Bill Humphrey

About Bill Humphrey

Bill Humphrey is the primary host of WVUD's Arsenal For Democracy talk radio show and a local elected official.

UK gov’t ok’d nerve gas ingredient export to Syria

Nearly a year into the brutal Syrian Civil War, the British coalition government somehow decided to issue a license for a UK firm to export to Syria the chemical components used in sarin gas manufacturing. To a regime known to hold chemical weapons. In the middle of a civil war. The exports were only blocked by external, EU trade sanctions added 6 months later.

No.10 Downing Street (the office of the prime minister) says this was “the system working.”

What? You don’t authorize companies to send dual-use weaponizable chemicals to a dictator during a war. That’s just common sense. 

Syria vote a game-changer for UK?

The British media is very worked up (Slate) over the failed vote for Syria military action in the British parliament, because it could alter the domestic balance of power permanently.

When your country doesn’t have a formal constitution and governance operates entirely on precedents and norms, any big reversals for the government are game-changing for the country. Unlike the US security state, the trend in Britain is often to take power away. For example, it will now be a matter of expectation that all future military action be authorized by parliament (except perhaps in emergency self-defense).

Surprise: UK parliament revolts on Syria

Huge news from Britain as a massive parliamentary revolt blocks British intervention in Syria. David Cameron’s plans in shambles as his own party (even in the House of Lords) goes rogue and joins Labour rebels in unexpectedly voting down military action completely. Cameron already promised not to use force without Commons authorization, which he then failed to get.

White House delays Syria air strikes

The U.S. White House is delaying the start of Western air strikes on Syria until the British parliament can vote on it during a special session this week, but it has no plans of asking for a special session of the U.S. Congress. So if I understand this correctly, major policy decisions affecting America get a vote in the British parliament but not here at home? Didn’t we stop that with the American Revolution?

Would bombing Syria solve much?

A Guardian commentator critiques Tony Blair’s call to arms against Syria, arguing that it won’t make any difference.

“I am not saying that armed intervention is always mistaken. If it could help fix things, or even improve them, all well and good. And that is where a plan comes in. But if the logic is simply that Assad is a 24-carat wrong-un, that his use of chemical weapons against his own people is a moral outrage, therefore we need to act – then we are doing little more than satisfying our own sense of retributive morality, and one that has become blurred with a large dollop of action-hero crap.”

I’m actually a Blair Doctrine person myself, but I have various common-sense qualifiers the man himself never applies to situations. When applied to Syria, it’s very clear we shouldn’t intervene, in my opinion. And I think if you’re broadly pro-intervention along the lines of the Blair Doctrine, you have to also exercise restraint in some cases (picking your battles literally) or else you won’t be able to intervene in other situations where you can do some good. We can’t intervene everywhere so we shouldn’t try or we’ll be able to intervene nowhere. 

AFD 54: Financial Crimes and Peacekeeping

Latest Episode:
“AFD Ep 54 – Financial Crimes and Peacekeeping”
Posted: Tues, 27 August 2013

Bill and Persephone discuss the Justice Department’s prosecution of financial crimes from the 2008 crisis — which makes Bill frustrated — and then examine the UN peacekeeping mission in the DR Congo.

U.S. still shouldn’t intervene in Syria

Stephen Walt provides a key comment on Syria (in an interesting NYT discussion):

“The brutal nature of the Assad regime has been apparent for decades, and its forces have already killed thousands with conventional means. Does it really matter whether Assad is killing his opponents using 500-pound bombs, mortar shells, cluster munitions, machine guns, icepicks or sarin gas? Dead is dead, no matter how it is done.”

tomahawk-missile-launch-200I agree with that. There are international norms and laws against using chemical weapons, but unfortunately the calculus still shouldn’t change because the consequences of a U.S. intervention and the ability to execute the goal of the intervention haven’t changed just because chemical weapons are in use now. Intervention will either fail to achieve anything or it will drag the U.S. into a fresh catastrophe we can ill afford by any measurement. Or both. And without UN authorization (or a provocation against a NATO member such as Turkey), a Western military operation would be illegal.