says that arming the rebels against forces loyal to President Assad (pictured) is a recipe for starting a major war

The Chinese ambassador turns up as an ‘observer’ at an Islamist demonstration in Birmingham.



Some protesters are injured. Carefully-edited footage of the occasion is shown on global TV stations, in which the police are made to look brutal and the provocations against them are not shown.



Soon after this, armed attacks are made on police stations and on Army barracks. People begin to notice the presence in British cities of foreign-looking men, sometimes armed.



Within a matter of months, the country is plunged into a civil war. A place known for stability, order and prosperity descends with amazing speed into a violent, rubble-strewn chaos, complete with refugees, plumes of oily smoke and soup-kitchens.



The bewildered inhabitants shrug with hopeless bafflement when they read foreign accounts of events, encouraging the rebels, even though nobody really knows who they are. They just long for the fighting to be over.



All the time, foreign media report in a wholly one-sided way, credulously trumpeting British Government ‘atrocities’ without verification. And then all the major countries in the world agree to permit the direct supply of weapons to the rebels.



Absurd? Wait and see. Something quite like this actually happened on a small scale in Northern Ireland, where American individuals helped buy guns and bombs for the IRA, and the US government put huge pressure on us to give in to the terrorists.



And China, on the verge of becoming a global power, is watching carefully all the precedents we set, in Yugoslavia, in Iraq and now in Syria.



I apologise to the real Chinese ambassador for inventing this particular story. But the events I imagine here are based on the actual behaviour of Western powers in Syria. And what nations do to others is usually, in the end, done to them in turn.



I do not like the Syrian government. Why should I? It is not much different from most Middle Eastern nations, in that it stays in power by fear. The same is true of countries we support, such as Saudi Arabia, recently honoured with a lengthy visit by Prince Charles.



In fact Saudi Arabia is so repressive that it makes Assad’s Syria look like Switzerland. And don’t forget the places we liberated earlier – Iraq, Libya – which are now sinks of violence and chaos.



So many high ideals, so much misery and destruction. My old foe Mehdi Hasan (who understands the Muslim world better than most British journalists) rightly pointed out on Question Time on Thursday that our policy of backing the Syrian rebels is clinically mad.



These are the very same Islamists against whom – if they are on British soil – Government Ministers posture and froth, demanding that they are deported, silenced, put under surveillance and the rest.



Arms: Foreign Secretary William Hague pushed for the EU's embargo on Syria to be lifted to enable the supply of weapons to forces opposed to President Assad

But when we meet the same people in Syria, we want to give them advanced weapons. One of these ‘activists’, a gentleman called Abu Sakkar, recently publicly sank his teeth into the bleeding heart of a freshly slain government soldier.



I confess that I used to think highly of William Hague. I now freely admit that I was hopelessly wrong.



The man has no judgment, no common sense, and is one of the worst Foreign Secretaries we have ever had, which is saying something.



His policies – disgracefully egged on by a BBC that has lost all sense of impartiality – are crazily creating war where there was peace.



Syria for all its faults was the last place in the region where Arab Christians were safe. Now it never will be again. Who benefits from this? Not Britain, for certain.



Now, Mr Hague’s strange zeal for lifting the EU arms embargo has caused Moscow to promise a delivery of advanced anti-aircraft missiles to Syria. Israel has threatened to destroy them if deployed. Syria has said it will respond with force.



This is exactly how major wars start. Mr Hague is not just pouring petrol into a blazing house full of screaming people. He is hurling in high explosives as well. It may even be that some people actually want such a war, with Iran as its true target.



They know that ‘weapons of mass destruction’ will not work again as propaganda. So they claim to be fighting for ‘democracy’ in Syria.



It is a grisly lie. Unless this stupidity is brought to an end, the world may be about to take another major step down the stairway that leads to barbarism.



This business is now so urgent that I beg you to ask your MPs what they propose to do to halt this wilful slither into a war almost nobody wants, and which could easily ruin the civilised world.

The gendarmes on British streets

The great Edwardian short story writer H. H. Munro (‘Saki’) once imagined what Britain would be like after a German invasion. In his fascinating novel When William Came, he portrayed (among other things) a bureaucratic state in which police officers had far more power than old-fashioned British coppers.



Well, it has come true without an invasion. The powers of the police have become oppressive to the innocent, and feeble towards the guilty.

They function like continental gendarmes and examining magistrates.

The nasty procedure known as ‘police bail’ allows an official to ruin the life of someone who hasn’t even been charged, let alone found guilty. It isn’t actually bail at all, but a very severe and distressing punishment without trial.

It is part of a general Europeanisation of our law, which is by a long way the worst effect of our membership of the EU, and which has never been fully understood or debated.

A crowning moment that I'm dreading



Anniversary: Today is sixty years to the day that the Queen was crowned

Sixty years to the day after the last Coronation, I wonder what the next one (which we must all hope is a long way off) will be like?

It is a sad fact that the majestic, wholly British, Protestant Christian ceremony of 1953 cannot possibly be repeated.

The enfeebled Church of England loathes the Shakespearean beauty of its own Prayer Book and Bible, and prefers the flat banality of modern language.



As for Protestant Christianity, that might upset somebody.



No doubt a committee is secretly hard at work making the ceremony more ‘inclusive’ and ‘diverse’, as well as less ‘militaristic’ (that part will be easy as we have so few soldiers left).

If you want a hint of what may be coming our way, take a look at Archbishop Justin Welby’s multicultural knees-up at Canterbury Cathedral in March.



The Archbishop writes the Coronation Service.

If I’m still around that day, I think I may try to spend it abroad.