This is something to think about
Wake up! The migrant crisis is here now but in just a year or two it might be WAR
That thing coming down the track can not, to me, look like the biggest humanitarian crisis since World War Two without bringing World War Three slithering along behind
It would be very nice if the world worked the way it ought to.
It doesn't.
The world works the way it always has - vicious and thoughtless, with occasional patches of decency.
That's why when children drown in their thousands in the Mediterranean we don't notice until one washes up under our noses, with a name and a parent.
And it's also why we don't think about what's coming down the line if it's likely to be bad.
Public opinion instead pivots on single, emotive events which have been in the past so long there's frankly little merit in getting upset.
Syria has been at war for five years. ISIS first sprouted legs in 2003, helped declare the Islamic State of Iraq in 2006 and went into Syria in 2011. It adopted its current form in 2013 and last year declared a caliphate which now controls the lives of 10million people in Iraq, Syria, Libya and parts of Nigeria.
The fact that 6.5million people are displaced within Syria, 3million have fled to neighbouring countries and 150,000 have claimed asylum in the EU would surely have informed anyone with a brain that there was a problem.
But no, it's come as a surprise in the summer of 2015.
And because we were surprised, we panicked. We put up fences, conflated refugees with migrants, threatened to deport them, declared we were full then with one dead toddler said: "Oh s***."
Had we thought quicker, and harder, we'd have set up migrant and refugee reception centres at the crossing points. We'd have given those in need a place to wash, visa forms and an option other than relying on the mafia.
We'd have made sure, too, that the entire EU treated everyone the same - rather than allowing Hungary for example to turn down 90% of asylum claims, forcing its refugees to move on if they want fair treatment in a friendlier country.
And it's not the sort where the most exciting it will get is some video game footage on the evening news.
ISIS and its sister organisations terrorise 8% of the world's landmass
War, in all its horror. War that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a war of superpowers, of modern technology and medieval cruelty.
I don't want war. I don't like war. My grandad never went abroad again after fighting through the last one, and it was so bad he refused to speak of it for half a century.
But I can smell it in the air, like a corpse downwind. And the sooner public opinion gets its boots on and deals with it, the less we will panic, the sooner we fight, and the sooner we will win.
Refugees are not the crisis - what they're fleeing is
Wars are different every time, but like a thread on a screw they turn the same way.
First come the refugees, and the world panics and worries about them when what they're running from is the real problem.
In this instance, the refugees are running away from ISIS on the one hand and the barrel bombs of their own government on the other, both of them using weapons we made, sold, or ennabled.
Behind them comes the monster - and the man steering our country while we enter its waters makes the captain of the Titanic look like a seafaring genius.
The full story here Wake up! The migrant crisis is here now but in just a year or two it might be WAR - Fleet Street Fox - Mirror Online
Wake up! The migrant crisis is here now but in just a year or two it might be WAR
That thing coming down the track can not, to me, look like the biggest humanitarian crisis since World War Two without bringing World War Three slithering along behind
It would be very nice if the world worked the way it ought to.
It doesn't.
The world works the way it always has - vicious and thoughtless, with occasional patches of decency.
That's why when children drown in their thousands in the Mediterranean we don't notice until one washes up under our noses, with a name and a parent.
And it's also why we don't think about what's coming down the line if it's likely to be bad.
Public opinion instead pivots on single, emotive events which have been in the past so long there's frankly little merit in getting upset.
Syria has been at war for five years. ISIS first sprouted legs in 2003, helped declare the Islamic State of Iraq in 2006 and went into Syria in 2011. It adopted its current form in 2013 and last year declared a caliphate which now controls the lives of 10million people in Iraq, Syria, Libya and parts of Nigeria.
The fact that 6.5million people are displaced within Syria, 3million have fled to neighbouring countries and 150,000 have claimed asylum in the EU would surely have informed anyone with a brain that there was a problem.
But no, it's come as a surprise in the summer of 2015.
And because we were surprised, we panicked. We put up fences, conflated refugees with migrants, threatened to deport them, declared we were full then with one dead toddler said: "Oh s***."
Had we thought quicker, and harder, we'd have set up migrant and refugee reception centres at the crossing points. We'd have given those in need a place to wash, visa forms and an option other than relying on the mafia.
We'd have made sure, too, that the entire EU treated everyone the same - rather than allowing Hungary for example to turn down 90% of asylum claims, forcing its refugees to move on if they want fair treatment in a friendlier country.
And it's not the sort where the most exciting it will get is some video game footage on the evening news.
ISIS and its sister organisations terrorise 8% of the world's landmass
War, in all its horror. War that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a war of superpowers, of modern technology and medieval cruelty.
I don't want war. I don't like war. My grandad never went abroad again after fighting through the last one, and it was so bad he refused to speak of it for half a century.
But I can smell it in the air, like a corpse downwind. And the sooner public opinion gets its boots on and deals with it, the less we will panic, the sooner we fight, and the sooner we will win.
Refugees are not the crisis - what they're fleeing is
Wars are different every time, but like a thread on a screw they turn the same way.
First come the refugees, and the world panics and worries about them when what they're running from is the real problem.
In this instance, the refugees are running away from ISIS on the one hand and the barrel bombs of their own government on the other, both of them using weapons we made, sold, or ennabled.
Behind them comes the monster - and the man steering our country while we enter its waters makes the captain of the Titanic look like a seafaring genius.
The full story here Wake up! The migrant crisis is here now but in just a year or two it might be WAR - Fleet Street Fox - Mirror Online
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