Peter Hitchens tries to make sense of UK foreign policy. Its raison d'etre explained by Claire Khaw

Peter Hitchens:

Bloody lessons we didn’t need to learn

For all the good he did by coming back from Cornwall last week, the Prime Minister might just as well have stayed on holiday, perhaps studying some more fishmongers’ slabs.

There he might find a flounder, the creature he currently most resembles – flat and still for most of the time, flailing wildly about when agitated.

The public murder of journalist James Foley has stirred a great deal of powerless frenzy.

As you listen to our leaders and their media friends raging and threatening vague things, I urge you to remember the following: They used to say exactly the same about the Provisional IRA, whose apologists are now welcome to sup with Her Majesty at Windsor Castle.

If people such as me criticise them, they grow pious and call themselves ‘peacemakers’.

Poor Mr Foley (may God rest his soul) was captured in November 2012 by the Syrian rebels our Government (and those of the USA and France) were already encouraging against President Assad.

On August 11, 2012, the former Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind said sides had already been picked. He said we should be ‘giving them [rebels against Assad] equipment to bring the conflict to an end much sooner’.

Now this genius, a man who has had great power in the State, is saying we should work with President Assad against the Islamist fanatics.

Former Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind said we should work with President Assad against Islamist fanatics

He might claim he had learned from his mistakes. But he had no need to. This outcome was obvious at the time. In June 2012, I wrote ‘Why do William Hague and the BBC want to help Saudi Arabia set up a fanatical Islamist state in Syria?

‘Don’t we realise that the “activists” we support are just as capable of conducting massacres as the pro-Assad militias?’ I also passed on reports from informants in Syria who told of ‘Salafis, ultra-puritan Muslims influenced by Saudi teachings, who loathe and threaten Syria’s minorities of Alawites and Christians.’

In February that year, I had written: ‘I tremble for the fate of Syria’s Christians if the Assad regime falls.’
The weathercock politicians who now claim to be shocked by the deeds of IS should be ceaselessly reminded that they helped to create it, when they could have known better.

And, like those who supported the Blair War in Iraq, their every public statement should be accompanied by a large warning, saying: ‘Wrong then – why should I be right now?’

Meanwhile, the Chilcot Report on the Iraq War remains unpublished, a scandal greater than any in modern times.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2732809/PETER-HITCHENS-A-young-mother-condemned-die-trendy-stupid-politics.html

UK foreign policy only makes sense if you view it in the following terms:

Cause a situation where the sale of British armaments is made to willing buyers after they have had their countries destabilised by Western media and NGOs. In short, it is a state-sponsored criminal enterprise.