Monday 16 April 2018

Why are the UK establishment class waging ideological war on the OPCW?


Anyone who has been paying attention for the last few weeks must have noticed that the Tory government has launched a sustained ideological attack on the Organisation of the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

This UK establishment attack on the Nobel Peace Prize winning organisation seemed to begin as a means of having a dig at Jeremy Corbyn over his insistence that the rules of the Chemical Weapons Convention should be followed in relation to the Salisbury poisoning.

Seeing Tories and the yapping dogs of the mainstream press attacking and ridiculing the OPCW seemed like the latest absurd manifestation of the anti-Corbyn agenda. It seemed that people were so unhinged in their desperation to criticise Corbyn that they'd actually resort to demeaning and ridiculing an organisation that is dedicated to ridding the world of chemical and biological weapons in order to score points against him.

But then the Syria airstrikes made it absolutely clear that this is way bigger than the myopic anti-Corbyn agenda of the British establishment class, these people have undeniably declared some kind of crazed ideological war on the OPCW.

The first thing that a lot of people noticed was that Theresa May rushed the decision to carry out airstrikes to jump the gun on the OPCW inspectors who were making their way to Douma in order to investigate the alleged chemical weapons attack.

But it doesn't stop there, not only did Theresa May deliberately undermine the OPCW by attacking before their inspectors could establish the facts about her stated justification for the attack, the targets of the attack were Syrian government facilities that had been given the all clear by the OPCW just weeks before.

Claiming that OPCW approved facilities are actually chemical weapons factories and then destroying them is about the most blatant way of undermining the authority of the OPCW you could imagine, especially if it turns out that the UK had intelligence that the site was a chemical weapons plant and they refused to share their information with the OPCW so they could investigate.

And then the UK envoy to the OPCW Peter Wilson has come out swinging to attack the institution with claims that "the time has come for all members of this executive council to take a stand. Too many duck the responsibility that comes with being a member of this council".

What can he possibly mean by this? That the OPCW should come out in support of airstrikes against facilities they green-lighted just weeks beforehand based on an alleged chemical weapons attack they weren't even allowed to investigate before the attacks were launched?

It's as if the UK establishment are desperate to attack and undermine the OPCW because they want to appoint themselves the ultimate moral arbiters on chemical weapons.

They want to be able to launch military attacks against one regime for the alleged use of chemical weapons without presenting their evidence, and without consulting parliament, yet  turn a total blind eye when their allies (Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States) use chemical weapons on civilians.

And perhaps the most ridiculous facet of this British establishment drive to undermine the OPCW and anoint themselves the ultimate moral arbiters of chemical weapons use, is that as recently as 2012 the UK government granted export licences for the sale of Sarin precursor chemicals to Syria!

Of course the UK establishment will try to use misdirection tactics to dress this up as an "us vs them" "good vs evil" conflict between Britain and the baddies ("if you scrutinise us you're siding with Putin/Assad" type nonsense). But it's obvious to anyone who is not a fool that the real debates should be raging over whether the Prime Minister gets to cynically bypass parliament to launch military attacks because she fears she'd lose the vote, and why the UK establishment suddenly seem so hellbent on attacking, sidelining, obstructing, and undermining the work of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

It really is quite simple: If our political establishment class are waging an ideological war against a Nobel Peace Prize winning organisation which is dedicated to the eradication of chemical and biological weapons, maybe, just maybe, they might not be quite the good guys they're trying to portray themselves as?



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