I had a strange job during Gulf Two. I had to keep the BBC website alive.

Or at least the BBC homepage, bbc.co.uk. It was – along with Friends eeceunited, Napster and AOL – one of the UK’s most popular websites in 2003.

Fortunately the task didn’t require much work.

If demand for the site got to a certain level I had to break into the HTML, turning the site into a simpler version of itself which would load more quickly. If the site got hacked somebody would call me up and tell me what to do. I was pretty scared of this eventuality, but it didn’t happen. Instead I watched events unfold on various TV screens.

As it was a night shift, I stayed in a hotel round the corner from Bush House – sleeping during the day. Just me and lots of screens all night. Frankly, not much to do but watch the screens.

I noticed the repetition of the same few successful ‘target strikes’, I got to know them like an iconic sporting highlight. They think it’s all over.

It was a bit like a computer game. It was exciting. The targets were always a military vehicle in a desert: nothing ever missed.

I was curious about this; at one time there were six released videos. But there had been several sorties. What happened to these?

There must have been missiles that missed, targets which were located in towns:  a missile hit a building but damage another building which isn’t the target. But it was always a cross hair direct hit.

And the same time, they were talking of the thousands of missions that were being carried out. And I realised that the ratio of ‘missions carried out’ to ‘released footage’ is usually several thousands to one.

It wasn’t deliberate bias on the behalf of the duty news editor in charge of a particular bulletin. Anybody in that position would have to show the best available images. But the cumulative effect was inevitably misleading. Wide shots of the strikes in built up areas, close ups of the successful hits of isolated targets.

There were no outright lies, as you get with Russian and Iranian state television.

But what people saw on television, and therefore how they perceived the conflict, but was based on a highly edited selection of footage. The editors were the military: they chose what we got to see. They didn’t bother with a bloopers reel.

The decision to bomb or not is not one to be taken lightly. It is grave. You are making a decision to kill at least some people who are innocent. You would think the best available information should be used. You would think that this decision could be one which transcends party politics.

(It’s more accurate to say ‘the decision whether to join more fully in US-led bombing campaign which has been going on for the last year.’ France, Qatar and even Canada have been involved in strikes, and the UK’s role has been to support strikes with things like reconnaissance and air to air refuelling. You could argue that an extensive bombing campaign should  have brought Isis to their knees, rather than seen a period of unprecedented growth in the organisation.

Since Russia got involved, several hundred non combatants have been killed directly in bombing, but several thousand more civilians have been killed by the Assad regime. Russia still backs Assad. It’s very hard to verify exact figures, but it is acknowledged that US strikes have killed many more civilians than Isis since strikes began: more than 100 children amongst them)

In this context, the name-calling by certain sections of the media and the leaders we pay to govern us is an embarrassment.

The ‘consensus’ on Corbyn, according to the Telegraph, is that he is an ‘unelectable embarrassment’, and the party is gripped by some sort of madness or delusion. His supporters? An ‘online subspecies’.

Wow. Whatever you think of the guy, and his solutions to solving the world’s problems, it seems pretty vitriolic. People who think differently to you are not even human any more, and mentally unstable. You are either on the team or so worthy of contempt as to be no longer a person.

This is the opposition to the strikes – belittled and idiotic, a loony fringe. The photographs of him are carefully selected too, just like the air strikes. They capture him looking rabid, or ridiculous. It’s a version of the truth. In cartoons he is even worse. He is not on the team. His ‘Nuclear armageddon? No thanks.’ stance marks him out as  dangerous

Instead we have the patriotism, the flags: in fact the colours the shapes on the flag. People will go to war for colours and shapes, or rather these days support other people to do so.

When the bombing starts, it gets worse. I remember people cheered on the bus, when they announced the start of Gulf One in 1990. All sixth form kids. Did they have combat experience? A sound knowledge of foreign affairs and the complicated geo political tensions affecting the region?

No. They had been whipped up to a fervour by the media, waving the flag on their behalf. Colours and shapes. The bad guy. Saddam Hussein is evil they said. But we provided them with the weapons, I explained to largely uninterested peers. [This continues to be a factor admittedly]. We trained his troops and literally sold him some of his weapons. Maybe a more long term solution would be to not do this? And why are you cheering when you know that innocents will die?

Albeit innocents who look different to you, and eat different food.

We learnt new words. Human shields. Collateral damage. Friendly fire. They launched sneak attacks, we launched surprise attacks. They cowered, we used stealth.

Now we hear about ‘targeted bombing’. This was used as the reason why this bombing would work this time around as opposed to the other bombings which didn’t work and which killed innocent people and bred more terrorists. Targeted bombing sounds so much better than plain old bombing, but every bomb ever dropped has been aimed at a target in some way.

I hear there are Jihadis in Brussels: if targeted bombing works, why not bomb Belgium? Because we know we would accidentally kill some innocent Belgians, I suspect.

Of course we are ‘better’ at bombing: technology has improved since Britain first bombed Iraq.

(Britain first bombed Iraq in 1920. 100,000 British and Indian troops had been involved in a costly ground war; they adopted a policy called ‘aerial policing’ for reasons of cost. It didn’t really work.)

We don’t drop bombs over the side of a biplane any more, but we do make mistakes.

It didn’t last long on the news bulletins last week, but the report on the US bombing of the MSF clinic where my friend Declan worked is very revealing. And depressing. Human error and bad systems, basically.

It’s a reminder that ‘targeted air strikes’ is an aspirational phrase.

We get to hear about the bombing of an MSF hospital because there were so many international staff involved; MSF has a media team and people lobby in its behalf. If they had been poor Afghanis, would there have even been an enquiry?

This is the kind of data which should be discussed, for the right choice to be made. But we have politicians talking instead.

You may still feel that bombing is the way forward, and I understand that view. It may be the best solution.

That I personally feel that it isn’t, is less important; politicians and those who influence them should come to make this decision based on facts and evidence, away from hysteria.

Away from language which George Orwell, in 1946, described as ‘designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.’

He went for the political left as well as much as the political right in this regard, as well as advertisers and politicians; but he reserved a special vitriol for those who mask the reality of war with language designed to confuse.

‘The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink…

Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.’

Defenceless villages like Idlib. Never heard of it? Bombs hit a crowded marketplace there on Sunday. At least 40 dead.

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Fighting an idea with violence.

Is doomed to fail.

Because you can’t kill everybody who has that idea.

This is particularly true with extremist ideologies, which have at their heart the concept of martyrdom.

It’s like the 1980s arcade game Asteroids.

You shoot the asteroid and create several more.

They need martyrs.

Because this is a promise of eternal life in heaven.

Do you see how killing people who believe in this is not a deterrent?

It is the opposite.

‘It’s because of Islam, right?’

Well no. I’m secular please don’t blame me for Stalin or Hitler or Pol Pot.

There are more than a billion people who are Muslims, the best guess for Isis troop strength seems to be about 20 – 30, 000. So do the maths. I can’t.

They want this ‘us versus them’ illusion, like we are so different. This binary clash of civilisations falsehood is a thing they encourage. It’s clearly not true.

I’m lucky to have been to several countries in the Arab world – which isn’t a great phrase as they bicker amongst themselves as much as people in ‘the Christian world’ or ‘the West’ or whatever it is.

Always had a good time. Always met nice people. Always felt incredibly welcomed. Always felt embarrassed how people wouldn’t let me pay for stuff: even taxi drivers.

‘You are from England? Be my guest, don’t pay.’

Wow. A taxi driver letting you off the fare. Let that sink in.

So he ruined it by telling me how much he liked Top Gear, which is apparently big in the Middle East, but this act of kindness has stuck in my mind.

Chaos theory is nonsense of course, a butterfly flapping its wings doesn’t change anything, but an act of kindness can stick in your mind and have this effect. So anybody who I think might be racist about ‘the Arabs’ gets the cab driver story from me, plus a few other stories of kindness shown to me by people from other countries, and in theory maybe they won’t be racist to people who will take offence and become a jihadist.

Even if this doesn’t work, being kind to people from other communities is quite a nice thing to do for its own sake.

But people support them in the region?

No. Read the Isis in-house magazine.

(you really should do this. Know your enemy, and don’t let a third party interpret their ideas for you. It’s here: http://www.clarionproject.org/news/islamic-state-isis-isil-propaganda-magazine-dabiq )

It’s packed with criticism of other Muslims.

They hate other Muslims, other Muslims hate them.

Like Millwall, they don’t care.

Their interpretation of the Koran is obsessed with death and the apocalypse and is not widely shared by most Muslims.

Their recruitment tool is victimhood.

The West hate us so we will destroy the West.

They succeed.

I saw a profile picture on a Facebook

‘I hate Islam’

Brilliant.

If you are Isis.

This is exactly what they want.

They want to generate a bit of hatred, some of it will take hold: recruitment.

In the style of a Vis Top Tip:

World Leaders – stop bombing the wrong people.

That would also help.

Innocent people being bombed is an excellent recruitment tool for violent extremists.

It generates revenge and martyrdom

Not in many people.

But you only need a tiny tiny percentage, as discussed.

Injustice breeds extremism.

Mosques became the centre of revolt in countries which were occupied by Europeans or which were governed by dictators who were backed by the West, because they couldn’t close the mosques.

Isis could only exist in opposition to the Assad regimes which were propped up by the rest of the world for decades. Nearly 50 years of human rights abuses, states of emergency, torture, detention without trial. So an ethical foreign policy would help.

So what to do?

Acknowledge history.

In Algeria the French secret police would drop rebel leaders into the sea from helicopters, and then go on to train the Argentinian Junta in how to torture people.

In Paris in 1961 the secret police murdered dozens of Algerians, and dropped them into the Seine. Nobody knows how many.

This is context: It should not need stating that this does not justify any acts of revenge, decades later. But I get the impression that a lot of people don’t get this context.

If you are Russian, vote out your leaders who are instrumental in blocking unilateral action in the region, and contributing to the ongoing civil war.

If you are a world leader: put pressure  on China who seem to be backing Russia’s stance on the Assad regime out of old habits.

Beware the language of conflict.

‘This is targeted bombing though,’ somebody said.

I will decide the adjectives, thanks.

All bombing in the history of the world has been described by those carrying it out as targeted. It looks amazing in the videos they release when the bombs hit the right target. And you don’t get to see the rest.

Jihadi John is possibly dead, said the authorities days before Beirut and Paris were attacked.

‘We’ll know from his phone records. If he stops using his phone, he’s dead. The vehicle we hit is too mangled for us to be sure.’

Nobody is talking about the bombing of Jihadi John now: whether it was a successful assassination or the killing of another innocent.

‘Collateral damage’ being the phrase they used to describe the killing of innocent people by accident, a word deliberately used in order to minimise how bad it is to kill somebody by mistake as part of your conflict. In the kind of places where some people think that life matters a bit less.

The idea that ‘violent death and taking down some people with you and then heaven’ is ‘better than life in its current form’ tends to come from places where life isn’t so great in the first place.

Palestinian kids do this; no job, no future, suicide by running into Israeli soldiers. A version of ‘suicide by cop’. You end up on a poster of martyrs.

Some young men copy them, in the way they copied Kurt Cobain, even though their circumstances are different.

Give people a better idea.

Give people a better opportunity.

Reduce inequality.

Don’t invade the wrong countries.

Invading countries, I repeat, is not the best way to deal with terrorists: the weapons, infrastructure, ideology, leadership structure, and methods are associated closely with countries which have been invaded.

Campaign against the arms trade and lobby for a reduction in weapons? There’s 100 million AK 47s kicking about so it’s a challenge. It’s an expensive amnesty for sure, but better value than the cost of more and more weapons.

Don’t look to the narrative arc of a violent movie for solutions to complex problems.

Acknowledge and seek measures to uphold human rights. These aren’t perfect, but they are the best tool we have for resolving conflict amongst people and delivering justice.

Education, education, education.

There are some well educated terrorists for sure, plus some who have had every opportunity in life. But most aren’t. The countries with the poorest and least educated people generate the most terrorists and suffer the most from acts of terror.

When one of the failed London bombers was captured: he grovelled.

He mentioned human rights

‘I have human rights you know’

My first thought:

‘Human rights?

After attempting to murder people?

How dare you?

You’ve forfeited those through your actions’

A bit later I thought:

‘You do have human rights; because they are inalienable. You cannot take them away. Your scummy actions will not cause me to change my view on this, nor cause me to deny you your rights. The right to justice, a fair trial.

By not allowing your action to change my view on human rights, we can be seen to be carrying out justice. My instinct might be to put a bullet in your cowardly face* has the potential to cause another injustice, for all the world to see. People might cheer me on, but why create another martyr? Because we know that martyrdom, along with  Islamophobia, is a key recruiting tool.’

(* I wasn’t there incidentally. I just read about it)

You may carry out inhuman wrongs. You may choose this path. You may parade your ‘prisoners’ and demand ransom. We should have nothing to do with it.

The subsequent appeals, incidentally, failed. The way in which they were arrested, questioned and offered legal representation were found in the European Court of Human Rights were found to be exemplary. I’m sure it cost a lot of tax money to establish this. But better than the alternative, to waste the guy.

To actually bend the rules. To say – actually, because you are terrorists, we will deny you your human rights it’s a special case.

Because then you allow terrorists to dilute your commitment to human rights, to make you do bad things.

ISIS captives wear orange, in a parody of those held at Guantanamo Bay.

Guantanamo Bay is exactly what violent extremists had in mind. The perfect recruitment tool. Torture and humiliate your enemies, deny them rights.

Beware, too, the revenge stories told using the laser guided language of technology.

That you can ‘take people out’ with ‘targeted’ or ‘clinical’ or ‘precision’ strikes.

People live with people. Have you ever seen an explosion? You will frequently  get the people you want to kill, but not others.

You know how angry ‘we’ are because of the killing of innocents? That’s how angry other people get when you kill innocent people too. Even if they are unlucky enough to live in the same town as people belonging to this awful nihilistic, apocalyptic, ignorant, bullying, illogical, incoherent death cult.

It’s a category fail. Similar to the category fail that, in the minds of Isis which sees all people in Paris as a legitimate target. Be better.

I’ve heard it said we should close our borders.

Great. Maybe do that, maybe stop rock concerts too, because they are clearly a risk. Shut the borders, forget about human rights and stop people from traveling?

I don’t want to live in that place.

Mostly there’s not much we can do. And getting angry just makes it all much worse.

Learn about the conflicts around the world. Vote for people with integrity, look to build bridges. Be nicer to each other that before. Give some money to people fleeing violence who come from poor countries if you can afford it.

Choose life innit.