Views, Visions and Values.

Tuesday, 27 August 2013

The Awesome Church

The Awesome Church

Promoting our churches is necessary if we want to grow and reach more people. But is there a way to bring less attention to ourselves and more glory to God? What if we deliberately don't tell people everything? What if we let some things happen without seeking a way to get credit? What would it look like to celebrate God's work through simple, direct, and honest thanksgiving? What if we gave annual reports that told not just all the good things from the past year but were honest also about the challenges, disappointments, even failures?

Immature advisers, moral indignation and the folly of wading into this bloody morass By MAX HASTINGS, Daily Mail

PUBLISHED: 22:41, 26 August 2013 | UPDATED: 23:52, 26 August 2013

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The Prime Minister seems to see in the crisis that has overtaken Syria his own Falklands moment

The Prime Minister seems to see in the crisis that has overtaken Syria his own Falklands moment, a chance to play the statesman and even warlord on the world stage.

Almost everyone else, however, including the U.S. President, sees a hideously intractable situation in which we meddle at our peril.

Downing Street has told the media that we may expect to see Western cruise missiles launched against Syrian government installations within a matter of days.

Parliament is expected to be recalled to debate the issue today, which presumably means that air strikes may follow soon after.

Downing Street has not, however, indicated what the purpose or expectations of such strikes should be, save to give President Assad a severe whacking.

We can all see that Syria’s leader is an evil and murderous dictator. It is probably true that he is using chemical weapons against his enemies.

Russia’s support for Assad lays bare the nastiness of the regime of President Vladimir Putin, who aspires to play the part of a pocket Stalin.

Deadly

But it is one thing to recognise the iniquity of the Syrian government and its allies, and quite another to entangle the U. S. and Britain in a military campaign of which it is impossible to foresee a happy ending.

All the options for President Obama and Europe’s leaders are bad, as everyone except David Cameron and the idiotic President Francois Hollande of France can see.

Syria is riven by warring factions, each holding chunks of territory. The Israelis have already mounted bombing raids in response to the intervention of the Hezbollah militias, their most deadly enemies. Iran has sent fighters to aid the regime.

Activists say that somewhere between 200 and 1,300 were killed in the chemical weapons attack on Wednesday near Damascus. Syria has one of the largest stockpiles of chemical weapons of any country

Evidence suggests Assad almost certainly used chemical weapons against his foes and innocent civilians in defiance of the global ban on such horrors

If the struggle drags on, as it probably will, the whole region could be drawn into strife.

The foremost reason Britain’s military, intelligence and diplomatic establishments have united to oppose intervention is that they do not believe any of the available options — notably air strikes and arms deliveries to the insurgents — will end the struggle.

They will merely keep the bloody game in play and possibly make it much worse by precipitating a showdown with Russia. Yet David Cameron and his young Turks have been fuming with anger and frustration for more than a year about what they see as an inescapable moral issue: how can civilised nations stand idly by, they demand, and watch Assad massacre his own people?

Their impatience for action has reached breaking point now evidence suggests Assad almost certainly used chemical weapons against his foes and innocent civilians in defiance of the global ban on such horrors.

As long as Putin remains committed to protecting the Syrian leader, it is hard to see how the West can take effective military action

It is plainly a blow to world order if Syria is able to defy this prohibition and get away with it.

‘Don’t you see the moral imperative?’ one of Cameron’s closest advisers demanded angrily of a sceptical soldier a few months ago.

Unfortunately, for the cause of justice and truth, loose talk about morality is a luxury grown-up governments cannot often afford to indulge.

What matters is what can be done realistically in Syria, a colossal mess in which there is little to choose for nastiness between the competing factions.

‘They’re all nutters,’ said one of the Government’s most sensible ministers — and a profound sceptic about intervention — at a recent National Security Council meeting.

The West faces the huge and probably insoluble problem that President Assad is the client and protege of Russia.

All the options for President Obama and Europe's leaders are bad, as everyone except David Cameron and the idiotic President Francois Hollande of France can see

As long as Putin remains committed to protecting the Syrian leader, it is hard to see how the West can take effective military action.

Syria poses the same dilemma as does North Korea, under China’s guardianship.

Yes, these are monstrous regimes — the North Korean leadership has killed vastly larger numbers of its own people than Assad — but short of going to war with Russia or China, what can the West do?

In recent days, Downing Street has been talking with extraordinary freedom about launching missile strikes.

I hope President Obama sustains his opposition to military intervention in the absence of a UN Security Council resolution in support, which is wildly unlikely to happen

More than a few soldiers see this sort of talk as a reflection of the almost childlike immaturity of some of those around David Cameron.

Most of the people at Westminster and in the media who are calling for military strikes against the Syrian government describe these as ‘quick, limited, clinical action’.

But what happens if they fail to halt Assad’s barbarities? What follows if the Russians and Iranians escalate their support for the Damascus regime?

A British military planner said a couple of months ago: ‘We can come up with 23 scenarios for how we get into Syria, but we don’t see how we then get out again.’

President Obama and his advisers have always recognised this problem much more clearly than Downing Street. This is why the Americans remain so cautious about armed intervention, which Cameron almost daily urges upon them.

Sensible generals always ask two things before getting stuck into any operation: What are our objectives and are they attainable? These questions are fiendishly hard to answer in respect of Syria.

For a start, while almost everyone in the civilised world agrees President Assad is a wicked man, few who know anything about the scores of insurgent groups fighting against him wish to see them replace him in power.

Not long ago, I received an email from an enchanting Syrian who was once our guide on a holiday trip across his country — never, alas, to be repeated amid the wholesale devastation.

Brutalities

been and gone – is taking drastic action

19/06/13
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He is no friend or natural supporter of Assad, but he wrote in deep dismay about the brutalities committed by the insurgents, mostly enthusiasts for Al Qaeda.

‘Do the West’s leaders know who these people are?’ this guide demanded bitterly.

If the West was led by statesmen rather than mere political operators, they would see that moral indignation is not enough to justify wading into a Middle Eastern morass.

There is some excuse for France’s President Hollande, because he is recognised even by his own people as a buffoon.

He is ever eager for foreign adventures to salvage his rock-bottom standing at home.

But Cameron’s obsession with Syria, and appetite for risk there, baffles even some of those who have to work most closely with him. He seems to suppose that leading a charge against the Damascus regime will enhance his standing and electability with the British people.

In truth, it seems doubtful if even some brilliant and wildly unlikely success there will gain him a single vote.

We are in the throes of extracting ourselves from a failed intervention in Afghanistan, with another defeat in Iraq on the scoreboard.

It seems extraordinary folly to propose a new military engagement in which — to put the matter brutally and cynically — Britain has no national interest at stake whatsoever.

Dangerous

We are still recovering from what we now see as the disastrous Blair era, in which British pretensions to posture on the world stage cost us billions of pounds, hundreds of lives and substantial prestige.

Why seek once more to take a lead, to play the great power, when we are nothing of the sort?

It is, of course, a fine irony that Downing Street wants to play Boy Scout games with cruise missiles after presiding over the most savage proportionate defence cuts in modern history.

By the time this Government has completed its restructuring of the Armed Forces, the only warships a prime minister will be able to deploy will be confined to his bath.

I hope President Obama sustains his opposition to military intervention in the absence of a UN Security Council resolution in support, which is wildly unlikely to happen.

Britain cannot act, thank goodness, without American backing. U.S. generals are as unwilling as British ones to launch a terrifyingly dangerous military foray unless they see a much more convincing strategic rationale than is evident today.

The usual shocked media voices are delivering that familiar cry of: ‘Something must be done!’ But our political leaders are supposed to behave more responsibly than this.

When David Cameron became Prime Minister, I was among those who held out great hopes for him. But he has displayed a lack of judgment, especially in foreign policy, that is deeply dismaying.

What is happening in Syria is ghastly, but so is much else that is going on in the world.

Britain and its allies should not seek to go there, with bombs or missiles or soldiers, unless we have a clear vision of what we hope to achieve — which today is utterly lacking.

Don't start what you can't finish, warn the top brass: Britain's leading military experts explain how the West should react to Syria By IAN DRURY, Daily Mail

PUBLISHED: 00:55, 27 August 2013 | UPDATED: 01:26, 27 August 2013

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As Britain, America and France threaten to launch missile strikes against Syria, IAN DRURY asks some of Britain’s leading military experts what the West should do...

LORD WEST OF SPITHEAD

Former First Sea Lord and security adviser in Gordon Brown’s Labour government:

‘We have to be absolutely crystal clear in our own minds that the use of chemical weapons was by the regime. If it was, then I think we can persuade Russia to sign a UN resolution that condemns a head of state for using them against their own people. That seems to be the first move.

‘I’m very wary of military action, even if it is a limited missile strike. What do we hope to achieve? Where will it lead?

‘What if Assad says, “get lost”, and uses chemical weapons again? Are we going to escalate military action? I have a horrible feeling that one strike would quickly become more.

‘The region is a powder keg. We simply can’t predict which way military action will go and whether it would draw us, unwillingly, further into a conflict.’

LORD KING OF BRIDGWATER

Defence Secretary during the First Gulf War:

‘There are no good options, only the least worst ones. I’m very wary of getting involved militarily in the teeth of a major sectarian Sunni-Shia bust-up that could affect the whole region. That’s why it’s so urgent that we get around the table to find a diplomatic and political solution.

‘I’m all in favour of getting Iran [the world’s largest Shia nation] involved because it is vital not to rub them up the wrong way. It’s also important that the Russians are involved: they must not feel as though they’ve been pushed back into a corner.

‘It is imperative to find a solution, and it mustn’t be military. This is turning into such a conflagration that it’s becoming extremely dangerous. I am appalled by the idea that the regime, if that is the case as it appears, would use chemicals against its own people. But the difficulties in how we respond do not become any easier.

‘The idea of a military strike to express disapproval is fraught with problems. We would have to avoid hitting civilians, and if we attacked the chemical plants there is the danger of dispersal of those chemicals into the air. It is hugely important that the UN does show some leadership here.’

MAJOR GENERAL JULIAN THOMPSON

Ex-Royal Marines officer who led 3 Commando Brigade during Falklands War:

‘The attack in Damascus last week has altered the conflict dramatically because
it has aroused a considerable amount of odium around the world. It was a stupid thing to do because Assad has fired up people who, on the whole, were not inclined to do anything about him.

‘If we are going to retaliate – which I don’t think we should – then an attack by a submarine using cruise missiles is the favoured solution because you don’t have
to put troops on the ground and you don’t fly aeroplanes against Syria’s
well-armed air defences.

‘It is risk-free, but we have to get our targeting right because we don’t want to kill civilians. The problem is we don’t know what the consequences will be. Russia is certainly against it, as is China.

‘There is a perception that Assad is poking us in the eye; if we let him get away with this chemical attack, what will he try next? But I’m wary of acting if we don’t know what the consequences will be.’

Conflict: Men search for survivors amid the rubble of collapsed buildings after what activists said was shelling by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo's Fardous neighbourhood

VICE-ADMIRAL SIR JEREMY BLACKHAM

Former Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff in 1999:

‘I strongly condemn the use of chemical weapons, which is illegal, and the idea of
a punishment strike is not at all unreasonable: how else is international law to be upheld?

‘Ideally this should have support, or a mandate, from the UN or the International Court of Justice.

‘However, it would be most imprudent to do it without careful consideration of, and proper preparation for, the range of consequences which might follow. This is not
a very nice dilemma and the answer is not at all obvious.’

COLONEL RICHARD KEMP

Former Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan:

‘If the Syrian regime carried out a nerve agent attack, then a limited but
devastating surgical air strike is not only justified but necessary in order to send
a clear message to Assad.

‘It is essential that the US and UK base their decision on the best possible
chemical analysis, backed up by firm intelligence to confirm who was responsible.

‘Of course our governments will need to be prepared to follow up with a second, more severe, wave of attacks if Assad responds with another chemical strike or some other outrage. But we must not be drawn into a protracted campaign, either in the air or on the ground. It would not be long before all sides turned against us.

‘And while it will be possible – under the table – to square a swift and limited intervention with Russia, a wider operation would be much more likely to develop into a proxy war or worse.

‘Nor should we supply rebel fighters dominated by Islamist extremists with anti-aircraft or anti-armour missiles: they are sworn enemies of the West.’

GENERAL SIR MICHAEL ROSE

Former SAS commander and leader of United Nations Protection Force in Bosnia in 1994-95:

‘The credibility of America hinges on Obama doing something after he said use of chemical weapons was a “red line” that couldn’t be crossed.

‘I am not against a military strike, but the intelligence has got to be good and the target has got to be very specific; so specific that it identifies the unit that carried out the attacks.

‘If not, we will be seen to be siding with the rebels – and that should not be the business of the Western powers. We don’t know what the outcome is going to be, and we could end up with people in power who are worse even than Assad.

‘We need to be imposing an arms embargo and a no-fly zone, which would reduce the level of the violence. This is a total lose-lose situation for the people of Syria. But however terrible their suffering is with Assad and his brutal ways, the end result of an escalating arms race will be to make things worse. The suffering will only be greater.’

Monday, 26 August 2013