Four years ago, we were all called mad conspiracy theorists, fake news peddlers and Kremlin trolls for saying that, via the Syrian "rebels", the CIA was arming the so-called Islamic State. Now, though, everyone admits it as if it were nothing.
Truly, we are back in the Cold War, when the world made sense to the likes of Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach, who is reduced to suggesting that Russia might cut our undersea Internet cables for no apparent reason. Such types have spent a generation claiming that any and everywhere was the biggest threat since the fall of the Soviet Union, and having exhausted all other options, they are back where they began.
Not that there ever was a military threat from the Soviet Union. It was many things, but it was never that. It had nothing remotely approaching either the means or the will to invade Western Europe, never mind the United States. We all know that now. Everyone who knew anything knew it then, and some of them, such as Enoch Powell, said so.
In the meantime, we have had, and we continue to have, "The War on Terror", which was recently taken apart on Newsnight by Sir Richard Dearlove. People with MI6 backgrounds have been publicly sceptical from the start. Where are all these terrorist attacks? That they are invariably so newsworthy is because they are vanishingly rare. But the policy response to them, which never has anything much to do with them, is frighteningly effective at creating and exacerbating very real threats indeed.
For example, in Syria, where everyone now admits that, via the "rebels", the CIA is arming the so-called Islamic State, just as we are arming the "Free Syrian Police", a branch of the "Free Syrian Army" about which some of us were screamed down for daring to warn you. And then there are the White Helmets. People always trust the first responders most, so setting up your own is always a good way in. We fund the White Helmets up to the hilt, while cutting our own emergency services to the bone.
We need to take the money from the "Free Syrian Police" and the White Helmets, and use it to ensure that those who were first on the scene at Grenfell Tower and at Westminster Bridge can once again afford to live anywhere near the places where they carry out their literally vital work. Make it happen.
Truly, we are back in the Cold War, when the world made sense to the likes of Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach, who is reduced to suggesting that Russia might cut our undersea Internet cables for no apparent reason. Such types have spent a generation claiming that any and everywhere was the biggest threat since the fall of the Soviet Union, and having exhausted all other options, they are back where they began.
Not that there ever was a military threat from the Soviet Union. It was many things, but it was never that. It had nothing remotely approaching either the means or the will to invade Western Europe, never mind the United States. We all know that now. Everyone who knew anything knew it then, and some of them, such as Enoch Powell, said so.
In the meantime, we have had, and we continue to have, "The War on Terror", which was recently taken apart on Newsnight by Sir Richard Dearlove. People with MI6 backgrounds have been publicly sceptical from the start. Where are all these terrorist attacks? That they are invariably so newsworthy is because they are vanishingly rare. But the policy response to them, which never has anything much to do with them, is frighteningly effective at creating and exacerbating very real threats indeed.
For example, in Syria, where everyone now admits that, via the "rebels", the CIA is arming the so-called Islamic State, just as we are arming the "Free Syrian Police", a branch of the "Free Syrian Army" about which some of us were screamed down for daring to warn you. And then there are the White Helmets. People always trust the first responders most, so setting up your own is always a good way in. We fund the White Helmets up to the hilt, while cutting our own emergency services to the bone.
We need to take the money from the "Free Syrian Police" and the White Helmets, and use it to ensure that those who were first on the scene at Grenfell Tower and at Westminster Bridge can once again afford to live anywhere near the places where they carry out their literally vital work. Make it happen.
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