What We do to Syria May One Day Be Done to Us

 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.  

 

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

 

In a matter of months, the country is
plunged into a civil 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, which are now
sinks of violence and chaos – Iraq, Libya,

 

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.

 

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 judgement, 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, his 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 high explosives in 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 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.

 

**********

Sixty years to the day after the last
Coronation what will the next one (which we must all hope is a long way off) 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 last March. The Archbishop writes the Coronation
Service. If I’m still around that day, I think I may try to spend it abroad.