Shiraz Maher

Hitting Assad – and hitting him hard – is urgent and necessary

There has been lots of debate about our impending intervention in the Syrian conflict today. Many of my Coffee House colleagues have counselled against intervention, arguing against Danny Finkelstein’s piece in the Times yesterday. I’m in broad agreement with the general sentiment of the piece, but some of its subtexts need greater illumination.

Leave aside Finkelstein’s argument about omission bias. For a moment, forget the ‘complexities’ of the conflict, imbibed as it is with sectarian differences, confessional rivalries, and great power posturing. Even the discussion of what should happen next in Syria can wait for another day.

The use of chemical weapons against civilians is an affront to the very idea of civilisation itself. It is the kind of nihilism we hoped would have been relegated to the history of more barbarous times. The issue of whether we are now prepared, however tacitly, to allow rogue regimes to use these weapons is one our leaders and society must carefully consider.

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