Susan Dalgety: With children gassed, May had to act

Billy Connolly's most poignant song, Sergeant Where's Mine? asks the impossible question that faces every soldier. 'What do you do with a gun in your hand, when you're faced with a hundred odd weans?'

Theresa May announces at a Downing Street press conference that British jets had bombed chemical weapon plants in Syria. Picture: AFP

That line haunted me as I watched images of Syrian children, foaming at the mouth and choking to death, innocent victims of a chemical attack ordered by President Assad.

What do you do with bombs at your disposal when you’re faced with pictures of children gassed by their own government?

Theresa May decided to use her weapons of mass destruction, and with the USA and France, has bombed the hell out of Assad’s chemical weapons plants, in an effort, she says, to stop him from repeating the evil deed.

Did she do the right thing? Should she have asked permission from parliament? Was the intervention too late?

I don’t know. No one does. The bellicose Stop the War campaign doesn’t have the answer. Nor does Nicola Sturgeon, or Jeremy Corbyn. I most certainly don’t.

What I do know though, is if it were my grandchildren who were foaming at the mouth after having been gassed by the government, I would want someone to intervene. Wouldn’t you?