It interviewed British diplomat Emma Sky about the situation in Syria today. Sky was an adviser to the general commanding the US occupation of Iraq from 2007 to 2010, years of bloody turmoil as the neo-colonial Anglo-US regime in the country started to unravel.

Invited to share her wisdom on BBC Radio, she said the scenes in Damascus accompanying the fall of the Assad regime reminded her of the apparent enthusiasm in Baghdad when Saddam Hussein was ousted.

“There was such hope and optimism that the fall of Saddam would bring about a better future,” she said, hopes that were, of course, entirely dashed amid the brutal anti-occupation and civil wars that followed.

How, the BBC asked, could Britain and the US act to prevent similar disappointment in Syria today?

It did not occur to the BBC that it was the actions of those two powers which had caused the chaos in Iraq — and who then repeated the act in Libya in 2011. In both cases, a regime was overthrown by foreign intervention, leading to state disintegration, mass killings and economic collapse.

The obvious answer is that the US and Britain should stay out of the situation in Syria entirely if they do not want the ruination of yet another Arab country on their account.

Such was not Emma Sky’s view, nor is it likely to be the response in Washington or London. Sky said that the powers should ensure that Syria’s turmoil does not lead to a revival of Islamic State (Isis) nor to a fresh alignment with Iran.

The Syrian situation is fraught with the prospect of further conflict. The erstwhile Al-Qaida affiliate, which has seized authority in Damascus, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is poorly placed to establish a unified democratic government, even if it wished to do so, which is moot.

That would require an agreement with the mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which control the east of the country. Yet that is the last thing HTS’s main international sponsor, Erdogan’s Turkey, wants.

This week, the Turkish army, already occupying big slices of northern Syria, has been in action against the SDF around Manbij as part of its confrontation with any military or political expression of Kurdish autonomy.

The SDF is itself aligned with the US, which maintains troops in Kurdish-run territories, ostensibly to confront Isis. The US, too, was engaged in bombing targets in Syria this week. It is a convenient alibi for a continued Pentagon presence.

Washington is also underwriting Israel’s aggressive incursions into Syria. Israel has occupied the buffer zone between the illegally occupied Golan Heights and the rest of the country — and, according to some accounts, moved significantly beyond.

Israel claims this is only temporary, but no-one will take it at its word. Netanyahu’s government includes elements which believe Israel should extend all the way to Damascus.

It has also seized the opportunity to destroy much of Syria’s military capacity with over 300 bombing raids so far, without significant protest from the new authorities.

British intelligence agencies and diplomats are meanwhile falling over themselves to declare that the “terrorist” designation be removed from HTS to ease Western political intervention, highlighting the entirely expedient nature of such labels for the imperialists.

What Syria now needs is less external interference, not more. All foreign powers should cease military activities on its territory, with both Turkey and Israel withdrawing.

Britain should do absolutely nothing, beyond offering to assist with reconstruction when such becomes possible. That is the lesson of Iraq and Libya.