Britain's muddled war on terror

Firstly, private Saudi donors are funding ISIS. Former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove certainly thinks so (Patrick Cockburn, Independent, 13th July, 2014). Saudi donors constituted “the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide”.

This is according to a secret memo signed by Hillary Clinton and released by Wikileaks. So why then did Britain back Saudi Arabia joining the Human Rights Council of the United Nations last year?

And why has Britain licenced £5.6bn in sales of military hardware to Saudi Arabia since David Cameron came to power in 2010 (Matt Broomfield, Independent, 6th January, 2016)? On the one hand, Britain is supposedly bombing ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and on the other hand, Britain maintains a cosy relationship with a country implicit in ISIS’s formation and military success.

In an interview with John Snow, Cameron says it’s because Britain receives important intelligence and security information from Saudi Arabia which keeps Britain safe.

One finds logic in this shambles only if one sees politics as a cynical game with business interests topmost and human rights concerns given token support or as a justification for one war after another.

Remember, they’re always going in with guns blazing to protect civilians and human rights - it’s called “humanitarian intervention” - when it’s civilians who are maimed and die and become refugees.

Businesses though always do quite nicely from wars. Check the surge in shares in Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BAE Systems, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman over the last two decades.

A graph plotting wars against corporate profits would say it all.

Louis Shawcross, Hillsborough