“Don’t Bomb Iraq or Syria” protest held by Bristol Stop The War Coalition
Supporters of Bristol Stop The War Coalition are lobbying their MPs calling on them to vote against further military action in Iraq & Syria in tomorrow’s Commons debate.
Bristol Stop The War Coalition is also holding a “Don’t Bomb Iraq or Syria” protest from 5pm, Friday September 26th on College Green, BS1 5TR
Jeremy Clarke of Bristol Stop The War Coalition said,
“David Cameron has recalled parliament to push through a vote for the UK to join the US in bombing ISIS in Iraq and possibly Syria.
If this vote passes British forces will be back in action in Iraq just three years after the last troops were withdrawn from the catastrophic occupation of 2003-11. The development comes in the same week Tony Blair called for renewed bombing in the region and the possibility of boots on the ground.
All the experience of the terrible wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya has shown that western military action only serves to kill innocents, destroy infrastructure and inflame violence.
ISIS is in part a product of the disastrous occupation of Iraq by Western powers. ISIS is funded by some of the West’s main allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia. Escalating Western military intervention will do nothing to stop them but will create more suffering and further destabilise the region.
Barack Obama is the fourth consecutive US president to order bombs to be dropped on Iraq. If bombing “worked” Iraq would be a paradise by now. More bombing, let alone boots on the ground, will only make the situation worse.
Our MPs must vote to rule out out any further military action in Iraq or Syria.”
David Gould September 25, 2014
Bombing will gain the UK nothing but the resentment of the families of innocent victims who may well become enemies of the future. It is short-sighted to go into yet another unwinnable war. Bombs are by their very nature imprecise weapons whose effect can never be properly anticipated. Mostly they kill and maim the innocent while the ‘targets’ are left alive; hence it would be a costly and fruitless activity that we must avoid at all cost.
It is not our war. We should stay out and provide humanitarian aid as needed and directed by the protagonists.