Our news channels continue to be dominated by the Middle East refugee crisis with heart breaking images causing distress to anybody with a conscience and outrage on social media (as if that is going to help solve the problem). Meanwhile, opposition party leaders gain television exposure, wringing their hands and appearing close to breakdown as they urge our government to take in yet more refugees.

This humanitarian crisis is often referred to as a European crisis but it is not, it is a world crisis and, according to many experts is the worst humanitarian crisis since the Second World War. The whole world therefore needs to get together to assist and take in as many of these poor wretched people as possible and as quickly as possible. This includes other Arab countries, particularly the oil rich Gulf States, who don’t appear to be doing that much at present to help their fellow Arabs.

This will help alleviate the immediate crisis. However, the refugee crisis itself is not the problem, it is a tragic symptom of the problem. The problem is the continuous unrest in the Middle East, the savagery of the Assad regime in Syria and the psychopaths of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. These problems must first be dealt with if the area is to gain stability and it will not occur through Western bombing raids and drone strikes alone.

The West, sooner or later, is going to have to brace itself for more direct action because this crisis is not going to go away. I quote, not for the first time in this blog, the great 17^th century politician, Edmund Burke, who said “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” He was right back then and equally so now.

There’s an old saying that you should be careful what you wish for and this has been illustrated perfectly over the last few days with details emerging of the latest Islamic State (IS) atrocities against the West.

When Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi  were the brutal dictators of Iraq and Libya respectively the West united to remove them from power by bombing Gaddafi into submission and in the case of Saddam, invading his country. The West also gave tacit encouragement (and in some cases aid) to facilitate regime change in Tunisia and Egypt during the so-called Arab Spring of 2011.

The problem was that our leaders never gave thought, or at least enough thought, as to what would happen once those changes had occurred and who would rule those countries in place of the removed tyrants.

As we know, the void was filled in virtually every case by Muslim extremists and worse still, those extremists have formed a new Caliphate (Islamic State) which is hell-bent on destroying everything and everybody that doesn’t fit in with its warped view of humanity. That Caliphate couldn’t possibly have been created had the West left Iraq and Saddam Hussein alone.

So, as we mourn the deaths of at least 30 British tourists slaughtered on a Tunisian Beach last Friday and the death of a French businessman beheaded by his Muslim employee, his head then tied to the factory fence, we must wonder what and who is next. There will be further atrocities, of that there can be no doubt.

Eventually, the West will have to take direct action and put men on the ground to confront the evil of IS. Those further atrocities will mean it has no choice. In the meantime our leaders can ponder on another old saying, when reviewing the removal of Saddam, Gaddafi and others, better the devil you know than the one you don’t.

At the start of next month a new law enters the American statute book. It is actually an extension of an existing law nicknamed the “Good Samaritan Law” which was passed to allow people to lawfully break into a car if they saw a child trapped inside.

The law is now to be extended to cover animals so that if, for example, you were to see a dog locked in a car, gasping for breath on a hot sunny day you could break into the car and rescue the animal without fear of criminal prosecution or any civil liability to the car owner.

The move has been welcomed by animal welfare groups concerned by numerous incidents of dogs left in locked cars in the heat of summer to literally roast to death or die of asphyxiation. Opponents of the law say that it smacks of big brother but if it means that people remember to leave their car windows open when locking pets inside then surely, it is a good thing.

Anyway, irrespective of legislation, I would hope that any decent human being could not ignore and walk past a locked car containing distressed infants or animals on a hot day. The first action would be to quickly try to find the owner of the car but if that proved fruitless the second would be to force entry or break the window and then face the legal consequences. Life, human or animal, is too important for any other response.

Vladimir Putin is apparently going to use next weekend’s celebration of the Soviet (and Allied) defeat of the Nazis in 1945 to showcase the launch of the world’s most formidable tank, the Russian T14 Armata. This tank is evidently far superior to anything possessed by the West and its launch comes at a time when Russian military expenditure has reached levels greater than any since the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991.

It’s funny how history repeats itself and no matter how far we may think we have developed or how much we may think things have changed they often remain constant. In the 19^th century the British Empire and Russia were deadly rivals and although that rivalry only came to open warfare once (the Crimean War, 1853-6) Russian imperialism was a huge threat throughout that century to Britain’s imperial and economic interests.

Of course, the Empire is long gone and Great Britain is no longer a major player but the Russian threat  remains, as events in Crimea and Ukraine have clearly demonstrated over the last couple of years. Modern politicians would do well to heed the words of Lord Palmerston, British Prime Minister who warned over 150 years ago that,

“The policy and practice of the Russian Government has always been to push forward its encroachments as fast and as far as the apathy or want of firmness of other Governments would allow it to go, but always to stop and retire when it met with decided resistance and then to wait for the next favourable opportunity.”

A copy of this speech should be sent to President Obama and to all those in the West who think that Putin’s Russia can be mollified by platitudes and appeasement. “Decided resistance” and not “apathy or want of firmness” is clearly required as much in the 21^st century as it was two centuries earlier.

Saturday, April 4th, saw the 47th anniversary of the murder of Martin Luther King on the second floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, an event that always resonates whenever I visit Memphis, or Atlanta where Dr King is buried.

Martin Luther King along with Ghandi and Nelson Mandela was undoubtedly one of the towering figures of last century’s struggle for equality and basic human rights, a struggle in the first two cases certainly, of peaceful protest.

It is therefore both sad and depressing to turn on the television and learn of yet more atrocities committed in the name of race or religion such as the weekend’s brutal slaughter of over 148 people, mainly young students, at a university in Kenya.

Has humanity learned nothing from the actions of these great men?

I heard an uplifting story (in more than one sense!) earlier this week about a former US fighter pilot who recently set a record as the world’s oldest active pilot. Pete Weber, from California and a veteran of both World War II and the Korean War established his record in the presence of his 70 year old son who videoed the whole flight.

To those who know Pete, the achievement was evidently no big surprise since he has always been something of a daredevil. He even turned up four hours late for his own wedding due to engine failure which caused him to crash land his plane in a corn field earlier that day! His bride’s irritation, no doubt tempered by relief, soon abated and they are still happily married 72 years later!

It just proves that, body and spirit willing, you are never too old to do or try anything. Better to regret a failure to succeed than a failure to try at all.

As for old Pete, there’s a saying that old pilots never die they just fly higher! Let’s hope it’s a good few years before he makes his final flight!