I WANT to reply to Frances Roberts (Letters, January 12) on Syria and Iraq. She asks: “Has the failure to intervene in Syria produced a better result?” But the UK has intervened in Syria. We have bombed Daesh and backed the rebels. The difference is that our side has lost.
Or does she mean troops on the ground? In that case, yes, our non-intervention means we have avoided the possibility of war with Russia.
She then defends our invasion of Iraq by asking: “What should the limits on national sovereignty be in those countries where tyrants are able to brutalise or murder their own people with impunity?” A good question, but she should not suppose it is one that Western leaders routinely ask themselves. They choose carefully whose sovereignty to violate based solely on interests. They would never limit Saudi Arabia’s sovereignty (Saudi Arabia supplies oil) or impede Turkey’s brutality towards its Kurds (Turkey supplies Nato bases and controls migration routes). Significantly, they even fail to recognise the latter’s past atrocities – its World War One genocide of Armenians.
The UK and USA (under Obama) turned against Assad for influence. They saw the chance to topple a Russian-Iranian ally and strengthen a USA-UK one, Saudi-Arabia. The attempt failed.
We can only start asking Frances Roberts’s question about when to limit brutality when stopping brutality becomes our motivation. For successive UK governments, it is no motivation at all.
AJ Gillon
Edinburgh
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