View across the Outer Harbour of Stornoway

Tuesday 24 November 2015

NaBloPoMo - day #24

Politics is a fickle game. Back in 2012, there was a move for the Royal Air Force to become involved in a bombing campaign in Syria. The object was to oust dictator Assad from power. He was such a horrible man, using chemical weapons and barrel bombs against his own people, just because they did not agree with his politics. How things change. Here we are in November 2015, and there is a bombing campaign going on against a terrorist organisation that calls itself Islamic State, and all of a sudden Mr Assad is the good guy that is supposed to help us suppress IS. Isn't it weird though that the one constant in this whole game has been a certain chap by the name of Vladimir Putin, who, at last check, was president of Russia. He opposed the bombing of Assad in 2012, and is now bombing everybody opposed to Assad - including IS. For international consumption, he stresses the bombing of IS, and certainly for internal consumption as well, after a Russian airliner was brought down by IS-affiliated terrorists in the Sinai, Egypt. We can expect the RAF to become involved in the bombing campaign, and this should be seen as being in support of Assad. Nobody, apart from Syria's army and the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, are in position to take on IS on the ground. And on the ground is where they will be beaten in the end. Meanwhile, where is that coward who shed his suicide vest in Paris, rather than using it to blow himself up on November 13th? Anybody, in Brussels particularly?

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