I had prepared a blog posting for today, but feel unable to post it after the atrosity committed in London yesterday. I would be inappropriate, and even uncaring.
Such a savage attack had to be expected at some point. But I would prefer to be silent on this occasion in memory of the innocent foreign visitors and Londoners so brutally murdered and injured .
Beware of being accused of hypocrisy. Five minutes after posting the above I read in the paper a report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claiming that the US had just bombed a school in northern Syria, killing 33 civilians. The school had been used to house at least 50 families fleeing violence elsewhere in the country. This is the second time in a week that US forces are accused of causing mass civilian casualties in Syria.
This is an Epicurean blog. We believe in moderation and extending a civilsed hand to all human beings on the planet. No, I cannot only deplore an attack on the city I was born in; I have to deplore all such brutality everywhere. All this violence is disgusting.
The most awful thing of all is that there is a connection between the London killings and the US bombing. Imagine you had a friend or family member in the school that was bombed. Now imagine that ISIS comes up to you, and promises to pay you relatively highly in exchange for committing an atrocity in a Western city, which you would probably view as revenge for the school bombing. You would probably accept ISIS’s offer.
Having Trump as commander in chief will only make things worse. He’s promised to increase the scale and severity of the bombing, going as far to believe the US Armed Forces should target the families of terrorists. This will only mean more civilian casualties, which in turn will fuel radicalisation.
More than ever, we need a policy of disengagement. While we rightly deplore the killings in cities like London, Paris or Brussels, we should not let the sheer emotion and outrage in the aftermath of such killings lead to bad foreign policy. Its very popular to call for revenge for those we love who have died. But only by showing some restraint, will we be able to bring about a lasting peace. I’m not saying we shouldn’t respond at all. Security should be tightened here in the West, whenever possible. But there’s scant evidence to show that foreign interventions, be they NATO or Russian-led, lead to fewer terrorist acts being committed here at home.
We should also take comfort in the fact that ISIS is in the decline, due to the efforts of NATO, Assad and the Iraqi government. Its losing territory fast, and so is resorting to extra-territorial acts of terror. The last thing we need is a disproportionately belligerent solution to a declining problem.