THIS weekend saw people up and down the country show their support for our servicemen and women on Armed Forces Day. Congratulations to all at in the Purfleet Heritage Centre on an excellent event.

The opportunity to visibly support our troops has been embraced all over the country.

It shows that whatever we ask of them, they will deliver and the public will get behind them.

That is a sobering thought for politicians. The truth is that war happens when politics fails. So when we consider military action, we have to make a very sober assessment as to the rights or wrongs of action when we are risking the lives of our brave service personnel.

The morality of intervention is usually an easy one to answer.

We have very firm ideals about freedom and democracy and it is pretty clear when a regime is behaving contrary to that. But it is the practicalities of intervention which are most likely to define whether we get involved.

We need to consider if we have the resources to deliver a sustained operation – we also need to consider the likely resources of our opponents. It is not worth undertaking military intervention unless we can be sure it will achieve an appropriate outcome. Nonetheless, we do need to take action if only to show dictatorial regimes we will not tolerate abuses of human rights. I am angry about the activities of the regime in Syria and the vile crimes it is committing on its own people. President Assad should remember Slobodan Milosevic. Nato used diplomacy as a tool to persuade Milosevic to change his ways.

But he was foolish to reach the conclusion that military intervention wouldn’t occur. When pushed too far, the bombs came. We hope to persuade Syria through diplomatic efforts and have cranked things up a gear. Let’s hope the message gets through.