Express.
INSURGENCIES led by religious extremists in Iraq and Syria are the most serious danger Britain faces today, David Cameron has warned.My solution is simpler, revoke their passports if they go or are proven to be out there.
The Prime Minister insisted the prospect of battle-hardened jihadists returning to the UK was a “real threat to our country”.
But he denied that the Government was restoring diplomatic links with neighbouring Iran in a bid to win Tehran’s help to quell the spread of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) militants.
Speaking at a joint press conference with Chinese premier Li Keqiang, Mr Cameron said: “No-one should be in any doubt that what we see in Syria and now in Iraq in terms of ISIS is the most serious threat to Britain’s security that there is today.
“The number of foreign fighters in that area, the number of foreign fighters including those from the UK who could try to return to the UK this is a real threat to our country.
“We will do absolutely everything we can to keep our people safe. That means stopping people from going, it means arresting people who are involved in plots, it means focusing our security, our policing, our intelligence effort on to that area of the world, on to those people.”
Naturally there are leftards comparing the jihadi's who go as equivalents to the Brits who went to fight for the International Brigades during the Spanish civil war in the 1930's though then they went to fight tyranny (as they saw it) rather than take part and revel in it. Most came back disillusioned with war too, though somehow for our jihadi's I cannot see this being the case.
Nor do I believe cosying up to Iran is wise, their government which is essentially controlled by religious clerics and is pretty much the other side of the same coin, just as fanatical but with the resources of a large state behind it.
Meddling in that area ought to become a maxim similar to that of never getting involved in a land war in south east Asia, it's simply not worth the time or effort and no matter what you do they are going to hate you anyway. Nor should we allow them to come here spreading their poison.
We should simply sell them arms and play one (or multiple) sides off against each other whilst making sure the oil flows.
We can always talk to the last man standing... eventually.
3 annotations:
In other words, the government of the UK should pursue policies in the interest of the UK.
Even if Assad is a total sh*t (which he is) it was clearly in our interest that he stayed in power. Similarly, cosying up to Iran may be in our interest but, given the jelly running this country (and the US) the probability is that this time next year Cameron (or Miliband) and Obama will be congratulating Rouhani on his country's new atom bomb.
As to the 450 or so UK passport-holding jihadists; when they return they will be - as Mao observed - the "fish in the water". The greater problem is the "water", not the "fish".
My solution is simpler, revoke their passports if they go or are proven to be out there
Well yes obviously. And equally obviously they tend not to say that's where they are going, and to go there and back via other destinations (especially given that there tend not to be direct flights from LHR to war zones), and the security services don't have the resources to follow every possible British jihadi to their final destination.
So your solution is simpler but unfortunately doesn't actually help very much.
Meddling in that area ought to become a maxim similar to that of never getting involved in a land war in south east Asia, it's simply not worth the time or effort and no matter what you do they are going to hate you anyway. Nor should we allow them to come here spreading their poison
The problem is that those are incompatible goals. Don't meddle and you allow a cesspool to develop, and when that happens, disease is bound to spread. The conflicts of the middle east can no longer be contained within the middle east — if they ever could.
Apparently 'we' know where they are and who 'they' are, so revoking a passport is simple.
Playing one side off against the other is far easier than rooting them out of our country.
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