Some Who Think

Peter Hitchens writes:

If a small army of Islamist terror fanatics makes its base in a crowded city, and will not let women and children leave, it is very hard to know what to do.

For instance, the Iraqi army was faced with this problem in 2014 when it sought to recapture the city of Fallujah from Jihadists. 

Nouri al-Maliki, then President of Iraq and so the West’s ally, used barrel bombs to fight ISIS terrorists in Fallujah.

Pro-ISIS propaganda made much of the civilian deaths, but I don’t recall the USA, or the BBC, or the moralizing choir who now emote over Aleppo and shout ‘war-crimes’, saying much. 

Nor do we hear at all from these moralists about Saudi Arabia’s rather savage little war now going on in Yemen (using British munitions) in which more than 2,000 civilians are said to have died. 

There’s a similar problem over the severe criticisms of the Syrian government made by the USA’s diplomats and their mouthpiece, the BBC. 

Near-identical repression of dissent in Bahrain and Egypt (currently our allies) passes with barely a mention. 

Their governments aren’t called ‘regimes’. Why is this? 

For instance, on a recent edition of BBC Radio 4’s over-rated Today programme, the presenter, Justin Webb, stated as a matter of fact that Russia ‘has no obvious interest’ in bringing the Syrian war to an end. 

How does he know? 

He then used that interesting phrase ‘some who think’. There are some (namely me) who think this is a BBC way of sliding an opinion into a place where it shouldn’t be. 

Anyway, according to Mr Webb ‘There are some who think they (the Russians) want it to go on and on and on in order to damage Europe with the flows of migrants’. 

No doubt there are, but who are they, and are they right, and why is Justin Webb smuggling this opinion (especially if it isn’t his) into a major news programme? 

A BBC spokesperson says feebly that this is ‘news analysis’, but it looks to me like taking sides.

From the start I have been shocked by the BBC’s partial coverage of this issue, and its willingness to be a conduit for war propaganda in Syria, as it was in Libya. 

This is important because we are being softened up for a war far more risky than that in Libya or Iraq. 

In Syria, western forces might actually find themselves in direct combat with Russian troops and planes.

Can you begin to imagine how dangerous that could be for Europe and the world? 

Please don’t be rushed into supporting such a thing, even by the BBC.