Tragedy in the Mediterranean - and Syria, Iraq and Libya.
David Cameron tried to get preparatory authorisation two years ago to act about the civil war in Syria and the House of Commons denied that authorisation.
We all remember who voted against it.
lf the Prime Minister had won the vote and what he had proposed had worked - and yes, that's a huge "if" - that poor little boy Alan Kurdi, and his brother Ghalib and their mother, both of whom also drowned, would probably be alive today rather than dead on a Turkish beach.
You can make all sorts of legitimate arguments about what action might or might not have ended the carnage in Syria - or better, what might end or at least contain it now.
As long as DA'ESH and Assad are indulging in mass murder, from firing missiles with poison gas at innocent civilians to mass beheadings of anyone of the wrong views on religion, the recreation of slavery and industrialised rape, or throwing gay people off tall buildings, there will be millions of refugees seeking safety, and whether they are found in a lorry or on a beach, some of those desperate refugees are going to take risks which end up killing them.
Instead of indulging in self hatred and blaming ourselves for this, let's use 1% of our attention putting the main blame for all these tragic deaths where it actually belongs - with Bashar Hafez al-Assad and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi - and the rest on trying to come up with a strategy to help.
And although I am not criticising those who say we should do more for refugees - we do need to look seriously and urgently at whether we can do more to help - it is even more important to revisit our approach to the root cause of the problem - e.g. civil war and carnage in Syria, Iraq and Libya.
We all remember who voted against it.
lf the Prime Minister had won the vote and what he had proposed had worked - and yes, that's a huge "if" - that poor little boy Alan Kurdi, and his brother Ghalib and their mother, both of whom also drowned, would probably be alive today rather than dead on a Turkish beach.
You can make all sorts of legitimate arguments about what action might or might not have ended the carnage in Syria - or better, what might end or at least contain it now.
As long as DA'ESH and Assad are indulging in mass murder, from firing missiles with poison gas at innocent civilians to mass beheadings of anyone of the wrong views on religion, the recreation of slavery and industrialised rape, or throwing gay people off tall buildings, there will be millions of refugees seeking safety, and whether they are found in a lorry or on a beach, some of those desperate refugees are going to take risks which end up killing them.
Instead of indulging in self hatred and blaming ourselves for this, let's use 1% of our attention putting the main blame for all these tragic deaths where it actually belongs - with Bashar Hafez al-Assad and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi - and the rest on trying to come up with a strategy to help.
And although I am not criticising those who say we should do more for refugees - we do need to look seriously and urgently at whether we can do more to help - it is even more important to revisit our approach to the root cause of the problem - e.g. civil war and carnage in Syria, Iraq and Libya.
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