WWII veteran: We are headed for a global bloodbath
World War II veteran Harry Leslie Smith has told Middle East Eye that the UK should not bomb Syria, as he fears we are headed for the beginning of the third World War.
The 92-year-old warned that we are headed for a bloodbath and the UK can’t have a proper debate on the decision to bomb Syria because the prime minister calls his opponents “terrorist sympathisers”.
Speaking to Middle East Eye by phone from his home in Canada, Smith said:
“It’s hard to consider this debate legitimate when the prime minister labels those against the bombing of Syria as terrorist sympathisers. I find the words very disturbing and are more in keeping with a tin-pot dictator than a British prime minister.
“The greatest fear I have [is that another world war is imminent] because I’ve seen these moments so many times in the past. And I feel this is the direction we are heading. It’s not a solution (war), it’s just an end for civilisation.
“We have to narrow it down to who are the main culprits in all this. I think we have to stop cosying up to Saudi Arabia because they have been spreading the ideology that underpins IS. We are at a dangerous crossroads in history – a vote for war will cause more harm than good.
“It may also plunge us into another bloodbath that will make the 30 years war (a 17th century religious war in Europe that killed 8 million people) seem like a family squabble.
“The last thing we need [in the UK] is a prime minister who only understands history as a glorious battleground. It’s always the people who take the brunt when a war is declared by a government. The young people are sacrificed to give pride to our rulers who can’t solve anything by debate.
“ISIS is symptom of how the Middle East has been turned into a toxic soup of profiteers and jihadists. I’m just stunned and can envisage the end of all this – the deaths of millions of people who don’t have a loud enough voice to stop our leaders who want to take us into another bloody mess."
