West's wars of choice target the weak
The vote by British lawmakers in the House of Commons late last month against attacking Syria was widely hailed as unprecedented in modern times. This is the same House of Commons that voted, with huge majorities, for military aggression
against Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya - the last in this very parliament - with devastating consequences.
It is the same House that has never opposed Britain's role in hugely destructive sanctions on Iran, North Korea and Iraq: sanctions known, and arguably designed, to inflict pain on the civilian populations, and reaching genocidal proportions in the last case according to two high-level UN officials.
It is the same House that routinely votes through legislation not only allowing people to be detained without charge, but now stripped of their citizenship so they can be drone-blitzed without government embarrassment.
A case of parliament vetoing military action proposed by the government is so rare that newspapers have reminded us that you have to go back as far as 1782 to find another example; in that case Lord North's plea, at the behest of George III, to continue fighting the American independence movement even after the disastrous and pivotal defeat at Yorktown.
in full: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-03-060913.html
