If there is to be hope for the Syrian people, the first step is for all foreign interference to cease. Only then can Syrians renew the task of taking possession of their own country.

What Obama has done will only fan the flames of a proxy war in Syria that may yet end up turning what is already a terrible tragedy into a catastrophic regional war.

Washington's excuse for its new Middle East adventure – that it must arm the rebels because the Syrian regime has used sarin gas against them – convinces no-one in the Middle East.

If Tony Blair's suggestion of no-fly zones in Syria become a reality, it would almost certainly presage a war throughout the Middle East and perhaps beyond.

Once you send in small arms, next comes anti-tank weapons, anti-aircraft missiles and before you know it, you're bombing Syrian airports and imposing a no-fly zone.

Western military intervention will leave Syria in permanent ruins say two former Nato secretary generals

Rather than secure humanitarian space and empower a political transition, Western military engagement is likely to provoke further escalation on all sides, deepening the civil war.

The United States and its European allies want regime change in Syria, and they are prepared to allow many more people to die to make it so.

The real objective of the anti-Assad forces is full-scale western military intervention: that needs to be understood before going down the road marked "arming the rebels".

No doubt as the war escalates we will be told that there should be more intervention in order to end the war, but at every stage such intervention has only escalated it.

By successfully ending the EU embargo on arms for the rebels Britain and France will not bring talks nearer, as they pretend, but make them unlikely to take place at all.

'Hothead' for war, UK foreign secretary William Hague, wants to escalate western intervention regardless of the consequences that more militarisation will have for the Syrian people.

Is the US orchestrating a lot of arms shipments, sending intelligence information to various militias, and generally meddling in a very complicated and uncertain conflict?

After the fiasco over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, people around the world are rightly sceptical about claims of gas attacks in Syria.

US involvement in Syria is risking regional war that could include Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Israel, Iran, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, with the potential to drag in the bigger powers.

In their seeming urgency to present a case for war, BBC reporters have neglected factual accuracy of reported events and very much taken their lead from Western governments.

The demand by Cameron and other western politicians to increase the flow of arms is reckless and cynical, and will certainly ratchet up the death toll and spread the war.