YP Letters: West must beware looking for easy answers to Syria crisis

PRESIDENT Trump’s attack on President Assad’s forces in Syria makes some sense as a means of rendering the use of chemical weapons counter-productive and of lending credibility to his military options against North Korea. There are those, however, who wish to extend and exploit this.

Bizarrely, Hillary Clinton tries to suggest that the natural corollary of objecting to the poisoning of civilians is to invite hundreds of thousands of them to settle permanently in the USA. At the same time supporters of the rebels, open and covert, ask that restrictions upon Syrian government tactics to be made so comprehensive as to bring about regime change.

However black some may wish to paint the soul of Bashar al-Assad, this does not imply that the opposition leaders who seek to replace him are virtuous or innocent men.

A long civil war inevitably takes a heavy toll in human life. Those who begin and perpetuate such a war in order to overthrow the state must bear responsibility for that. Actions taken by the state in resisting this attempt can hardly be cited in mitigation for the earlier act of rebellion.

The West arms, and aids, factions in the war whose leaders escape censure only because most of us don’t know their names.

There is no nice option for ruling Syria; it would be criminal to prolong the war for a single day to secure a change of leader. Yet Boris Johnson seems set upon repeating the Libyan policy of William Hague.

From: Edward Mitchell, Bridgwater, Somerset.

BORIS Johnson is assuring us that the recent horrific gas attack in Syria was the work of the President Bashar al-Assad.

However, while I see Boris on my television virtually every night, he has yet to offer one single shred of evidence that Assad, and his Syrian government, are actually the perpetrators.

Boris is actually an American, born to wealthy parents in the Upper East Side of New York during June 1964. He is Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs under the current Conservative government. I voted for the Conservatives, but regret it every time I see or hear Boris.

We now have to endure this rather mad-looking Eton-educated lad who has no foreign experience.

And yet we have to suffer this man as the British expert on foreign affairs.