MIKE HEDGES AM CRITICISES DECISION TO BOMB SYSRIA IN ASSEMBLY DEBATE

MIKE HEDGES AM CRITICISES DECISION TO BOMB SYSRIA IN ASSEMBLY DEBATE.

Speaking after the debate, Mike Hedges said…. ‘I have real concerns about what the UK Government is trying to achieve in Syria. Of course use of Chemical weapons should be condemned outright, but is military action going to lead to peace in Syria and the wider region. Use of Military Force in an area of long standing conflicts has rarely had the outcomes that were sought, and many innocent people have lost their lives in the process.

Surely sanctions and talks have a better chance of providing a long term solution to the issues in Syria.

Speech

Mike Hedges AM - Can I first of all say I voted in favour of having this debate? The second thing is: I'm very pleased to find that Theresa May has found this infamous money tree in order to be able to fund the bombing of Syria. I also think, if we live in a parliamentary democracy, the Westminster Parliament should have had an opportunity to vote on whether we went to war and attacked another country or not, and we didn't have to work to Donald Trump's timetable. If you look at what we've done so far, we wanted to bomb Syria, which would only have helped Assad, which would have helped Isis. Then, we bombed Isis to help Assad. Now, we're back bombing Assad, which would only help Isis. It's almost as if our policy is, 'Can we keep this civil war going for as long as possible?'577

We didn't bomb the site of the chemical weapons, thankfully. How do I know that? Because thousands and millions of people didn't die. Because if you bomb chemical weapon plants, the chemicals get put out into the atmosphere. The whole of the Middle East could have been covered in whatever chemical weapons are meant to be there. 'Ah', you say, 'they haven't been mixed yet'. Well, let's say they haven't been mixed—when you bomb them, what do you think you're going to do with the chemicals but mix them? If you bombed a chlorine plant we would have created absolute havoc. But we seem to have a policy of bombing for peace. It reminds me of the medieval idea of bleeding people to make them better. Neither work. 578

We really do need to intervene in Syria. It worked so well in Iraq and it's worked so well in Libya. After so much success—. Somebody once said, when we used to partition countries, 'It hadn't worked yet, but we hoped the next time would.' The next time never worked. Bombing countries never works. This can only be solved by negotiation, and we need to get peace in the Middle East and we need to get peace in Syria. And the other thing is: there is a worse case happening in the world today, and that is Yemen: the unthought of, unspoken area, where children are dying daily, but because Saudi Arabia are involved, the west is frightened to get involved.