28. 8 13.
Another letter in The Guardian today - this time on the Syrian situation. It was badly cut but got a main point across. Below is the link to today's letters page, and the original text I sent in.

link: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/27/syria-problem-responsibility-to-protect

bottom letter

Full text:

Why is money always found for wars abroad and not enough found to feed and care for our own people? How can we ever think of gathering resources and sending young people to die in yet another little understood conflict, when so many Britons are hungry, our health care is threatened, and our education system and culture is being daily trashed. When will we learn that the counties that do NOT go to foreign wars - China, Germany, the Nordic countries, Brazil, etc. - have economies that thrive?

The use of chemical weapons is appalling but so is cruise missiles, machetes, water-boardings, imprisonment without trail, etc..

Please let's stop parading on the world stage like wound-up ancient tin soldiers who don't know when or how to stop! Let's look at the motes in our own eyes first, and learn. Let's refuse to go anywhere again without a water-tight UN mandate and then only as a very small cog in a huge global exercise designed to heal Syria rather than cause further harm.

Let's force the world to move beyond war as a solution, before we lose the earth altogether!