Friday 22 April 2011

WE CANNOT STAND BY AND WATCH A DICTATOR SLAUGHTERING HIS OWN PEOPLE


Watching the television news tonight, I was reminded that a just a few short weeks ago Messers Sarkozy and Cameron were touring the world insisting it was vital for the West to take action against Gadaffi.

I particularly remember Mr Cameron saying, in what I imagine he considered his statesman voice (not unlike Jim Hacker’s attempts at Churchill), that we in Britain could not stand by and watch as a dictator murdered his own people.


He was hailed by the Tory Press as a world leader, quite literally, as he was leading the attempts to force the world into action against the Libyan dictator. The press were, of course, as happy to leave the mention of Sarkozy’s involvement to the 8th or 9th paragraph as they were to point out that President Obama was dithering and indecisive.

Of course they were wrong on all fronts. M
rs Clinton was infact, working on diplomacy behind the scenes, as is the job of the Secretary of State and Cameron and Sarkozy were well out of their depths in involving themselves in matters they didn’t fully understand.

Now don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think that it is easy to leave people to die at the hand of
a heartless, cruel and murderous oaf like Gadaffi; and I wouldn’t want the responsibility of declining to get involved, but with my limited knowledge of what goes on in the world, I could see that what we were dealing with here was likely to be more than just Libya.

Tunisia and Egypt had already dispatched their dictator presidents and unrest was already apparent in other Middle East
countries. Last night I mentioned in my ramblings the fact that in the tiny kingdom of Bahrain, whose crown prince will be the guest of the Windsors next week, medical personnel were being 'disappeared' because they had seen the dreadful carnage caused by the Bahraini police and their friends from across the causeway in Saudi Arabia.

Today over 50 Syrians have been killed on th
e orders, Mr Cameron, of their dictator, Bashar al-Assad (who fortunately is not invited to the Windsors’ wingding).

Surely if ordinary people could see that contagion was not only possible, but highly likely, what on Earth possessed Cameron to make such stupid pronouncement? Did HE not foresee that within weeks people would be asking why he was not equally affronted by the death of peoples of other countries at the hands of THEIR dictators?

It would appear that he did not; and neither did his foreign secretary, nor any other his numerous advisors in the FCO. Of course Bahrain and Syria are not the only countries to which this has spread. Unrest is rife in Yemen, and has even spread as far as the nailed-down-tight kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to Morocco and to the much easier-going Jordan, where it seems to have been contained by the swift actions of modernist King Abdullah.

No one now knows how long we will be involved in yet another war which has nothing to do with us; and in the meantime other poor, pathetically downtrodden people will be crushed by dictators to whom doubtless, our governments sold the wherewithal to do it...

And we simply have neither the money nor the manpower to do anything about it.
Cameron’s Churchillian moment, which looked fairly daft at the time, now looks plain ridiculous.

11 comments:

  1. Update: The Guardian is reporting 88 dead in Syria.

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  2. Food shortages and spreading unrest the ball has started to roll, stock up on essentials wherever possible.

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  3. That "Yes, Prime Minister" reference is absolutely spot on. Of course, while Hacker was attempting Churchill, Cameron attempts Blair.

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  4. Thanks for the link CH.

    So it will spread and there will be more riots, and more people who thought they had a job for life will be worried about that future.

    I think Mali, Niger, Chad, Mauritania, Algeria and some of the other Middle East states will be next, and if the army doesn't produce the necessary election, and ensure that they are free and fair, Egypt will revolt again.

    I'd forgotten of course about Sudan and Iran which were mentioned in your link.

    Who'd want to be a world leader... only the very brave and the very knave.

    I guess we all have our own ideas about where Cameron stands on that scale.

    He may need to call for the assistance of SuperGray shortly. Straight into a sandwich shop, turn round 3 times and there he is... heavily disguised as an escape car. Just what you need in a crisis.

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  5. Hey Doug: Long time no see... <:¬()

    Yep, I have to admit, you've got it in a oner.

    It wasn't Churchill or Thatcher he was copying, it was Blair on Botox. Princess Diana all over again. "Gadaffi is not.... pause from dramatic effect... the ...pause for effect again.... people's dictator...

    Grrrr. How i dislike these people. Why is it British prime ministers feel the moral obligation to run the rest of the word, but a strange reluctance to make a stab at running the UK?

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  6. Did you see the other day when the po-faced idiot “call me”, said that we should all try to imagine what Churchill would do when faced with a decision?

    Well this morning I was unable to decide whether to have coffee or tea, so I tried to imagine what Churchill would have done! And am currently enjoying my third glass of Champagne and a fine Havana!

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  7. LOL. I did see that quote Munguin.

    It was pompous in the extreme, and of course, like most of Dave’s stuff, pretty badly thought out, if thought out at all.

    It is sound bite stuff. It sounds good, but has no substance.

    Without getting into the merits of Churchill’s thought process, or indeed its tendency to choose alcohol of some sort, to be able to think “What would Churchill have done?” and come up with any meaningful answer, you’d have had to know Churchill quite well. Now, as Churchill died in 1965 and Cameron was born in 1966, even being as well connected as he is, it is unlikely that they would have met for any more than a brief few minutes.

    If he is relying on history books to tell him, then the answer over Libya, for example, would be to ignore what anyone else said and take every steps to ensure that what he referred to as “heathens” did not in any way interfere with the express intentions and wishes of Her Majesty’s government.

    Botox is just a PR man... a two minute, no thought, no substance, jingle man...


    Erm...enjoy your cigar and don't upset the servants too much...

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  8. BTW: Did you notice how "just one of the boys" (or, un des gars juste) they are in that photograph. I wonder if they decided together to go tieless into the photo op.

    Sarkozy : « On va débarrasser nos cravates, David ? »

    Botox Boy (with Eton French) : "Oh no Nicholas, I don’t think we should embarrass anyone, and I’m not wearing a cravat."


    (PPS: I can feel Dean's scorn!)

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  9. tris

    why not we being doing it for years and years..

    (PPS: I can feel Dean's scorn!)

    yeah its all knobbly and covered in blue slime yuk!

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  10. Afternoon Niko:

    Yes, yes, I know, but the point is that it's new politics now. We can't do it any more. So said Mr Cameron. You should pay attention to the UK leader a bit more.

    BTW, I see your man's relaunching his campaign on Monday. I wonder where he'll launch it to this time? Mars sounds a good bet.

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  11. And trust you to see the rude potential in a perfectly innocent throw away line... Honestly, does your mind ever rise above your belly button?

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