Melanie Phillips: The weekend bombing of the Syrian chemical facilities

So what did the weekend bombing of three chemical weapons facilities inside Syria achieve?

Well, if what we are being told is true, it knocked out three Syrian chemical weapons facilities. That’s good. This may have set back, maybe seriously, Syria’s capacity to use chemical weapons.That’s good, maybe very good.

So is that good enough? No way.

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: Operation Regime Change – some aren’t giving up

Operation Regime Change (as I’ll call it) achieved some of its objectives, particularly the elimination of Saddam Hussein and Muamar Ghadaffi, but has been an unmitigated disaster for the MENA region and for the world at large.

It gave us ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and the disintegration of Libya resulted in a country that now exists only as lines on a map and is about to become a staging post for ISIS metastases as well as being a springboard for illegal mass migration into Europe.

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: Syria – Putin’s geopolitical coup

It’s the stuff of an Orwellian political satire. 

A sovereign nation is faced with a massive insurrection that is largely orchestrated by hostile outside forces who bring in thousands of foreign fighters. Third parties who don’t like the government of that nation arm and train other rebel groups but they also feel threatened by the principal usurper, so those rebels are supposed to take on both at once.