Commentary
In a rare display of democratic sanity, the British House of Commons has jammed brakes on the whimsical plans of the PM Cameron to bombard Syria, at least for now.
This is in contrast to the US where president Obama apparently plans to move ahead with the strike even without congressional approval.
As the war scale buildup for the strike Syria was going on, Britain appeared to be ahead of even US till yesterday as the British air base in Cyprus was clearly smelling war. But the sheer baselessness of the British Government's claim that pinpointed Assad for the chemical weapons use acted to catapult the members of commons. It was a strange sense of deja vu as similarly provocative but essentially baseless evidence of WMD in Iraq had led to the cataclysmic Iraq invasion a decade back.
Has the possibility of a strike on Syria subsided significantly? I think, no. US still has the capability and will power to launch the attacks and they are unlikely to miss such a golden opportunity to strike a foe who, having consistently gained upper hand in protracted warfare, has suddenly become more vulnerable than ever.
There is no doubt the chemical attack in Syria was horrendous, to say the least. But while John Kerry has chosen to label it a 'moral obscenity' of the Syrian regime, as many analysts have pointed, it is perfectly possible for the reality to be just the opposite given the lack of motive for use of such weapons on part of Assad's forces and the desperation of the rebels.
In a rare display of democratic sanity, the British House of Commons has jammed brakes on the whimsical plans of the PM Cameron to bombard Syria, at least for now.
This is in contrast to the US where president Obama apparently plans to move ahead with the strike even without congressional approval.
As the war scale buildup for the strike Syria was going on, Britain appeared to be ahead of even US till yesterday as the British air base in Cyprus was clearly smelling war. But the sheer baselessness of the British Government's claim that pinpointed Assad for the chemical weapons use acted to catapult the members of commons. It was a strange sense of deja vu as similarly provocative but essentially baseless evidence of WMD in Iraq had led to the cataclysmic Iraq invasion a decade back.
Has the possibility of a strike on Syria subsided significantly? I think, no. US still has the capability and will power to launch the attacks and they are unlikely to miss such a golden opportunity to strike a foe who, having consistently gained upper hand in protracted warfare, has suddenly become more vulnerable than ever.
There is no doubt the chemical attack in Syria was horrendous, to say the least. But while John Kerry has chosen to label it a 'moral obscenity' of the Syrian regime, as many analysts have pointed, it is perfectly possible for the reality to be just the opposite given the lack of motive for use of such weapons on part of Assad's forces and the desperation of the rebels.
