English Democrat "Reprisal" is murder

There has been some interesting fall out (excuse the pun) from my last blogpost about the suggestion by English Democrat candidate for the Crime Commissioner post Steve Uncles that the Western powers should threaten Daesh (ISIL) with a Nuclear strike on Mecca the next time there is a terror attack in the West.

In the follow up of the debate on Twitter there were questions about my ancestor’s political affiliations and what I would do with Cyril Smith… The most disturbing seems to be Collective punishment.

A simplistic way of putting it is what happened to my Grandfather at school when the head teacher caned an entire class because someone had drained the radiator to fill their water pistol and as he lined them up he said “The innocent will suffer with the guilty.”

I will let you interpret the tweets for yourself and see if you come to the same conclusion as I have;

What do you think?

My interpretation, added to the original post about nuking Mecca during the pilgrimage as punishment does concern me greatly and leads to this “Collective responsibility” and took me to thinking about other examples of this in the past.

First one that popped into my head was the village of Lidice in the Czech Republic. Three Czech “terrorists” assassinated the German governor of Bohemia & Moravia Reinhard Heydrich on the 27^th May 1942 (he died on 4^th June). In reprisal for this terrorist act and to try to stamp out similar acts the German authorities liquidated the village of Lidice including executing all of the men, most of the children and sending the women to concentration camps. Buildings were flattened, animals were executed and even the dead were disinterred and their remains destroyed. In total 1300 people in the protectorate were killed in these reprisals.

Another example, sadly again from the World War Two era, are the executions of civilians for each German soldier killed ten local civilians would be shot. This happened in Greece (where whole male populations were liquidated) and notably in Russia with these duties falling to regular Wehrmacht troops not just the Nazi SS.

Although Mr Uncles has distanced himself by saying We can all agree that National Socialism is a terrible thing. I still cannot see the difference in the reprisal by nuclear weapon killing innocent civilians and the Karbiner 98 rifle shooting innocent civilians…

In the United Kingdom we have our own sordid past with the rounding up of women and children in South Africa during the Boer War, their property burnt and their internment at concentration camps where many died from disease and poor conditions. There is the reaction to the 1857 rebellion in India which saw British subjects, military and civilian being murdered and brutalised was avenged by British troops bayonetting civilians (including women and Children) in Delhi;

These were not mutineers but residents of the city, who trusted to our well known mild rule for pardon. I am glad to say they were disappointed reported the Bombay Telegraph.

Another report stated;

The orders went out to shoot every soul… It was literally murder… I have seen many bloody and awful sights lately but such a one as I have witnessed yesterday I pray I never see again. The women were all spared but their screams on seeing their husbands and sons butchered were most painful… Heaven knows I feel no pity, but when some old grey bearded man is brought and shot before your very eyes, hard must be that of a man’s heart I think who can look on with indifference.

All in the aim of ending “Terrorism” and protecting British/English citizens and rule.

In my mind, and I leave it up to the reader to make a final decision, there is little difference between these lamentable periods of history and threatening to launch a nuclear strike on Mecca as a reprisal for a terrorist action in the West.

The one constant between the Lidice, Feldpolizei, Indian Mutiny and Boer War examples AND a strike on Mecca is that a large/extreme number of people face or have been MURDERED in reprisal for actions carried out by a few.

My family have been involved in Policing for over a century with my Great Grandfather Walter joining the Metropolitan Police in early 1914 and the immutable faith in the notion of Justice has been passed down from generation to generation and the ultimately the biggest nuggets of knowledge have been –

1.) Don’t make idle threats
2.) Two wrongs do not make a right

Murdering civilians in their hundreds of thousands during a pilgrimage in Mecca is ethically and morally abhorrent and is on the same scale as the terrorist who blows up a bus of commuters and the Oberleutnant who orders a nearby village levelled because one of his men was shot by a terrorist. 

As far as Mr Uncles is concerned, the only difference is that ISIS are not signed up to the Geneva Convention so are seemingly exempt from its protection. I'm sorry to say that this is not how the convention works a                                          

English Democrat calls for Nuclear strike on Mecca

I have studied war and all of its incarnations since the age of eight when I first picked up the Ladybird book of "Soldiers" and

started asking questions of my grandfather.

War is undeniably one of the great evils that mankind has unleashed upon the world and sadly the one thing at which we as a species excel at. Aggression breads technology and at the very top of the tree are the nuclear weapons.

Many people argue that Nuclear weapons are necessary.

They have never been necessary.

The excuse of ending World War Two quickly is touted too quickly but the truth of the matter is everyone knew Japan could not physically hold out much longer and that conventional bombing methods would have sufficed. Indeed the RAF and USAAF had proved that over Europe where 25,000 people in three days in Dresden of saturation bombing in 1945 and Hamburg had suffered 42,600 killed in the firestorms of Operation Gomorrah in July 1943. With Germany defeated the bomber fleets were free to relocate to the Pacific.

At the turn of the 20th Century the greatest weapons were Artillery (and Dreadnoughts) by 1915 the horror weapon was poison gas, by the 1930s it was the Bomber especially if carrying gas and by 1945 it was the A-bomb. The only reason to use it in 1945 was to show the Russians that the West had them and was not afraid to use them should they be pushed as Churchill (succeeded by Atlee) and Truman knew that Stalin would not have hesitated to use them if he thought he had the upper hand.

In modern times though there is a small clique of states who have nuclear weapons all eyeing each other suspiciously... However who is the major threat?

A lose alliance of Islamic extremists who have no state and whose ability to use a nuclear device is, for the moment, limited to a dirty bomb for which the only defence is keen Military intelligence.

Should one of these devices go off in central London the effects would be ugly and a lot of people would be irradiated and killed with many dying from the effects for years afterwards.

English Democrat and former Kent Police Commissioner candidate (I think I heard he is running again in 2016) Steve Uncles has an answer to this... A retaliatory Nuclear strike on Mecca after ANY terrorist attack on the West.

Mr Uncles argues in his blog that the heart of Islam, within Saudi Arabia, will be full of Muslim pilgrims. He states:

Massive retaliation works on the same principles as Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), with the important caveat that even a minor conventional attack on a nuclear state could conceivably result in all-out Nuclear retaliation.

and...

This threat to of massive retaliation of 1 million Muslims and the destruction of the most holy Muslim site in the world, if a further "civilised" life is taken on respective sovereign territory, may be the only answer to eliminate Islamic Terrorism.

My first response upon seeing this was... What... the... actual.... F**k?

My more reasoned approach is this;

First off the bat:

In 1914 the Sultan of Turkey decreed a Jihad against Britain and her Allies, for all Muslims to rise up against the West and come to the aid of Germany and her allies. Apart from a few scattered uprisings including some rumblings in Persia and in the Far East the majority was limited to just the Ottoman Empire.

In 2015 the same is true. Despite the call for a universal Jihad the number of Muslims fighting the West is, on the grand scale of things, a small number. Should the Holy shrines of Mecca be destroyed by the West then there will be a massive uprising of Muslims worldwide and who could blame them? Their Holy places destroyed in one blast would cause horrific hatred and rightly so.

As would the slaughter of a million innocents. How can anyone legitimise the murder, and it is murder, of all of these people? How many will be terrorists or support terrorists? These people will have come from around the world and may even be citizens of your state on a religious pilgrimage - how can you kill all these people?

If it happened we would be no better than the terrorists.

Thirdly is the prickly ball of Saudi Arabia. Yes there are sections of their society who probably funding terrorism but they are also pro-West and supply a vast swathe of the much needed crude Oil. Should anyone Nuke Saudi Arabia then that vital line is lost and the West is somewhat dependent on it at the moment. There is also the Saudi investment in the West and its business, their withdrawal could cause absolute chaos in the business world and financial markets.

The terrorists and their strategists know this and know any threat on Mecca is a paper tiger - it would cause more harm than good and is morally and ethically wrong. It is akin to General Amherst reported suggestion that blankets from Smallpox hospitals be distributed to the Ottawa indians to quell Pontiac's Rebellion.

What frightens me the most about all this though is that there will be many who agree with him.

Syria - I just don't understand the inaction

It is true - I have an interest in war.

I've studied war in all its forms since I was a small boy. I'm fascinated by the tactics, logistics, strategy and human behaviours from the Field marshal on the hill to the Private on the fields - but I am not a war monger.

War for war's sake is always wrong and should always be a last resort to  sort out a situation.

As a Star Trek geek I also hold to the Prime directive of non interference in another nations internal affairs.

When Human rights are being, shall we say flexed(?!) then there is space for diplomatic sanctions and pressure.

When they are ruptured then more serious moves need to be made.

But when Women and children are being murdered in the streets or homes a line has been met and I truly believe that the Civilised world cannot sit idly by. As for using poison gas and nerve toxins, a practise banned after the Mustard and Phosphane gas attacks of World War One, on the helpless is absolutely unforgivable.

Seeing the news feeds of rooms full of dead children, civilians laying on the floor as if sleeping, people gasping for breath in hospitals through damaged lungs - I cannot understand how we cannot act?

I don't want to talk about the politics of the matter really, nor do I want to speculate on why Ed Miliband did what he did - I will merely point you to Dan Hodge's blog in the Telegraph.

I guess at the moment there is an area of doubt as to whether Assad has used the weapons or not and this is down to an MPs discretion as to whether or not it warrants action. I for one agree with Nick Clegg, that Assad has the weapons, he has used them before, his troops were shelling that area of town at the time and he has threatened to use them time and again - way to many coincidences for me there.Couple that with Military intelligence being pretty damn certain kind of hits the final nail for me personally.

Whether you are for or against an air strike though it doesn't matter as though as it was Party politics that won the day last night rather than a discussion of morality and right or wrong. Stackee's blog on Parliamentary Party politics puts my thoughts into words very succinctly.

So what are the solutions for Syria?

Well, we have precedent of such things:- Libya, Kosovo and Bosnia. The West provides an aerial strikes removing Assad's ability to deliver such weapons then pulls back.

Another approach is to provide Aerial superiority that will remove Assad's ability to wage war or to level the playing field for the rebels.

Neither option should be attempted before the UN weapon's inspectors have reported back. It is highly likely that for whatever reason the Russians and China will veto the Council if the decision to militarily intervene is decided. If this happens I still think that it is right to try and do all we can to stop these war crimes from being repeated.

I agree humanitarian aid needs to be delivered to the people in Syria and in the internment camps in the surrounding countries where hundreds of people are concentrating. This is always a recipe for disease and deprivation and aid must be organised. This needs to be done quickly as well.

History shows that when the world hesitates or decides to sit on its hands people die. Not the combatants or the ones who arguably deserve to but the innocents, the helpless and the defenceless.

The world cannot allow these atrocities to continue - it will not be forgotten and never forgiven.