Britain prepares strikes on Syria

With apparently overwhelming evidence that the Assad regime in Syria has used chemical weapons, killing hundreds of its own people, limited retaliatory strikes from the West now look inevitable. Both Britain and America have indicated that they are preparing to launch missiles, although Washington has said this is "not about regime change".

"We cannot allow the use of chemical weapons in the 21st century to go unchallenged," said Foreign Secretary William Hague in The Daily Telegraph. "It would make further chemical attacks in Syria much more likely, and also increase the risk that these weapons could fall into the wrong hands in the future." As a result, Britain and America must "respond in a way that is legal and proportionate" to "deter the further use of chemical weapons in Syria and to uphold the global ban against their use".

This doesn't go far enough, reckons Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal. Rather than merely deterring Assad, the "main order of business must be to kill" him and "everyone else in the Assad family with a claim on political power". While it's true that "a Tomahawk aimed at Assad could miss", it could also "hit and hasten the end of the civil war". In any case, "there's both a moral and deterrent value in putting Bashar and [his brother] Maher on the same list that once contained the names of [Osama] bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki". Overall, the airstrikes must be "acutely personal and inescapably fatal".

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"People wince at the course of intervention," writes Tony Blair in The Times. "But contemplate the future consequence of inaction and shudder: Syria mired in carnage, between the brutality of Assad and various affiliates of al-Qaeda." Those who want us to stay out forget that Russia and Iran are already interfering "to support an assault on civilians not seen since the dark days of Saddam". We need to take the side "of the people who want what we want; who see our societies for all their faults as something to admire; who know that they should not be faced with a choice between tyranny and theocracy".

But those looking for an Iraq or Afghanistan-style intervention are likely to be disappointed, reckons Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times. Barack Obama's strategy is "to lessen American involvement in the Middle East, so allowing him to concentrate on domestic reforms, addressing the rise of China and the perfection of his golf swing". He'd much rather "let allies take more of the strain of unfolding events in the region".

And Britain should consider carefully before it volunteers to take any such strain, says Max Hastings in the Daily Mail. "It is one thing to recognise the iniquity of the Syrian government and its allies, and quite another to entangle the US and Britain in a military campaign." While there are genuine humanitarian concerns, "loose talk about morality is a luxury grown-up governments cannot often afford to indulge". We need to realise that "Britain has no national interest at stake whatsoever". Not to mention that, due to David Cameron's "savage" defence cuts, "the only warships a prime minister will be able to deploy will be confined to his bath".

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