Comments on: Peter Tatchell: Aleppo is today’s Guernica. Where is Labour? https://leftfootforward.org/2016/12/peter-tatchell-aleppo-is-todays-guernica-where-is-labour/ Left Foot Forward is the home for UK progressives. We provide evidence-based analysis on British politics, news and policy. Tue, 13 Dec 2016 10:38:57 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.5 By: Michael WALKER https://leftfootforward.org/2016/12/peter-tatchell-aleppo-is-todays-guernica-where-is-labour/#comment-851897 Tue, 13 Dec 2016 10:38:57 +0000 https://leftfootforward.org/?p=117387#comment-851897 Guernica – a small city bombed with 800 dead.We killed several times that a night in raids in WW2 and 1,000 times as many with one atom bomb in Japan. It may resonate with those who are fond of political history but Guernica is not of any historical significance.

Loss of life is inevitable in war. Whatever anyone may say, it has always been military policy to use civilians as military targets. From before the Romans to the Vietnamese war, civilians have always been targets. Starving populations into submission has always been used as a military strategy – by all sides. (We practised in the wars against France, the Boers, WW1 (Germany) and WW2 (Germany and Japan).

So why should we intervene? CAN we intervene successfully?
Can we overthrow Assad? Nope.
Have we control of the air? No. The Russians do.
Have we ground troops? No. The Russians and Syrians do.
So we don’t control the ground, cannot fly safely and if we do support one side or the other we are supporting either a nasty dictator or a bunch of religious terrorists.

Previous interventions in Muslim countries have been a monument to futility.All we have done is encouraged the spread of Islamic militancy.

]]> By: GodfreyR https://leftfootforward.org/2016/12/peter-tatchell-aleppo-is-todays-guernica-where-is-labour/#comment-851887 Tue, 13 Dec 2016 09:34:42 +0000 https://leftfootforward.org/?p=117387#comment-851887 The Syrian civil war is one bunch of islamofascists fighting a slightly different bunch of islamofascists. We need to stay well clear of it.

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