Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 222

From the EU - on Ukraine

Some of you, familiar with previous postings on the subject,  will be interested in the following reply I received from an EU spokesperson today after my last posting on EU Aid to Civil Society organisations in Ukraine (I had sought a response to that posting): 

'I can confirm, as previously stated, the total amount of EU funding to support civil society projects was €31 million for the period 2004-2013.

Which was the question you originally posed.

 

Naturally, higher figures can be obtained if the total amount of EU assistance for Ukraine is calculated – which I alluded to in my previous email  – if you include in the calculations, EU funding of research and innovation projects, EuropeAid, education, etc in Ukraine.

Which is exactly what happens when figures are retrieved from the Financial Transparency website.

 

And as one of your contributors wrote, for the period 2007-2013 the total figure of EU assistance is just under €435 million.  But this was not all allocated to Ukrainian civil society.'

An Argument about Intervention on Newsnight

On Friday night's 'Newsnight' on BBC2 I discussed the right and wrongs of liberal intervention with one of the last surviving Blairites, John Rentoul of the Independent (now a keen supporter of the Heir to Blair, David Cameron) . 

 

The discussion (preceded by long clips of propaganda videos made at the time by George W. Bush and Anthony Blair) begins at 20 minutes into the programme 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04dqd9c/newsnight-15082014

 

 

A Discussion on Intervention PH vs Douglas Murray

I recorded this discussion on intervention yesterday at the offices of the Spectator in London.

 

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9287832/defeat-isis-yes-we-can/

 

My opponent is Douglas Murray, the chairman is Fraser Nelson, Editor of 'The Spectator

A Discussion of the Death Penalty on BBC Radio 2

Here, beginning at One Hour and  8 minutes, is a discussion about the Death Penalty  I took part in on the Jeremy Vine show (Paddy O’Connell in the chair) . There are some historical preliminaries explaining that the last executions in Britain took place almost exactly 50 years ago. The actual discussion begins  at 1 hour 15 minutes

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04cpg15

 

My opponent is Steve Crawshaw of Amnesty International.

 

The discussion ended before I could say that I have never understood, as a longstanding member of of Amnesty International, why or how an organisation founded to aid peaceful prisoners of conscience could have ended up campaigning for lenient treatment of violent killers in free countries. 

And yes, as a member I have protested against this change. 

 

Mr Erdogan Changes Trams

‘Paulus M’ rightly points out that the Spectator discussion on Iraq never got round to the huge, looming problem of Turkey.  I like to think that I have been ahead of most British journalists in grasping that something momentous is taking place in that fascinating and important country. I have visited it twice on assignment, and have long mocked the ‘Economist’ Magazine for its ridiculous description of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government as ‘mildly Islamist’.

 

Here’s an article I wrote four years ago ( I was amused that some readers disbelieved the description of  Fatih, or doubted that the black-clad women I saw – and who were pictured by the photographer accompanying me - were Turkish. In fact a Turkish colleague had taken me to the district to illustrate the growth of this sort of Islamic expression in Istanbul).

 

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2010/08/the-disturbing-picture-of-growing-repression-at-the-heart-of-eurabia.html

 

 

Even the ‘Economist’ has now dropped this absurd designation of ‘Mildly Islamist’ , though it has never fully acknowledged just how repressive and despotic Mr Erdogan is, and how much more so he is becoming. Funnily enough it was not his absurd show trials and accusations of ludicrous impossible plots (the ‘Ergenekon Affair’),  nor even the imprisonment of journalists and cowing of the media, which turned opinion among naïve Western liberals . It was Mr Erdogan’s repression of a protest against the destruction of a treasured and much-loved park, and his menacing behaviour when challenged, which seemed to alter matters. During subsequent protests, Mr Erdogan’s state, like that of our friends in Kiev,  has 'killed its own people’ but without producing the wave of righteous wrath which this action brings about when done by regimes of which we disapprove.

 

In which case, of course, it isn’t really our reason for disapproving of them. Always hunt for such anomalies. You will then be able to expose alleged reasons for action as what they really are, pretexts. And you will be able to penetrate the disguises in which history advances itself.

 

This has been a particularly strange disguise. When I wrote my article in 2010, Mr Erdogan seemed genuinely keen on good relations with Iran and Syria. Since then, he has veered in a completely different direction, more or less openly helping the attempt to overthrow Syria’s President Assad, having first had a public row with him. This, it seems to me, must put him much closer to Saudi Arabia than to Iran, and the two are pretty much mutually exclusive. Since Turkey is very much a Sunni rather than a Shia Muslim country (though it has an Alevi minority who are close to Shia Islam) , and since Turkey’s days of imperial glory gave it control over what is now Saudi Arabia (not to mention Syria, Iraq, Lebanon Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and a large chunk of south-eastern Europe) , and since Ottoman Istanbul was also the seat of the Sunni Caliphate until Ataturk abolished it in 1924, these are all profoundly sensitive matters.

 

The great paradox of Turkey was that its turn to the West under Ataturk was undemocratic and repressive. So when the EU began courting Turkey, it demanded the dismantling or weakening of Ataturk’s  army-backed Deep State – just the sort of bright idea the ‘Economist’ would support.

 

Alas, the more democratic and free from the army Turkey became, the more Islamic it became. And so democracy has been used ( as it so often is used) as a means to a stronger state, though of a different kind.

 

Mr Erdogan famously said a very important thing back in the mid-1990s when he was just Mayor of Istanbul (to a journalist from the newspaper Milliyet) : ‘Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.’ ( Istanbul, I should note here,  has some very fine trams, though they don’t actually go all that far before you have to get off and find some other less smooth and modern means of travelling).

 

Imagine the fuss that would be made if Vladimir Putin said any such thing. Turkey is just as important as Russia, and indeed many more British people are familiar with it than will ever visit Russia. But Mr Erdogan’s illiberal and cynical outbursts and actions are forgiven because he is (so far) a friend of the liberal globalist movement. Mr Putin’s are not because he is not. Here’s another anomaly, clue to another pretext.

 

Mr Erdogan’s words about the tram  are  even more startling than his verses about Minarets and Bayonets, featured in the article to which I link.

 

And now that he has (almost unnoticed by a one-track British media) become the directly-elected President of Turkey, with new executive powers ( potentially despotic) coming his way, I reckon he is unstoppable. In many ways his switch from premier to president parallels Mr Putin’s. But there is so much less concern.

 

He is already making messianic orations about how a new Turkey has been reborn from the ashes of the old.

 

One of the few accounts of him which really illustrates his menace appeared in a  leader in the ‘Independent ’  . It noted : ‘The polls put him well ahead of his two rivals, a septuagenarian ex­diplomat and a young ethnic Kurd, which is not surprising, as the public has not learnt much about either candidate. Figures for last month showed that while Mr Erdogan received 533 minutes of airtime on state television to make his pitch, his two rivals got three minutes and 45 seconds respectively.

 

‘That farcically lopsided allocation of media coverage is only one of many indications that Turkey is morphing into a Russian-­style "shell" democracy, in which managed plebiscites mask the essentially autocratic character of a system containing few or no checks and balances.’

 

It added : ‘Like Vladimir Putin, Turkey's strongman specialises in the rhetoric of "us and them"; in his case, railing against a strange and unlikely combination of Jews and supporters of the US­ based Sunni cleric Fethullah Gulen, who, he insists, are plotting to destroy him. Lest anyone dismiss this as hot air, it should be noted that Mr Erdogan has made good use of these alleged conspiracies to ram through key changes, purging institutions of his opponents, starting with the army and police. When he began putting generals on trial, Western governments were inclined to applaud, seeing the Turkish armed forces as over-­fond of politics and their own privileges. But the purges have continued to the point where the only serious resistance to Mr Erdogan's whims now comes from the judges, who in April bravely struck down his attempt to ban the use of social networks.

 

‘This is where Turkey's foreign friends should really start to worry, because if - or rather when - he becomes head of state, Mr Erdogan will be able to nominate judges and sap the Supreme Court's ability to oppose him. It gets worse, because Mr Erdogan also plans to transform the hitherto largely ceremonial presidency into the beating heart of government, with the power to appoint ministers and dissolve parliament.’

 

Isabel Hunter, writing in the ‘Independent on Sunday’, gave a flavour of the man which confirms much of what Turks have told me (in many cases in private conversations which they did not wish to have quoted) :

 

‘During the election campaign, state media has been accused of favouring Mr Erdogan. Yesterday, the editor of a leading Turkish newspaper resigned after Mr Erdogan criticised the news coverage of the paper's owner, Dogan Media Group.

 

‘In a separate incident last week, Mr Erdogan lashed out at correspondent Amberin Zaman, calling her a "shameless militant woman disguised under the name of a journalist". She was accused of insulting Islam and Muslims and told she should "know her place". Yesterday another prominent Turkish journalist, Mehmet Baransu, was detained, reportedly as part of a crackdown on dissenting journalism.’

 

If Vladimir Putin behaved in this fashion, it would not be on page 27.

 

I must confess to being puzzled by Mr Erdogan’s foreign-policy trajectory - swerving towards Teheran and then towards Riyadh, and incidentally crashing into Israel (once  a Turkish ally)  on the way - just as I am puzzled by his very successful moves towards integrating the country’s Kurds (previously a harried minority) into Turkey as a whole.  Does he hope to integrate them fully, or is he ready to contemplate a nominally independent Kurdistan under some sort of Turkish ‘protection’? I have no idea. It is a thing to watch, and Mr Erdogan is a man to watch. He’s nearly reached the end of his tram ride, as far as I can see. I wonder what sort of vehicle he will use for the rest of his journey?

Parliament did not vote on war on 3rd August 1914

The Wiki Man continues to dispute clear facts about the British declaration of war on Germany in 1914, available to any interested party, claiming that they are matters of opinion.He even suggests that (despite it being well known to everyone interested that it wasn't so) that the Commons did vote on our entry into war. They did not.  I understand that this *seems* incredible to anyone used to the modern age, and to anyone who thinks that our entry to war was an open and honest process. But it is by grasping that these unbelievable things actually happened (or did not happen) that we understand that the entry into war was not open or honest. There was no obligation to Belgium. Parliament had no opportunity to vote on the war until after it had irrevocably begun. One of our main allies in this supposed war for democracy and the rights of small nations was an aggressive despotism, Russia (which had in recent years forced its will on both Finland and Persia, no less despicably than Germany forced her will on Belgium).  

 

 

It is easy to check about the non-vote on House of Commons Historic Hansard

here

 

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1914/aug/03/statement-by-sir-edward-grey

Divisions are aways recorded with lists of who voted Aye or Nay. There is clearly no division. In fact it is clear from the final moments of the debate that Stanley Wilson and Mr Morrell (Philip, I believe, husband of Ottoline) are asking for a Vote and Mr Asquith is saying 'not today'. As the Speaker makes clear, no motion is before the House, so there is nothing on which to vote.

Later that evening there was an Adjournment Debate, more or less a safety valve, again without a chance to vote. It ended thus ' It being a Quarter-past Eight of the clock, and there being Private Business set down by direction of the Chairman of Ways and Means under Standing Order No. 8, further proceeding was postponed without Question put.'

 

The House then went on to discuss the London County Council. I am not making this up.

 

I also need to reiterate the clear record (already set out in '1914 Revisited -Part 1') , in Asquith's message to the King, recorded in a reliable bigraphy of Asquith,  that the Cabinet concluded that the 1839 Treaty did not place  a legal obligation on this country to go to war in the event of an invasion of Belgium. I will reproduce the passage,  still apparently unread by the Wiki Man, which makes this abundantly, unequivocally clear.If the Wiki Man would only read it, instead of assuming, as his default poition,  that I must be wrong because my information contradicts his cherished view, or that I am stating an opinion as fact ( as he has also done about the Commons non-vote), he would save me and him a lot of trouble:

 

'The cabinet resolved that ‘the matter, if it arises, will be rather one of policy than of legal obligation’ (Asquith, writing to the King, July 1914, quoted in Spender ‘Life of Asquith’, Volume II page 81).

Arguments for Doing Nothing

I have selected two critical comments on the Iraq intervention matter.

 

The first, from ‘Nicholas’

 

‘No matter how long or detailed Peter Hitchens's analysis of intervention is, in my gut I know he is wrong. Peter seems more concerned to punish the wrongs of the past, "PENANCE FOR WARMONGERS" than preventing wrongs being perpetrated by IS (ISIS). It seems to me that little consideration has been given to the fact that earlier intervention set out for regime change. Intervention now is at the urging of the legitimate governments of Iraq.’

 

And the second from ‘Caroline’

 

I was for the Iraq war and was living in the US at the time. I remember understanding that the Twin Towers getting hit by the planes and the targeting of the Pentagon and White House was a clear declaration of war. What action should the US have taken? No one from Uk gives me a clear answer. So many people I know in UK were against in part because of their pre existing anti Americanism. When living in the US being half American and half English I could not understand the march in London. I've tried to find that answer in your past blog pieces . Can you please point me to the one that answers that question directly? I remember reading an article by Rod Liddle in the Spectator magazine explaining that Christians were the most persecuted group in the world explained by an atheist. I've felt frustrated for years that you can't tell this to people easily in post Christian London/ England where I am back living for the past ten years. I've know this fact and read about it and prayed and donate to Aid to the Church in need. What else can I do? But watching what's happening in the media.. Are you really saying to me that I should take the view that we in the west should do nothing? Aren't I supposed to defend the persecuted Christians? And do you really think that George Bush should also wear a red mark next to him permanently? You think he is as bad as all the lefties who hate his guts and he was no 1 hate figure which was so tedious. Am I being morally lazy when I want to help them? But you are saying it was all our fault. We caused this. And if that's true, then you say that there is no reason to help militarily now? I'm so upset about this Mr Hitchens but you say it's because I'm getting whipped by the media. But I don't think I am in the case. Perhaps I care more about this group of people, the Christians than I do others. I can't back up why but despite your thorough and impressive journalistic investigations and seemingly consistent logic you have not persuaded me and rather lost me on this one. I'm disappointed in your reaction I guess. Do you ever find situations where you find yourself saying something must be done Mr Hitchens? I know this an emotive commentary and so intellectually weak perhaps but there you have it.’

 

I must of necessity be brief here (to the relief of some readers, no doubt) . To Nicholas I say only that thinking with your viscera is a poor way to make policy, and often leads to … well, to people dying, and their viscera lying scattered about the landscape. He cannot *know* anything in his gut, or whatever he is using to think. He can feel it, but that’s a purely subjective point of no value in a dispute. I, by contrast, can point  to a succession of interventions, all supposedly benevolent or urgent, whose consequences have been unexpected and bad. I think people should understand (which few, alas, do, thanks to the public relations skills of the world’s air forces) that air power really isn’t much use by itself, except to destroy.  It cannot hold ground. It cannot make a foundation for a government. Military power is bad at these things too, but it can temporarily appear to be successful, hence the frequent delusion that interventions ahve worked, dispelled by later events when tickle-minded media have ceased to watch. 

 

Allied with the anti-Gadaffi militias, air power did in fact overthrow Gadaffi in Libya,  because it destroyed the government’s only military advantage over the rebels. But it was not able to turn the rebellion into a new government, or to discipline or unite the militias, or get them to do what we wanted them to do. They were glad of our help,. And may have thanked us formally for it, but they had no reason to show any practical gratitude, for we were only ever flying overhead.

 

Had we used air power against President Assad in Syria, we would without doubt have propelled ISIS into power in Damascus, they being by far the best-armed, best-led and best-organised of the anti-Assad forces. The beaches of Syria would be crammed with refugees, many of them Christian, Alawi or Shia, some of them perhaps even Yazidi,  begging for us to intervene to help them . But we would just have intervened in a way which had ruined their lives.  How does that make sense?

 

Any *effective* intervention now will require actual men, lots of them, airlifted in, with all the support that requires. Once they are there, we will have to ensure their safety by reinforcing them.  Any politicians ( a la John Reid in Afghanistan) will swiftly think of new tasks for them which will no doubt be said to be risk-free. Before you know where you are, it will be a full-scale mission which nobody dares to withdraw (withdrawal itself being one of the most difficult military tasks there is) .

I suspect we will end up either becoming the Kurdistan Army (as we are not prepared to admit that Kurdistan is a state, and won’t therefore arm it with advanced weapons ourselves) or attempt the impossible, namely, holding together Iraq after it has already split into three hostile parts, Kurdish, Shia and Sunni. The permutations of unwanted and unexpected consequences, flowing from such actions, are endless. We’ll see.

 

Caroline, by contrast does not seem to think there is ever a good reason for doing nothing. I disagree strongly .

 

When the things that you *can* do are bad, pointless, dangerous or plain stupid, doing nothing is a sound option. Only politicians and children have not yet learned this simple piece of wisdom.

 

But she has no argument for doing anything. Though in her original post she said : ‘I was for the Iraq war and was living in the US at the time. I remember understanding that the Twin Towers getting hit by the planes and the targeting of the Pentagon and White House was a clear declaration of war. What action should the US have taken? ‘

 

 

She has later asserted : ‘I didn't and I don't link Saddam with 9/11.’, but I simply don’t think that’s true. The opening of her post clearly makes such a link, or at least implies it so heavily that no sentient reader could fail to see that she regarded the two as linked. Yet there was and is no link. Those who wish to know which country is most strongly linked with September 11th 2001 by knowledgeable people should read  ‘The Eleventh Day’ by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, or the new book by Patrick Cockburn ’The Return of Jihad’.  Hint, it’s not Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Kuwait, Bahrain or Afghanistan.

 

She must know by now that the evidence against Saddam was cooked up and wrong. Yet she admits to having been influenced by it. Shouldn’t any sensible person learn from that experience not to be so easily swayed in future? Doing nothing would have been far, far better than the 'something' we did in 2003. 

'Something Must be Done!'...'This is Something'...'OK, we'll do that'

Something mustn’t be done. Or must it?  I resigned myself to the usual gasps of horror, incomprehension and dismay at my callousness,  when I wrote on Sunday that I was against intervention in Iraq. But I hope that eventually the good sense of my position will become clear.

 

From a purely British perspective, the question is far simpler because I doubt very much if there is anything Britain can actually do, apart from dropping food and water from cargo planes and hoping a) that it doesn’t fall on top of the people we want to help b) that it survives the impact and c) that the intended recipients, rather than their persecutors, actually find it.  But that’s not intervention. Intervention means bombs and troops.

 

As for them,  few people (especially loyalist Tories wilfully unaware of the true nature of David Cameron) grasp just how much our armed forces have been devastated in the last five years. I am genuinely unsure how we would be able to mount any significant military intervention in Iraq now, except as passengers on American technology.

 

 

THE MORAL DISHONESTY OF LIBERAL INTERVENTION

But from a general perspective there are several reasons to hold back.

 

The first is that this sort of thing is profoundly morally dishonest.  We favour intervention because it makes us feel good, not because we really wish to do good. Generally we are clueless about the countries we say we are going to help, the history, geography and conditions there. And generally we want someone else to do the things that will make us feel good. I would respect any person who volunteered either for dangerous military service or to go and do relief work, or who offered to open his home to refugees for years to come. But just *being in favour* of other people doing something is morally vacuous, or worse.

 

 

 

We believe transparently false claims, such as that bombs can be dropped accurately.

 

We imagine that we can influence events now with force, but are not prepared to remain permanently,

In which case the force we defeated is quite likely to reassert itself.

 

We imagine that it is as easy to get troops into (and out of ) a country as it is to insert a TV crew.

 

 

 

If we examined our actions as a country, we would admit that we had done much (in the name of goodness) to bring about the disaster we now seek to stop by yet more intervention.

 

 

ADMIT YOUR PAST MISTAKES BEFORE MAKING ANY NEW ONES

But until we admit our past mistakes, how can we possibly be fit to take new actions which are equally likely to have unintended consequences? Oh, but surely everyone now admits the Iraq invasion was wrong. Well, in a way, they do. But only symbolically. Politicians and their media allies who cheered for the war, and in some cases helped propagate the lies that started it, may have mumbled some admissions of error. But they are still prominent in public life, and in many cases are still listened to seriously.

 

PENANCE FOR WARMONGERS

 

 

In my view, every politician and columnist who backed the Iraq war should have that fact displayed, in large red letters, next to everything they write, should be forced to admit it, before they make any policy statement or call for any actions. If they speak in public, especially for a fee, a large red notice should be displayed on the podium reminding the audience that this person supported the Iraq war.  Likewise, the same label should be prominently displayed on screen whenever they speak or are interviewed on TV, and should be mentioned at the beginning and the end of every appearance they make on radio.  I’d like to see a bit of penance, too, perhaps some unpaid lavatory cleaning at Headley Court, and other places where the terribly injured soldiers from their war try to recover.

 

These labels can be removed, and these penances relaxed,  as soon as all the people, who are dead because of the policy they espoused,  are no longer dead. And as soon as all the people maimed as a result, are no longer maimed. But until then, I really think the supporters of the war ought to suffer a bit. Alternatively, they could just drop out of public life, and then we could forget all about them.

 

IF YOU REALLY CARE ABOUT PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS, WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?

 

Violent persecution of Christians by Islamist fanatics has been under way in Iraq pretty much since we and the Americans invaded that country in 2003.  It was so bad that about half the country’s Christians fled to Syria to escape persecution, including murder and kidnap, and the bombing of churches.  Nobody lifted a finger to stop this, any more than anyone in the ‘West’ even knows about the endless anti-Christian discrimination in the territories of ‘Free Palestine’ (as they humorously call it on the placards), or the rapidly worsening position of Christians in Egypt.  Indeed, we made it much worse by turning Syria into a hellhole too, in our pursuit of ‘democracy’ there.

 

Christians in Iraq were *comparatively* safe and untroubled as long as Saddam remained in power. Until the invasion, the secular tyranny of Saddam (itself the inheritor of our own imperial possession of Iraq) had held such things in check not out of kindness but simply because it suited Saddam’s policy.

Christians in Syria were among the safest in the Middle East.

 

 

 

ODD THAT OPPONENTS OF ISLAMISM WERE SO KEEN TO DESTROY THE SECULAR STATES THAT CONTAINED IT

 

 

From the point of view of those who now get so het up about Islamic fanaticism, Saddam’s Iraq was a demi-paradise. Women went unveiled, the influence of religion over public life was kept to a minimum, Shia-Sunni friction was slight. Odd then that the same critics of ‘Islamo-fascism’ were almost all keen supporters of the overthrown of Saddam by illegal armed force in 2003. You would have to ask them how they got into this swamp of contradictions, though the irrational hysteria of the intellectuals, which swept the West after September 11th 2001, has a lot to answer for.

 

‘Something must be done!’, they shouted.

 

‘This is something!’ cried the people who had long wanted to attack Iraq.

 

‘Oh, well, great, we will do that, then’, said the ‘Something must be done!’ people, as they usually do. And disaster followed, as it usually does.

 

Now, having made such a terrible mess, you might have thought we would have learned that there is usually something worse than an Arab tyrant.

 

But a few years ago the fashion began to grow, in London, Paris and Washington, for demanding the overthrow of the Syrian government of Bashir el-Assad. All kinds of diplomats and weighty journalists discovered that the Assad government was not very nice . These tended to be the same people who have for years been failing to notice that Turkey’s new President (and let’s see how that turns out ) Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is not very nice, and even praising him despite his increasingly repressive and militantly Islamist government. Mr Erdogan, as it happens , would then enormously assist the forces whose growth and strength led to the formation of ISIS.

 

 

 

I have always assumed this new sensitivity about Syria really originated in Saudi Arabia (that paradise of the rule of law, free speech and conscience, democracy etc), which loathes Syria because the Assads are Alawis. I can never fathom this religious position in detail,  but Alawis are certainly closer to Shia Islam than they are to the puritan version of Sunni Islam espoused by Riyadh.  And in any case, they are the allies of Shia Iran, the hated foe of Saudi Arabia in the real contest in the Middle East - between Riyadh and Teheran, which is at the heart of almost everything that happens there.

 

Anyway, we then began supporting ‘pro-democracy activists’ in Syria, a policy which I was one of the few people in this country to oppose, mainly because I wasn’t sure that ‘pro-democracy’ was an accurate description of these gentlemen , and because I *specifically* feared for the future of Syria’s Christians (I have emphasized below the passage in which I warned of this more than two years ago).I redoubled my opposition after I was contacted by British people living in Syria who warned me that many of them were foreign fighters, of a distinctly Islamist type. 

 

I first wrote about this here at length on 12th February 2012

 

‘THE BBC is working hard to get us to go to war in Syria. Its incessant coverage is - as it was in Libya and Egypt - mostly dim, partial and unquestioning. This should cease.

 

If there is a rebellion against a dictatorship, then it must, as far as the BBC is concerned, be noble. If a government defends itself against rebellion, it must, according to the BBC, be wrong.

 

Great slabs of history tell us that this is not necessarily so. In this case, I tremble for the fate of Syria's Arab Christians if the Assad regime falls.

 

Bad is often replaced by worse. This is already happening in Egypt and Libya, though the BBC seldom troubles to record the aftermath of the 'Arab Spring' it welcomed so simple-mindedly.

 

Perhaps the Corporation is trying to please our Foreign Secretary, William Hague, an increasingly pathetic figure who seems to have mistaken military intervention in foreign countries for conservatism. Someone should also ask him why he gets so outraged about Syria, and was not outraged by equally bloody repression in Bahrain.

 

It seems that, having been refused UN permission to destabilise Damascus under the blue flag, we are now looking at running guns to the rebels. What British interest is served by this dangerous policy?

 

The revolt in Syria would long ago have faded away had it not been for the noisy support of Washington and London. Much of the bloodshed and destruction is, I believe, the responsibility of the 'West', which has falsely encouraged naive people to believe that Nato helicopters and bombers are just over the horizon.’

 

 

Then, I wrote on 9th June 2012:

 

‘The truth seeps out of Syria

 

I have been contacted by a group of Western women who live in Syria and who believe that most of what the world is being told about that country is false.

 

As far as I can discover, they are not stooges of what they agree to be a rather nasty government in Damascus, but exactly what they say they are: normal human beings caught up in a political tornado. For obvious reasons, I have promised to protect their identities.

 

I urge you to read what follows, because it is important, because our emotional interventions in other countries never do any good, and because it is vital that people resist attempts to drag us into Syria, too, by feeding us one-sided atrocity propaganda.

 

On the 11th June that year I then wrote this:

 

‘A scoffing contributor splutters that it is surely absurd that anyone in Syria would contact *me* of all people, about problems with the coverage of the present crisis.

 

Well, I can say that some of my correspondents did in fact contact more ‘mainstream’ media outlets about what they saw as severe bias, and were either ignored or rebuffed. They came to me because they had read online what I had written, and thought (rightly) that I would be more sympathetic.

 

The bias of the media towards a crude good versus bad interpretation of Syria is not the result of a particular political view or direct interest. Far from it. Most of those involved would have trouble finding Syria on a map, and know nothing of its history.

 

But, as I explained in my book ‘The Cameron Delusion’, media outlets are terribly conformist, and tend to follow a line, and all stories which do not fit that line are ignored are discarded, or buried in obscure corners.

 

The ‘Arab Spring’ is a terribly simple and easy formula for newsdesks and presenters, though the problem is increasingly to define the rebels. Where the rebels were of a type we disapproved of (in Iraq, after the Anglo-American invasion), they were ‘insurgents’. Had they been approved of, they would have been the ‘resistance’. Likewise, in Syria, ‘our side’ must not be called ‘rebels’ or ‘revolutionaries’. They are called ‘activists’, a word so meaningless that if demands analysis. What is it supposed to suggest? Some sort of protestor in a good cause, perhaps in the poorer part of Chicago or Glasgow, raising important issues with the authorities?

 

It certainly does not bring to mind the idea of a rather well-organised and (I believe) quite well-armed faction, equipped by foreign powers and dominated by Islamist fanatics of the type we have for the past ten years been taught to fear and loathe.

 

This mindset is also capable of believing almost anything about the wickedness of the regime . Now, it is a nasty regime, and I make no doubt about that. But we have a difficulty with all such post-colonial regimes, because they draw their legitimacy from us. Even more than in Libya, where the King we left behind was overthrown by Gadaffi and his fellow-officers, and we later recognised that regime, Syria is a direct inheritor of the defunct French Empire. The only previous legitimate authority there was the Ottoman Empire( complainers about the legitimacy of Israel have a similar problem) . If we are going to classify this hitherto recognised state as a ‘regime’ worthy of overthrow, what is the consistent basis on which we decide which states are acceptable and which are not?

 

For years western diplomacy and media ignored the wrongs of the Assads ( I used to have a virtual monopoly, among British journalists of even knowing about the 1982 massacre in [Hama], because in those days the media only cared about Arab deaths if they had been caused by Israel. Arabs killed by other Arabs were of no interest, apparently). It is much the same as the current blank ignorance about the Caucasus and Central Asia, where Hillary Clinton consorts with all kinds of dubious figures and nobody cares, or thinks it odd in the light of her burning conscience about Syria. The day will come when we learn a lot more about this crucial, oil-and-gas-filled region (I have already taken the trouble to go there and find out).

 

Now, as in the Houla massacre, the Assad government is guilty even if the evidence against it is confused on any terms. Take the initial reporting of the Houla massacre ( I have no doubt, by the way, that there was such a massacre, though as far as I know it remains to be properly established who was massacred by whom). We were , at the beginning, shown horrible pictures of murdered children, plainly killed at close quarters. At the same time, we were told that the Syrian army had caused the massacre with shellfire. So anxious were those involved to blame Damascus directly that nobody seemed to see the rather obvious difficulty, that shell fire would not have, could not have, caused the sorts of injuries in the photographs. Whatever had taken place, the reports of it lacked basic professional scepticism.

 

A UN spokesman’s unwillingness to attribute responsibility to anyone at that stage was mentioned, but over-ridden, or bypassed in reports Only later was a new culprit, an Alawite militia, named (more credibly) as being responsible. It may well have been the fault of Assad, but that *had not been established* . A rush to judgement is always unwise. For some reason the British government is anxious to take the Saudi and Turkish side (the militant Salafi and Sunni side) in this complex conflict. Its enthusiasm should surely be open to question. William Hague, the foreign Secretary, did at least mention the possibility that the ‘activists’ may have been responsible for bad things in the Commons yesterday, but he is still an enthusiast for a process which is headed rapidly towards intervention, and which accords Damascus absolutely no right to defend itself from attack.

 

That is, in effect, a cancellation of Syria’s national sovereignty. What forces do we have, able to replace Syrian national sovereignty with a stable and peaceful government of that territory, a complicated and dangerously unstable balance of forces? Our supposedly benevolent interventions have already displaced untold numbers of Christians in Iraq, and caused who-knows-what terrors and miseries in ‘liberated’ Libya. Why are we so sure we will do any better this time?’

 

This sort of propaganda has a price. I hope you have noticed the continuing tally of deaths of selfless British soldiers in Afghanistan, in a cause long ago abandoned.

 

And I hope you have also noticed that Libya, 'rescued' by us a few months ago, is now a failed state whose main international airport was recently taken over by gangsters, and where unjustly arrested prisoners are starved and tortured in secret dungeons.

 

One of my informants from Syria writes of the 'activists' we hear so much about: 'These protesters are not peaceful, flower-carrying people wanting freedom. No, they are weapon-toting killers who snipe, who ambush, who fire upon the army with the sole purpose of inciting riot and mayhem.'

 

She blames Salafis, ultra-puritan Muslims influenced by Saudi teachings, who loathe and threaten Syria's minorities of Alawites and Christians. She says many of the 'activists' are foreigners, a view shared by all my informants. Many of the 'activists' are armed.

 

Armed intervention is in fact well under way, uncondemned by the UN, which readily attacks the Syrian government for defending itself. Another writes: 'I have seen reports of opposition rallies which showed pictures of pro-government rallies, and reports purporting to be from the north Syrian countryside, where it has been an incredibly wet year, which appear to have been taken in some desert. The news being accepted as truth by BBC World News is so biased these days that I no longer believe what they say about anything any more, after more than 60 years of crediting them with the truth.'

 

She says she has spoken to a man who took part in a march at Hama last summer. He 'was worried for his safety, but was given a red rose to carry and assured the whole thing would be calm and orderly, and seeing many other men from the mosque joining in with their small sons, he agreed. They walked for a very few minutes, the unarmed police watching them from the wayside, then a man next to him pulled out a gun and shot the nearest policeman dead.'

 

A riot followed, reported by foreign TV stations as a police attack on peaceful marchers.

 

I expect to have more to say on this in weeks to come.’

 

I might add that , round about the same time, once again as an isolated, much-scorned and attacked anti-interventionist in a country besotted with the idea that intervention was good, I wrote about the Libya adventure in these terms : 

 

‘DAVID CAMERON'S war of personal vanity still rages on, its aim and its end unknown. Our ludicrous Libyan allies - who may in fact be our enemies - fight each other as we protect their so-called army from Colonel Gaddafi. If we don't send weapons and troops to help them, they have no hope of winning. Will we? Or will we, in desperation, wink at an assassination of the Colonel, an action that will take us close to his moral level? Or will we, by then, be too busy bombing our way to the Big Society in Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Iran, Zimbabwe, China and anywhere else where government doesn't reach our leader's alleged high ethical standards? Nobody knows. Ministers, apparently with no idea of the forces they have unleashed, drawl that it's as long as a piece of string.

Ho ho. Or maybe it's as long as the rope needed to hang themselves. Yet the House of Commons endorses this leap in the dark with a vote so overwhelming that you wonder if they put something in the water, or whatever it is they drink. What are all these costly people for? Last year we worried about their expenses. This year we should be worried about their salaries. We hired them to question and watch the Government, not to do what the Prime Minister tells them. Aren't we still recovering from the gullibility of MPs (and the media) over Saddam Hussein? Do we learn nothing from experience? Are too many of us, and them, just too thick to be in charge of a small nuclear power? It seems so.

MPs should be reminded they are not the employees of Downing Street, but of us. I am quite sure that a huge number of British people do not want this war, and for good reasons. It is not in our national interests. We can't even protect old ladies from rapists in our own country, and perhaps we should sort that out before reforming Africa.

They correctly think it is not our affair. After being told that we can't even afford public libraries, they have to watch Liam Fox burning great mounds of banknotes (provided by us) as he rains costly munitions on Tripoli.

THEY are baffled to see the remains of our naval power towed surreptitiously to a Turkish scrapyard, because we allegedly cannot afford it. And meanwhile, an obscure public relations man who has never fought in a war poses as the saviour of Benghazi.

Where was the British people's voice in the Commons on Monday? I don't care much what the UN, that rabble of torturers and tyrants, thinks. I would cheerfully see it abolished.

I have no idea why we still need Nato 20 years after the threat it was formed to face vanished for ever. The fact that it has endorsed Mr Cameron's adventure doesn't comfort me.

What really troubles me is that Parliament wasn't asked its opinion until after the missiles were launched. It was treated, contemptuously, like a neutered chihuahua, a pitiful yapping thing to be pushed about by the Premier's polished toecap, and patted as long as it fawned. And if it doesn't now revolt against this treatment, then that is what it will have proved itself to be.

I believe that the Government knew by Friday, March 18 that it was more or less certain it would begin military action on the evening of Saturday, March 19. There was time to call a special session of the Commons.

And there was a precedent - the Falklands. The first motion before the House on Monday should have been a censure of the Government for launching a war of choice without seeking Parliamentary approval.

Yet, while the whole engine of British diplomacy was devoted to getting Mr Cameron's war past the UN, Nato and (of course) our ultimate rulers in the EU, Westminster was forgotten.

And so were we.

This is wrong. Those involved should not get away with it. Later on, I shall say I told you so. Just now, I'm telling you so.’

 

And now I can say ‘I told you so’. This prophecy business is, in fact, startlingly easy. You just have to make the tiniest effort to find out what is really going on. And you can then be right where all the intellectuals and statesmen are wrong. The problem is in getting anyone to pay attention when it is still possible to change the outcome.

 

At the time, I faced incredulity and derision from almost everyone I knew, that I should be taking these positions.

 

Various examples of ‘successful’ interventions have been put forward by those who are actually still trying to defend the one in Iraq. Among these are the Falklands (not an intervention in a sovereign state, but a recovery of sovereign territory lawlessly invaded) Kuwait (as in the Falklands) , Bosnia, not over yet, Kosovo, not over yet, and Sierra Leone, not over yet. Remember, when being told how wonderful these interventions are that the same people, until about 18 months ago, were still vigorously defending the Al Maliki government (which everybody know agrees is a corrupt, sectarian, repressive disaster)  in Baghdad as a triumph of democracy.

 

I advise all enthusiasts for intervention to see that clever film ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’ , itself about an intervention that later backfired on its progenitors in the most spectacular and unexpected way. Do we really have the knowledge to play God in this way? And if we don't, dare we act? 

 

Particularly to the point is the story about the Zen Master towards the end of the film, which you can watch here (profanity warning). I think the sound of the aeroplane flying overhead may be meant to prefigure September 11th.   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2L1-TgfKb4

 

‘We’ll see’, said the Zen master.

An Interview with Australian Radio, on the Monarch and Religion

I genuinely cannot remember if I posted this interview about the monarchy and religion at the time it was broadcast, in 2012. If so, here it is again. If not, here it is:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43LOR15_1q0

 

 

 

My friend is in a secret prison. His ‘crime’? Loving his country

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

A good friend of mine has vanished into an Iranian prison. I am writing this in the hope that it will help to free him.

Some of you may recall a report I wrote in this newspaper in 2007, about what Iran is really like, about its people’s great friendliness towards us, about the astonishing amount of freedom of thought and speech that exists there despite the forbidding regime.

What an irony it is that I could not have begun to write this without the help of Jason Rezaian, an Iranian citizen with an American mother and a Persian father. For it is he who is now in a cell somewhere in Tehran.

Jason showed me the real Iran, took me inside homes and families, introduced me to normal, wise people of all opinions.

He plainly loves his father’s country, its ancient and lovely culture and faith. I doubt if any single journey has ever educated, informed and delighted me as much as that one did, which is saying something.

Jason’s pride in Iran’s history and beauty was unmistakable. Ever since then, I have done what I could to correct the silly prejudices which far too many Westerners have towards that fascinating country.

 

See, for example:

 

 http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2007/04/during_my_ten_d.html

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2007/04/peter_hitchens_.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-449880/Iran-A-nation-nose-jobs-nuclear-war.html

 

Jason went on to become the Washington Post’s correspondent in Tehran. He married an Iranian, Yeganeh Salehi, also a journalist.

He continued to work on explaining Iran to the outside world with intelligence and knowledge, worth more than any number of ambassadors. And then, on July 22, plainclothes police pushed into his Tehran flat and took both of them away. Nobody has heard from them since, except for a brief phone call from his wife to her parents.

Jason is a transparently good man, working openly in the clear air of day (and I might add a very good companion), who loves his country and seeks only to tell the truth about it, where it will do most good.

I fear he has been caught up in some Persian intrigue, part of the endless contest between Iran’s political leadership and its deep state.

Whatever the reason, he and his wife should be released. I hope very much they will be soon.

If any of my readers wish to join me in this plea, they might wish to write and say so, politely and courteously, to His Excellency Hassan Rouhani, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, c/o Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 16 Prince’s Gate, London SW7 1PT.

Theatre is no place to play politics

Why do London Lefties get so excited about David Hare’s 1995 play Skylight, which sold out within seconds of being revived in one of the capital’s theatres.

I will tell you. It is because of a silly Leftist speech (which in my view rather spoils a good drama) shouted at a businessman – played by Bill Nighy – by a self-righteous teacher (Carey Mulligan).

It takes the Lefties back to the dear dead days when they still believed New Labour would save the country. Ha ha.

'Safe' cannabis doesn't exist, Mr Clegg

The Sun newspaper, which has in the past been a keen cheerleader and bootlicker for the Blair creature, the Iraq and Afghan Wars and for David Cameron, now wants a ‘rethink’ on drug laws. Well, you can’t rethink till you’ve thought in the first place.

Its pretext for this irresponsible tripe is an interview with Nick Clegg, in which he claims we’re too tough on drug possession. The courts, he drivels, are ‘imprisoning 1,000 users a year who have not committed a crime other than possession’.

Not committed a crime other than possession? Really? Can he find half a dozen people of whom this is true, let alone 1,000? No previous convictions? No suspended sentences? No other offences? Just innocent teenagers who have never even ridden a bike without lights?

Really?

It’s incredibly difficult to get jailed for drug possession. Most cannabis users are let off without even being cautioned.

As for the others, more people (10,682) were cautioned in 2013 for possessing a Class A drug (heroin, cocaine) than were prosecuted (10,049). Of the 9,554 found guilty, just 545 went to prison for an average term of about 16 weeks. Most (6,802) got soppy ‘community sentences’, suspended sentences, or fines averaging £142. Another 1,424 were discharged. The story with classes B and C is much the same, except that the fines are even lower and the jail terms even briefer.

The idea that this regime is too tough, and needs to be softened, could only find a home in the head of someone as dim as Nick Clegg. I do hope that next May the voters of Sheffieldwill chuck him out of Parliament. 

They may remember that their fellow citizen Alan Greaves, a kindly church organist, was beaten to death on his way home from church there at Christmas 2012, by two young men who laughed as they ran from his bleeding body, and were later found to be cannabis smokers. Soft, safe, nice cannabis, eh? 

Mr Clegg wants to make it even easier to get. Let’s put him back on the streets, where he can meet the people who smoke it.

 

 

*********

 

No, let’s not intervene again in Iraq. This isn’t because I don’t grieve for the people now facing the horrors of Islamic State rule. It’s because intervention won’t save them.

 

 

 

If there is one thing we should have learned from our intervening in the past 35 years, it is that it almost always makes things much, much worse than they would otherwise have been.

 

 

 

**********

 

 

 

Since we’ve largely given up punishing criminals, our jails are warehouses and fines go unpaid for years, have the authorities considered the Bernie Ecclestone solution?

 

 

 

Mr Ecclestone, accused but certainly not convicted of bribing a banker, was able to get the trial abandoned by paying a large wad of cash to the German government.

 

 

 

Presumably he actually had to show the colour of his money before the deal was done. So how about applying the same rule here. On arrest, you can simply buy your way out of the charges.

 

 

 

Of course, lots of guilty people will get away without being punished, but they do already, so it’s no more cynical than the existing arrangement, and at least it would help pay off George Osborne’s enormous, swelling deficit.

 

 

 

And there’d no longer be any reason to pretend that crime was going down, since more crime would mean more revenue.

 

 

 

********

 

 

 

Boris Johnson is standing for Parliament because he knows that the Tories can’t win the general election. He hates the Commons and did badly there last time. But if he isn’t an MP he can’t stand for the leadership which a beaten David Cameron will have vacated. Simple.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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