I’m not a natural Guardian reader. I view it as a bit of a rag, like almost all the media. But I can’t help reading George Monbiot’s column in the Guardian every Tuesday. He invariably lifts the lid on something our political masters would rather remained out of sight and mind. Monbiot’s articles are well argued and he always posts a fully referenced version on his weblog.
This week is no exception. In Why stop at Isis when we could bomb the whole Muslim world? Monbiot totally destroys any pretence our masters have for their actions in the Middle East. I give you a few extracts:

Let’s bomb the Muslim world — all of it — to save the lives of its people. Surely this is the only consistent moral course? Why stop at Islamic State (Isis), when the Syrian government has murdered and tortured so many? This, after all, was last year’s moral imperative. What’s changed?
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The humanitarian arguments aired in parliament last week, if consistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East and west Asia … Perhaps this is the plan: Barack Obama has now bombed seven largely Muslim countries, in each case citing a moral imperative.
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Now we have a new target, and a new reason to dispense mercy from the sky, with similar prospects of success. Yes, the agenda and practices of Isis are disgusting. It murders and tortures, terrorises and threatens. As Obama says, it is a “network of death”. But it’s one of many networks of death. Worse still, a western crusade appears to be exactly what Isis wants.
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More than 6,000 fighters have joined Isis since the bombardment began. They dangled the heads of their victims in front of the cameras as bait for war planes. And our governments were stupid enough to take it.
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Never mind the question, the answer is bombs. In the name of peace and the preservation of life, our governments wage perpetual war.
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There are no good solutions that military intervention by the UK or the US can engineer. There are political solutions in which our governments could play a minor role … Whenever our armed forces have bombed or invaded Muslim nations, they have made life worse for those who live there.
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Yet our politicians affect to learn nothing. Insisting that more killing will magically resolve deep-rooted conflicts, they scatter bombs like fairy dust.

He is pointing the finger at David Cameron and Barak Ombama, but previous governments — specifically Tony Blair and George W Bush — are at least as culpable.
The argument may be reductio ad absurdum, but he does have a very good point.