The complete idiot’s guide to Mideast peace – part 272

IS says it has beheaded British aid worker David Haines | The Times of Israel   ‘Terror group releases video apparently showing killing, threatens another alleged British captive’

And the not unnatural Western and, in many cases, Eastern response to these acts of barbaric indifference towards human life is what?Something that might be said to border on the very much the same sort of thing. Air strikes may kill IS adherents and the world in general will consider that no great loss to the human gene pool. But the use of air strikes and even ground troops must inevitably cause the deaths of many others, those who unwillingly got in the way, were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Such actions, by their very nature, cannot be confined exclusively to combat personnel and those who are their intended targets.

And yet what else is to be done? Force must be answered with force; words will not prevent what is shaping up as an inevitable clash of arms between the powers-that-be and powers-that-want-to-be. The end result must mean a lot of dead people, many of whom have no wish to fight or die for whatever reasons others might find so important and compulsive.

To win out against so polarised a situation demands a better strategy that just prevailing upon the battlefield whenever the occasion arises. There has to be some additional leverage in place, an overwhelming worldwide commitment to permanently address these matters and all others like them.

www.laxiankey.com  – ‘ for those of us with better things to do.’

Because, if all of us can do no more, then let us at least do this much.