What Do We Hope To Gain?

Peter Hitchens writes:

I absolutely decline to watch horror videos showing fanatics murdering their prisoners. I am sure it is morally wrong to do so.

I am still haunted by my decision, when I was younger, to witness two lawful executions of heinous convicted murderers

But aside from that, I believe these zealots hope we will watch this obscenity and as a result lose our reason and launch unwise and stupid attacks on them, which will end in our moral and physical defeat.

Some people are already falling into this trap.

I have never doubted for a moment that Russia is aiding the rebels in Ukraine with men and munitions, though this is difficult to prove.

What puzzles me is that so many do not seem to suspect that the USA and other Nato countries are likewise helping Ukraine’s shambolic army fight the war we urged them to start.

How naive can you be?

The American threats to arm Kiev’s forces may already have been carried out, but by deniable and indirect routes (as happened  in Afghanistan).

I continue to be amazed at the enthusiasm in this country for getting involved in the third major European war in a century.

What do we hope to gain?

It is only to be expected that the Sunni monarchies are indistinguishable from IS. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has not made up Sharia Law. It already existed. He learned it as it was and is lived out by, in and as the Sunni monarchies. That is what we are fighting for. Even, although with Bahrain it is one of the least worst, in Jordan.

Every time that you hear of an IS atrocity, then ask yourself if it could not have been perpetrated by any of the states for which we are fighting while we stubbornly refuse any alliance with Iran, Syria, and the coalition around Hezbollah.

For all the faults of those on the latter list, they do not do the things that IS does. Those things are also done in and by the states to the maintenance of which we have committed our blood and treasure. The states from which IS learned everything that it knows. The states the leader among which was behind the events of 11th September 2001. As, of course, we knew on that day.

I am not aware that this country has any military obligation to Ukraine. Nor to the Gulf monarchies that created IS and which are indistinguishable from it. This street is full of teenage boys, and so is my church. They are my friends' and neighbours' sons, and they are my friends and neighbours. They are not being sent to die, either for the House of Saud, or for the flame-keepers of Stepan Bandera.

Minorities in Transcarpathia and Bessarabia are refusing to fight for Kiev. They are fleeing abroad, or tearing up their call-up papers. Kiev, meanwhile, has legislated to shoot deserters from among its teenage conscripts. You and I will no doubt have paid for the bullets.

Perhaps we ought to offer asylum to these deserters and refuseniks? But then, what about when we have our own? Our young men will refuse to be sent to die for Svoboda and Pravy Sektor. And our young men will refuse to be sent to die for one branch of the Wahhabi against another. In both cases, they will be right.