The rise of extremist terror group Islamic State (Isis) could have been avoided if the UK began attacks on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2013, according to two former defence chiefs.
“It’s a great shame, something that we should be ashamed of, that we could have nipped this problem in the bud four years ago, but failed to do so,” said Lord David Richards, a former general and the UK’s chief of defence staff from 2011 to 2013 under Prime Minister David Cameron.
“….if anything encouraged Isis at that point, it was that decision,” said Lord George Robertson, Nato secretary general from 1999 to 2004, and UK defence secretary from 1997 to 1999. “It was that fact of a failure of will on the part of the Western powers,” he added, that also encouraged Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Crimea in 2013.
….”We are our own worst enemy. We simply ignore problems,” said Robertson, who urged the UK’s politicians to do more to convince the public why the government needs to take military action. “Unless people are convinced there are things worth fighting for, then we’ll be in trouble….”
Reminds me of:
“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” ~ from the film adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
Often misattributed to Edmund Burke who wrote: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
Read more at Isis could have been 'nipped in the bud' with attack on Assad in 2013 say ex UK defence chiefs.
Hilarious – talk about making up reasons after the fact to justify a particular worldview. Hubris