PRESS RELEASE
House of Commons ‘Debates’ a Nuclear War To ‘Protect Civilians’
Oct. 11, 2016 (EIRNS)—At the initiative of Tory Member of Parliament Andrew Mitchell, the British House of Commons today staged an "Emergency Parliamentary Debate," allegedly on Syria, as a forum for promoting war with Russia.
An article published by Mitchell in the Daily Mirror today, "Vladimir Putin’s Russia Acting like Nazi regime with Syria hospital air strike," set the histrionic tone of the "debate." Mitchell is being "advised" by former British military officials and by former CIA director ret. Gen. David Petreaus, who have developed a proposal to track Russian jets from U.K. warships off the coast of Syria, and for a complete no-fly zone for Syrian helicopters over civilian areas, the London Guardian reported today. "No one wants to see a firefight with Russia, no one wants to shoot down a Russian plane," Mitchell told BBC Radio 4. "
But what we do say is that the international community has an avowed responsibility to protect and ... if that means confronting Russian air power defensively ... then we should do that."
The debate was quite a show. The 43 parliamentarians from various parties who spoke were speaking to each other; the rest of the seats were empty. The scene was dominated by wild diatribes against Russia, and calls for the House of Commons to make up for its "mistake" of 2013, when it voted against military strikes on Syria, by imposing a no-fly zone (NFZ) now.
One called for putting aside the fight against ISIS until "the children of Aleppo are saved." A notorious Blair-ite assured that many colleagues on these benches would support a motion for a NFZ. Others endorsed the proposal of a leader of the All-Party Friends of Syria group that Syrian and Russian military facilities be bombed every time they were alleged to have struck a civilian target. Another stood up, repeatedly, to insist that other speakers identify Russia as a threat, not just to Syria, but to the "international order upon which our security is based."
At the conclusion, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson rose to respond. He expressed his pleasure that the debate today expressed a different resolution than in 2013. He spoke of "rebel-held areas" of Aleppo being viciously attacked by Russia, Syria, and the Hezbollah, and said that the May government does think there are advantages to bringing Russia before the International Criminal Court for war crimes. All available evidence points to Russian responsibility for the September attack on the humanitarian convoy in Aleppo, he asserted—and there is "no doubt" that it had been bombed from the air. We in the U.K. trust the UN Board of Inquiry into that attack will reach the same conclusion, and his government stands ready to help them do just that, he promised.
Johnson agreed that Russia poses a general threat to "our international order," and heartedly endorsed one of the parliamentarian’s call for demonstrations to be held outside of the Russian Embassy in London and others around the world. But he cautioned, that a NFZ requires shooting down planes and helicopters, and that must be worked through with the U.K. allies before it could be adopted—thus alluding to the target of the entire show: these insane British interests cannot bring about the global, thermonuclear war they are thirsting for without lining up the United States behind their insanity.
