The Islamic State: Climate Change, Terror and the Making of a Caliphate.

The Caliphate ( Islamic State ), established and centred on Raqqa in Syria, does clearly have its origins on uneducated mosque imams contantly extolling the Caliphate as a symbol of a lost spritual and political realm towards which Sunni Muslims should aspire and realise through jihad.

Syrian writer Hassan Hassan cites the Syrian cleric Mohammed Habash claiming "Isis did not arrive from Mars; it is a natural product of our retrograde discourse." and while that is true, the sad reality is that it has caught on because of a civilisational crisis in this part of the Middle East that has induced it.

One thing that comes across from Vice News's report 'Spread of the Caliphate' is that the foot soldiers of IS are both brutal and banal, largely semi-educated men all the more dangerous for the indoctrinated certitude with which they assert their credo that they are on a roll and shall follow God until victory is assured.

The ISIS jihadists are in for the long game, indoctrinating and grooming the children to become future warriors as the only way for the Caliphate to survive and strive forth towards its destiny of creating some sort of pure community that is uncontaminated by enemy influences from without and within.

If they were not so deadly, their corny attempts at piety would be entirely laughable as opposed to merely contemptible. Hence the point of their headless corpses strewn across pavements and sticking heads on spikes is meant to give the impression that they are, in fact, very serious.

The aim is to spread the Caliphate out, kill or convert the Infidel ( or with Christians make them pay a tax ) and to be part of God's project as it unfolds and is realised. Women are to be nowhere seen on the streets of Raqqa. Jihadists previously living in Europe claimed they left the girls behind for the cause.

Women need to be properly concealed in order to thereby maintain the fundamental purity of the Caliphate from within, the better to make it more ferocious and formidable without against Indidels and Hypocrites ( secular Arabs). It says so, they claim, in the Qu'ran.

This myth of the return of the Caliphate is one held on to by the simple minded but it could only spread in the conditions of lawless chaos of the sort that existed in Afghanistan in the 1990s. ISIS is similar to both the Taliban and Al Qaida but this time rolled into one-and with control over lots of oil resources.

IS is selling crude oil on the international black market, something even reported to be reducing oil prices. It is making $1 million a day from the sale and the rush of adrenalin from that and the prospect of using revenues to expand their Caliphate is causing millennial style fervour.

The support among Sunni Arabs for this is based on a revolt of those living in lands where crop failure, desertification, drought and having been pushed out of ant prospect of adequate poliitical representation in either Syria or Iraq has led to the Caliphate as a "solution" to all earthly evils.

The Sunni Arab zone in northern Syria and Iraq is trapped between other regions with far more resources both as regards the vast majority of the oil wealth ( which lie in the Kurdish regions to the east ) and those absolutely vital to life such as water. Iraq is a resource war over oil and water.

The River Euphrates drying up as a consequence of climate change, decreasing precipitation and increasingly hot summers. Turkey was alleged to have reduced supplies along the Euphrates upstream. That makes the necessity to spread the war as far as possible even more 'vital'.

So many Sunni Arabs in Iraq have come to believe nothing to lose by aligning with a pyschopathological group that asserts their interests as against the Kurds, Turks, and Shi'ites. IS attempted to take the Mosul dam so as to have control over electricity and water: this is a resource war.

The cause of jihad is precisely what they have to sustain them both materially and in hope of regaining the dominance Sunni Muslims once had in the region more generally and in Iraq, in particular, under Saddam Hussein who used to use control over the water supply as a tool of control over the Shi'ite south.

Evidently, IS pursues policies that are evil and mad but there is, beyond evident sadistic cruelty and pleasure in murdering Infidels and Hypocrites, a method and motive to the madness and mayhem and the clear intention to instil terror and utter fear. They need to be taken seriously.

If Iraq and Syria were to break up, it is difficult to see how there could be a secure and viable state for Sunni Arabs as that would depend on the wars in both states having any prospect of ending. And so IS is taking the destiny of Sunni Muslims into its own hands, destroying the Sykes-Picot borders of 1916.

ISIS is an outgrowth of failed attempts to back Sunni forces by the Saudis as a check on Iranian influence in Syria, the idea of Sunni persecution and yet historical superiority, myths of the Caliphate and the collapse of Syrian and Iraqi Sunni regions especially through climate change and war.

Blair, Islamism and Planetary Plots

Seumas Milne is right that there is a lot of mendacious propaganda flying about in an age when 'public diplomacy' consists of 'framing devices' put forth by the political class. The aim of Blair's speech was to shape perceptions about both his policy towards the Middle East and the course of foreign policy.

It could not have gone amiss that Blair gave the speech at Bloomberg's London HQ. For those fearful that the future could involve Britain being involved in endless conflicts and interventions, with the looming threat of terror hanging over its cities and town, this speech was a propaganda template for that.

So Blair's speech is important because a significant part of the political and media class In London value Blair's ability to stake out a position that can be used by politicians in need of an alarmist way in which to connect Britain's foreign policy with the need for domestic protection.

So it is odd that Milne opines that the reason why Blair's views are taken so seriously 'isn't immediately obvious'.On the contrary, it is immediately evident that Blair did not set out any real policy but was concerned with drawing up the correct battle lines, the propaganda framework for some cosmic struggle.

The substance of Blair's speech was less signification than the way language was used. When Blair referred to 'extremist Islamism' he meant the sort that threatens Britain's interests and so conflated the Muslim Briotherhood In Egypt with malign and openly terroristic forces such as Al Qaida.

However, Milne, himself no stranger to propaganda riffs, then claims,

'..he ( Blair ) also demanded military intervention against Syria – backed by Russia – along with more "active measures" to help the armed opposition, which is dominated by Islamists and jihadists. It's a crazy combination with an openly anti-democratic core'.

The 'Opposition' ( Blair's term for the anti-Assad insurgents ) may be dominated by Islamists and jihadists but the official line of the Coalition government until late 2013 was that the 'rebels' in the Free Syrian Army were mostly democrats fighting against Assad's tyranny and that he 'must go'.

However, if it is clear that the many of the insurgents in Syria are not democrats but many affiliated to Al Nustra and Al Qaida, it raises the question of whether Milne agrees with Blair that the Muslim Brotherhood should be supported or not ( or, at least, in word if not deed ).

After all, it's deeply contradictory of Milne to complain that Blair is demanding 'active support' be given to 'Islamists and jihadists' in Syria while supporting their being crushed in Egypt, unless the supposed purpose of that foreign policy is made plain.

After all, it could be argued that the opponents of the interventionist foreign policy in Britain such as Milne often use doublethink in lauding Islamists when they are being oppressed and condemning them as tools of imperialism when the same Muslim Brotherhood members are against a government Britain dislikes.

British foreign policy does have blatant double standards and has demonstrated a weird Orwellian schizophrenia, supporting the anti-Assad insurgents when it was clear they were dominated by bloodthirsty fanatics who elsewhere would have been portrayed as the existential enemy at home and abroad.

However, it is curious that 'anti-war' activists often demonstrate the same double standards without the even the excuse of being in government. They have the luxury of having things both ways, that when Britain accepts Egypt's coup against Islamists it's evil and when it supports them in Syria it's evil too.

Evidently, the best foreign policy would be one where Britain would not interfere or meddle in the internal affairs of Middle Eastern states, in which case the policy of realpolitik would be preferable (but that's condemned as well ). It which case no attempt should be made to have a foreign policy at all.

When it comes down to it, Western states are embroiled in the affairs of the Middle East because of geopolitical concerns and the fact it contains huge supplies of oil and gas. Until energy independence is aimed at, the region is going to be the site of intense geopolitical and Great Power rivalries.

There are certain 'anti-war' journalists, such as Milne, who prefer the Cold War period and who praise the Soviet Union in retrospect as a check on Western power in the Middle East and its support for the secular dictator Assad. But its not clear why they have the pretence of being concerned with democracy.

The "Islamist Plot" in Britain-The Domestic Impact of Foreign Policy.

It's possible fanatical ideologues such as Education secretary Michael Gove have tried to exploit the existence of a plan to push school academies towards 'Islamisation' for political gain and to try to steal votes from Ukip and co-opt support for an interventionist British foreign policy against 'extreme Islamism'.

But it does not follow that Milne is corrrect in this,

'In Britain, the campaign against Islamist "extremism" is once again in full flow. In fact, it is open season on the Muslim community. For the past few weeks reports have multiplied about an alleged "Islamic plot", code-named Operation Trojan Horse, to take control of 25 state schools in Birmingham and run them on strict religious principles'.

Even if the the Operation Trojan Horse statement comes from a shadowy anonymous source, the evidence of the DfE Report does seem to prove there is a serious basis to the allegations that cannot be routinely dismissed as part of an 'Islamphobic' propaganda campaign.

Andrew Gilligan in the Telegraph writes,

'A separate report, by inspectors from the DfE, has substantiated many of the allegations. The report, disclosed in The Telegraph on Friday, accused Park View, Nansen and Golden Hillock of illegally segregating pupils, discriminating against non-Muslim students and “restricting” the GCSE syllabus to “comply with conservative Islamic teaching”.The report said girls at Park View and Golden Hillock were made to sit at the back of the class; some Christian pupils at Golden Hillock were left to “teach themselves” and at Park View a supporter of al-Qaeda was invited to speak at assembly. Aspects of the GCSE curriculum were ignored as un-Islamic, even though needed by pupils for exams..'

More than that radical Islamists such as Salma Yaqoob , formerly of George Galloway's Respect Party, has tried to use the language of the Iraq War in calling the Operation Trojan Horse statement a 'dodgy dossier' and part of a campaign of 'McCarthyism”

So it is not only Gove that is trying to score political propaganda points by linking plan to 'Islamise' schools to foreign policy and a global threat. Yaqoob is simply doing the same but spinning the narrative the other way; that this is part of a plot to 'demonise' Muslims and so justify interfering in Muslim lands.

That claim is handy is if the political agenda is to compare the Ofsted inspectors 'interference' with Brimingham schools with an interventionist foreign policy and so put forth propaganda about a plan to order Muslims about and so create a siege mentality and swell supporters for Islamist organisations.

The claims in the Ofsted Report are either true or they are not true and trying to put a spin on them one way or another cannot change that, unless it is supposed that the report itself was part of a 'political witch-hunt' and ordered to find out what they wanted to to back up the allegations of an Islamist plot.

The danger with this foolish shadow boxing between politicians in government and Islamists is that it could indeed polarise British society. In that sense ideologues such as Milne, who backs any movement or force so long as its anti-Western, and Yaqoob are part of the problem no less than Gove.

After all, Gove in his appalling Celsius 7/7 writes of Islamism as 'one seamless totalitarian threat', one that extends from Afghanistan and the Middle East into Europe and Britain, a vast planetary struggle between Good and Evil that actually sounds quite as paranoid as the ideology of radical Islamists.

British Jihadi Islamists and the Syrian Conflict.

'Counter-terrorism officers, fearful that some of those fighting in Syria will return to Britain radicalised with the ability to carry out violent acts on British soil, hope that female family members will curb the numbers of people intent on taking up arms against the Assad regime'.( Syria crisis: stop your sons joining war, urges Met police, Guardian 24 April 2014 )

Much about the Syria-related terror threat does not add up. The Metropolitan Police may have though 'counter terrorism' depends on educational campaigns and social work 'in the community' to prevent Muslims going to Syria. Yet this depends on the bizarre notion they have not been radicalised already.

By definition, British Muslims who went to fight in Syria or are intending to join the struggle, are radicalised. In the Age of the Internet, British Muslims have access to information and have been able to cross the border from neighbouring Turkey with ease.

The Metropolitan Police are wasting their time. If British Muslims have decided to go and fight along with jihadists, then it is supposed to be the task of MI5 and MI6 to monitor those involved in terror plots before they go, meaning they could be stopped on the border, or to keep tabs on them if they return.

Should British citizens get killed in Syria fighting against Assad, it is the responsibility of those who decided to go. If they join Al Nusra or other groups of fanatics, the chances are they will get killed (in which case they pose no danger to Britain ) or they can be monitored on their return.

The probability is that the British secret services are playing the usual power game in using British born jihadists as 'assets' in order to gain more intelligence or, in fact, to use them as proxies in the struggle to remove Assad. This has been the pattern since the Bosnian War in the 1990s.

This extremely dangerous game, where known Al Qaida affiliated operatives have been allowed to pass across the borders and not arrested, was once part of the Covenant of Security, the policy of permitting exiles and jihadists to settle in Britain so they would not attack it but could be used by MI6.

Since the 'war on terror' got going after 2001, that policy was formally dropped. Even so, the shadowy power game has continued. The security services most likely want British born jihadists in Syria so they can gain intelligence and have agents within groups espousing violent Islamist ideology.

Some radical groups patronised by the British establishment as part of a 'counter-extremist' strategy have, according to historian Mark Almond, have acted as a conduit for Islamists to go and fight in Syria and that the strategy of collusion could lead to blowback.

Since the threat of Al Nusra has grown disproportionately, the British government by late 2013 seemed to have grasped the fact that their strategy for Syria was counter productive and could risk bringing terrorism back directly into the cities and towns of Britain and other backers of the Syrian insurgents.

The threat of terror is, however, always of utility to British governments that have wanted to harness jihadists to destroy states controlled by those hostile to Britain's geopolitical interests and over pipeline routes ( e.g Syria ) and regions with copious oil and gas.

British citizens are going to have to get used to the fact that Britain's high octane consumer society depends on these hazardous strategies for control over pipeline routes from Eurasia and the violent consequences of being locked into a struggle for mastery over diminishing natural resources across the globe.

Blair's Speech and the New Great Game.

Tony Blair's speech, as with everything this man utters, is a carefully calibrated public diplomacy missive better called a propaganda offensive. The timing is instructive; Blair is upgrading his profile in the Middle East because the crisis in Ukraine is set to lead to EU states searching for alternative energy sources.

It was interesting that Blair claimed the Ukraine Crisis would distract attention away from the Middle East. And why his fellow strategist and sinister operative John McTernan is 'on message' to explain just what Blair meant to those who could regard him as an important critic of Western foreign policy.

As is standard with propaganda, words and meaning must be prized apart from their conventional uses

'Libya and Syria are at the heart of Blair's argument: action started by this government but left incomplete. The passage on Syria is a direct attack on Cameron and Nick Clegg, and their inaction'.

Firstly, the Coalition government were not 'inactive' over Syria. They continually called for Assad 'to go'. Sarkozy set up the Friends of Syria group in Istanbul in 2012 to create a unified opposition with the intention of ousting Assad and installing a client state.

Secondly, Britain and France in particular were highly active in agitating for a missile strike on Syria, far more so even than a more energy independent 'post shale revolution 'USA. Their main client in the Middle East is Qatar which is in rivalry to build a pipeline from the South Pars gasfield which it shares with Iran.

Britain and France have increasingly sought to diversify the gas supply away from dependence upon Russia. One reason why Qatar's copious production of liquefied natural gas is a lucrative opportunity whereby its petrodollars from selling it get invested in the London and Paris property market and arms.

'Not a defence of liberal intervention, but a scrupulous account of the costs of doing nothing – particularly where the coalition has called for regime change. And, typically, looking at the bigger picture. The Middle East matters.. It matters because of oil and gas and our economic dependence on them'.

That statement matters. Essentially, with Russia and the US in a dangerous stand off over Ukraine, like Syria another pipeline transit route between east and west, Blair is trying to revive the idea that democratising the Middle East could provide EU states with better energy security.

Yet 'liberal intervention' was what was on offer when NATO facilitated the victory over the Gaddafi regime in Libya and what was on offer with the West's humanitarian concern over the East Ghouta gas attack in Syria. The reason no action was taken in Syria was increased concern over Al Qaida's presence.

The Libyan intervention made a bad situation worse. It enabled Gadaffi to be removed only for immediate ( and highly predictable ) squabbles over Libya's oil production capacity to divide the rebels ensuring another failed attempt at regime change backfired.

Now jihadists from Libya are known to have gone to Syria. The danger is, should Egypt fall into increased chaos, that the entire Maghreb could become a zone of carnage and bloodshed. Al Qaida affiliates are already operating in the Sinai Peninsula and fighting the Egyptian military.

As in Syria, the reality in Egypt was that the US and US tacitly accepted a military coup, even if the Muslim Brotherhood's bungling policies and attempts at institutional takeover has divided Egypt and led it even further towards economic and political collapse.

The Western Powers need to stop pretending that they can control events in the Middle East. Energy security has to be attained by decisive policies to move away from the great car economy and to find alternatives to oil and gas as well as dealing cautiously with Russia over Ukraine.

Blair's understanding on the Middle East is both simplistic and deranged. But his siren calls for radical and decisive action and drawing up of cosmic battle lines between Good and Evil remain potentially lethal if politicians and the media hail it as delivering a solution to an a looming energy security crisis.

Syria: Patrick Cockburn on the Impact of Air Strikes

Patrick Cockburn of The Independent is no doubt the best journalist writing on the Syrian Crisis at present. His analysis here is well worth the read. How Syria action risks unsettling fragile Middle East balance of power Wednesday 28 August 2013

'Will air strikes help spread the Syrian conflict to other countries in the region? The important point here is to take on board how far it has already spread and the degree to which it already destabilising Syria’s neighbours. The al-Qa’ida-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, which fights in both Iraq and Syria, has already become stronger thanks to Syria, and is responsible for bombings in Iraq more intense than anything seen since 2008. The same organisation is responsible for ethnically cleansing Syrian Kurds in north-east Syria, 40,000 of whom have already fled to the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq. If the Assad government becomes weaker then the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front and other jihadists, the most effective rebel fighting forces, will be strengthened.

Turkey is likely to support US actions, its importance depending on whether or not the US air base at Incirlik in south-east Turkey is used. Turkey has a 560-mile long frontier with Syria but it is vulnerable to Syria and Iran acting through Turkey’s Kurdish minority. Turkish government support for the rebels in Syria is also strongly opposed by the Turkish opposition who have been reinvigorated by mass street protests this summer.

Syria : The USA's Coercive Diplomacy on Syria.

'Obama's draft resolution has a short paragraph on the need for a political settlement in Syria and even calls on the Geneva talks process to be resumed urgently. Is it cynical or just naive? Syrian rebels' intransigence and their unwillingness to attend without preconditions are the main reason for the failure of Geneva so far.' ( Jonathan Steele, Syria: the US public faces a grim reality TV choice  Guardian September 1 2013 )

Washington never wanted a political settlement on any other terms other than that of the US and the Syrian opposition it supported along with the Friends of Syria group. It continually made Assad's removal or agreement to 'go' the precondition of any negotiations. The foreign policy was and remains 'Assad must go'

That has been the aim of of US and its strategic partners in the Middle east such as Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The US and Britain does not want any Iranian influence in Syria because there are fears it was using that to plan a pipeline to the Eastern Mediterranean in rivalry to Qatar's proposed one to Turkey.

Syria is geopolitically the cockpit for rival energy interests. The US, France and UK support Saudi Arabia and Qatar because they rely on these countries for oil or gas. France has become increasingly reliant on Qatar for LNG and Total has a stake in it. Britain likewise in order to diversify supplies away from Russia.

Iran is seen as a threat because it is a rival to both these countries and feared as a source of sponsorship for disgruntled Shia populations in Saudi Arabia who live near the main oil producing zones of Saudi Arabia not to mention backing Assad's Alawite regime in Syria.

Engaging with Iran is the most sensible diplomatic option to bring about a political settlement but the US and Britain have continually rejected that because of the energy interests at stake and because Qatar and Saudi Arabia are going to pursue their interests no matter what the Wests wants.

The problem comes down to the fact that though US foreign policy on Syria is one of choice it is also dictated by the necessity of it depending on Saudi Arabia for 12% of its oil still and the more general overarching strategy of containing Iran and getting 'regime change' there.

Obama started talking more straightforwardly of 'national security interests' after the British Parliament decided the UK would not take military action alongside the US. These interests are crucially interconnected with energy interests and energy security no less than they were with Britain and more so France.

Evidently, Obama is attempting to drum up wider support for a missile strike against Syria designed to add greater pressure along with Kerry's statement that there would be assistance to 'the rebels'. The UN security council is dismissed as 'completely paralysed'. In reality, the US is asserting coercive diplomacy.

Syria : The Missile Strikes as 'Coercive Diplomacy'.

The Obama administration's preferred option for a potential strike on Syria is likely to leave Bashar al-Assad's government with significant chemical weapons and military infrastructure, according to military analysts.

In the first confirmation of the scope of any attack, White House principal deputy press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Thursday that Obama was contemplating "something that is discreet and limited."But "boots on the ground" or "any military options aimed at regime change" were not up for discussion, State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters Thursday. Similarly, "we're not talking about a Libya-style, open-ended no-fly operation,"

One comparison here is Operation Desert Fox in 1998 when the US and UK bombed Iraq for four days in order to 'degrade' Saddam Hussein's capacity to produce and use 'weapons of mass destruction'. The aim of these air and missile strikes could be similar to that outlined by Madelaine Albright.

"I don't think we're pretending that we can get everything, so this is - I think - we are being very honest about what our ability is. We are lessening, degrading his ability to use this. The weapons of mass destruction are the threat of the future. I think the president explained very clearly to the American people that this is the threat of the 21st century. What it means is that we know we can't get everything, but degrading is the right word."

The difference is that this is 2013 and Syria is in the middle of a serious civil war. To start bombing is effectively to commit to the anti-Assad side and the insurgents backed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. If the bombing is a token gesture to prove US 'credibility' it will do nothing to ensure that.

Assad is not going to be removed by his military capacity being 'degraded' but it could lead to an intensification of the war on the ground as he loses the advantage he had until this as yet unexplained and alleged chemical weapons attack. It is said the aim is not 'regime change'.

It is difficult to understand what the logic behind these missile strikes would be beyond proving that crossing Obama's 'red lines' on chemical weapon use ( despite their being no conclusive proof as to the facts as yet presented to the UN security council ) means he would give a 'green light' to a strike.

The bellicose rhetoric of 'punishment' advocated by France's President Hollande, mingled with statements about humanitarian intervention and 'acting as the conscience of the world' wheeled out in Britain by the oily Michael Howard today, adds up to nothing coherent other than what is obvious beneath the spin and deceit.

Put clearly, the strikes would be the opening salvo in longer campaign of coercion implicit in the position taken by the West that 'Assad must go' for two and a half years after the civil war broke out in 2011. The US and Britain have always made that the precondition for negotiations on a political transition in Syria.

The fact is that this threatened use of force is an extension of the unwillingness to engage in proper diplomacy with Iran in order to uphold the West's tacit backing for Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar's proxy war in Syria against their main Persian Gulf rival.

This strategic alliance is mostly concerned with the geopolitical and energy interests it shares with the West. Yet engaging in diplomacy with Tehran was one of the only ways that could have brought about the political settlement Western statesmen claimed they wanted.

At a meeting last Monday in Istanbul of Western diplomats from 11 “Friends of Syria” nations made clear strikes could be expected. The group wasset up with the express purpose of organising regime change outside of the UN Security Council after the Russian and Chinese veto on a resolution condemning Syria in February 2012

 “The opposition was told in clear terms that action to deter further use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime could come as early as in the next few days, and that they should still prepare for peace talks at Geneva”

Syria: The West Blunders Closer into the Syrian Civil War.

Hans Blix, the UN weapons inspector in the run up to the Iraq War has given his opinion on Syria.

'Obama, like Bush and Blair, seems ready to ignore the council and order armed strikes on Syria with political support from only the UK, France and some others.

While much evidence points to the guilt of the Assad regime, would not due process require that judgment and consideration of action take place in the UN security council and await the report of the inspectors that the UN has sent to Syria – at the demand of the UK and many other UN members?'

Given the British government's threat that it could launch an attack on Assad's state without UN Security Council backing, the responsibility for the possibly justifying any attack depends on the absolute proof that it did use chemical weapons intentionally and poses an imminent threat to the Middle East.

Without giving time for the UN inspectors to complete their findings, any military strike is an act of aggression that sets a precedent for taking international law into the hands of the US, Britain and France. Even the 'responsibility to protect' is a shaky pretext with regards to Syria.

Missile strikes by the US on Syria's military installations cannot do anything to protect the civilians on the ground on either side of the sectarian divide in a brutal civil war. As the West cannot be intending to take out chemical weapons facilities, the argument about deterring further chemical attacks is weakened.

The aim cannot be to get full 'regime change' as that would lead to greater chaos and a worse version of the lawlessness that has engulfed Libya after the US, France and UK promised to use air power to prevent a massacre in Benghazi.

Moreover, by effectively siding with the anti-Gaddafi insurgents in 2011 the West overstepped its mandate after China and Russia approved of a limited use of air power in a nation not as crucial to their geopolitical interests as Syria and, by extension, Iran is.

The fact is that any response to the Syrian crisis has to involve diplomacy and not military intervention. If 'the West' ignores the other global powers, there is no longer any reason why China and Russia would need to take Western states interests or opinions into account in future.

The ratcheting up of the drive towards military action against Syria is about maintaining Western credibility and being seen to stand by Obama's previous declaration in August 2012 that Assad's use of chemical weapons would 'cross a red line'.

A 'red line' however is a rhetorical device not an international law. More evidence in US foreign policy for two and a half years after the civil war broke out; that is is the use of the threat of coercion to bring Assad to the negotiating table based on the precondition he hands over power.

The apparent drive towards war at present and the presence of ships in the Eastern Mediterranean armed and ready to strike is an extension of the most coercive form of diplomacy short of effectively threatening military action. It could be a way of breaking the 'political deadlock' with Russia on US terms.

One aim is to force Russia into a corner should the UN inspectors find evidence that chemical weapons were used and then it could be proved that Assad must have used them. The Western powers will in the next three days before the UN inspectors complete the task be searching for a legal pretext for action.

However, it looks very unlikely Russia is going to withdraw its backing for Assad nor for there to be a clear version of events and evidence presented as to 'who did it'. The US claims it has all the intelligence already but if it wants to pursue even a semblance of legitimacy in dealing with the crisis it has to renew diplomacy.

But now the drive to war has been cranked up it is very difficult how the West is going to be able to back down without 'doing something'. This would be an idiotic blundering into the unknown as military strikes unleash their own dynamic and create unforeseen circumstances that could draw it in further to the Syrian civil war.

The Humanitarian-Bureaucratic Complex: Save the Children.

The disturbing film images of children suffering and dying from an alleged chemical weapon attack carried out by the Assad regime in Syria has led to the humanitarian-bureaucratic complex gearing up for action and calling for something to be done. Save the Children's charity's chief executive, Justin Forsyth, stated 

'The appalling attacks on children in Syria are a crime. Those who are responsible should be held to account by the international community. Already far too many children have been killed, maimed and traumatised by this conflict. The world must act to protect the children of Syria'.

The chemical weapons attacks are no less a crime because they have been committed against children. The attack on Ghouta , east of Damascus, was also an attack on all civilians, including children, who were killed. It seems that Save the Children is an arm of political power when it calls on 'the international community'

It seems odd that people  were surprised by the exhorbitant salaries that the heads of 'charities' such as Forsyth were awarded. Only 31% of Save the Children's funds come from private donations. It is in reality part of the what Theodore Dalrymple calls the 'charitable-bureaucratic complex'.

Many of the top echeleons of save the Children have worked closely with politicians. Like New Labour politicians with whom they are close, they are New Labour careerists and ones ready to launch wars. Justin Forsyth, the chief director, was Gordon Brown’s communications and campaigns director.

Fergus Drake, the Director of Global Programmes, 'worked for the Office of Tony Blair, in Rwanda advising President Kagame and his Cabinet in achieving their Millennium Development Goals' Gordon Brown is now working on those goals in his new supposedly post political career.

The fact is that organisations such as Save the Children are in the business of acting as an auxiliary arm of the British government's humanitarian intervention in nations such as Afghanistan. They work along with governments to serve political ends and work with corporate partners including Chevron.

Save the Children is a business corporation that has crossed the line from being an 'independent charity' into one that in Afghanistan clearly bolsters a geopolitical agenda of intervention through military power, where children are saved by benificence of the one hand and drone bombed on the other.

Syria : The Hague and Fabius Duet.

The usual propaganda mechanisms are being cranked up fast as the momentum of a drive towards war proceeds in accordance with the usual formats. This time it is a blend of the 2003 Iraq War one ( Chemical Weapons) and the 2011 Libyan War version ( Dictator Out of Control ).

First, Britain via Hague pops up rather sprightly and acts a public diplomatic mouthpiece by squarely blaming the Assad regime without giving the UN weapons inspectors time to get to the site of the alleged chemical weapons attack. That's the Iraq Format.

Secondly, then Fabius of France ratchets up the pressure by claiming that even if "no ground troops' will be used" but states “There would have to be reaction with force in Syria from the international community”. That is the Libyan Format. So far the political choreography is as predictable as it could be.

By "international community" it is meant that Britain, France and, lastly, the USA who Hague and Fabius hope will give them green light for either supplying arms to "the rebels" or perhaps even using air power. Expect to hear the phrase 'all the options are on the table" a lot in the next few days.