Thursday 3rd December

I am writing this before the vote on the United Kingdom joining in the bombing campaign against ISIS, so I do not know the result; however I am fully expecting the vote to be passed, regrettable as I think that decision would be.  But this piece is not specifically about whether we join in and bomb Isis or not; others will decide that question.

So, what happens when you bomb people?   Two things happen immediately.  One is that innocent people are killed, and the other is that the people you are bombing become more determined to resist their attackers than ever before.  On every occasion (bar one, which I will discuss later) aerial bombardment has not won a war, or more importantly weakend the enemy’s resolve to fight.  The first wholesale bombing campaign was the German bombing of London and other cities in the first years of the Second World War.  Thousands of ordinary people were killed, children were sent wholesale to ‘safe houses’ in the countryside, curfews were imposed, thousands of buildings were bombed and burnt to the ground.  But it weakened our resolve not one jot, in fact it stiffened it; Churchill used the very fact that we were being attacked in our own homes as justification for our bombing of Germany.  And boy, did we bomb them in return.  Many cities like Dresden, of no military significance at all, were razed to the ground.  Possibly millions of innocent Germans perished, but the leaders were unmoved, the war continued to the bitter end.

It can be argued that dropping the Atom bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima was successful, but the Japanese were in full retreat by then anyway, and they had lost their German ally.  Maybe it was a way out for them, and we must never forget the awful nature of these weapons, the horrific destructive power which had never been seen before.

In Vietnam almost ten times the bombs dropped by all sides in WW2 were dropped on that tiny country.  Guess what?  They won anyway.

In Gaza, the Israelis have repeatedly bombed the Palestinians.  It hasn’t changed anything, except to make Israel almost a pariah state.

And so far there have been hundreds, maybe thousands of bombing raids already on ISIS.  And so far, to no avail.  In fact there are reports that they welcome it.  It simply confirms their belief that the West is embarked on a crusade against Islam.  They also believe that they will win.  Maybe not this time, but eventually.  And as we discovered after Iraq, the actions of the West, no matter how “well-intentioned” (durghhh!!!!) have resulted in chaos and civil war and a massive increase in terrorist actions elsewhere.

So bomb away Mr. Cameron, bask in the reflected glory of being one of the big-boys, but I hope you realise what actually happens when you bomb people.