Looks like Cameron is talking pure shit on Syria.
Heard something similar on the drive home. Feels more like needing to be seen to be doing something than any realistic expectation of achieving anything. That said, there are a huge number of commentators throwing out critisims without offering up any ideas of how to deal with these utter wankers (ISIL not govt)
There does, and itās somewhat amazing that a football forum (and not heavy at the footy at that) has better ideas than people that are paid upwards of 70K a year to do a job on foreign policy. For me, we need to do/accept the following:-
Assad. Heās the legitimately recognised leader of Syria, and the game in town when it comes to credible ground forces. If the short-term solution is the destruction of ISIS/ISIL/whatever, he has to be part of that equation. What comes after is negotiable, and should not prevent us from addressing the immediate threat.
Russia. Not going away either, and Putin has achieved something that would have seemed impossible in the paranoid days of the 1980s; making the Russians look reasonable when the Soviets never could be. In many ways, the West has helped him. Expansion on the Eastern front and the disastrous post-conflict planning in the Middle Eastern conflict enable a bit of international whattabouttery when he wants to make his own moves. Also part of the powerful BRICS group, which apart from being an acronym, actually constitutes about 3bn people, all of whom live in a different bubble to us.
What must they think of Cameronās plan for more of the same? Have we honestly learned nowt since 1918? Not taken Einsteinās maxim that āinsanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?ā seriously?
Cameron is General Melchett at this point.
Exactly! And that is what is so brilliant about it! It will catch the watchful Hun (ISIS) totally off guard! Doing precisely what weāve done eighteen (thousands) times before is exactly the last thing theyāll expect us to do this time!
Dennis Skinner.
Skinner is my hero, a legend and he fucking hates namby pamby pc bollocks, a proper mp.
We should stay away as the left will rightly hammer the people who voted for it and the people living their lives will pay the price with bombs and blood.
We should stay out.
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Goaty predicts that one of these cunts on this video is a fucking bigger cunt than the other cunt.
Ā£2 pays fuck all.
This article nails the situation for me.
In classic pap style, Iāll tease a little bit (emphasis mine):-
Not since Hitler ordered General Walther Wenck to send his non-existent 12th Army to rescue him from the Red Army in Berlin has a European leader believed in military fantasies as PR Dave Cameron did last week. Telling the House of Commons about the 70,000 āmoderateā fighters deployed in Syria was not just lying in the sense that Tony Blair lied ā because Blair persuaded himself to believe in his own dishonesty ā but something approaching burlesque. It was whimsy ā ridiculous, comic, grotesque, ludicrous. It came close to a unique form of tragic pantomime.
At one point last week, one of Cameronās satraps was even referring to this phantom army as āground troopsā. I doubt if there are 700 active āmoderateā foot soldiers in Syria ā and I am being very generous, for the figure may be nearer 70 ā let alone 70,000. And the Syrian Kurds are not going to conquer Isis for us; theyāre too busy trying to survive the assaults of our Turkish allies. Besides, arenāt the āmoderatesā supposed to be the folk who donāt carry weapons at all? Whoās ever heard before of a āmoderateā with a Kalashnikov?
The Syrian regimeās army ā who really are ground troops and who never worried about the āmoderateā rebels because they always ran away ā are the only regular force deployed in Syria. And thanks to Vladimir Putin rather than PR Dave, theyāre beginning to win back territory. Yet after losing at least 60,000 soldiers ā killed largely by Isis and the al-Nusra Front ā the Syrian army would be hard put to fight off an assault on Damascus by Dave Cameronās 70,000 āmoderatesā. If this ghost army existed, it would already have captured Damascus and hurled Bashar al-Assad from power.
Originally posted by @pap
This article nails the situation for me.
In classic pap style, Iāll tease a little bit (emphasis mine):-
Not since Hitler ordered General Walther Wenck to send his non-existent 12th Army to rescue him from the Red Army in Berlin has a European leader believed in military fantasies as PR Dave Cameron did last week. Telling the House of Commons about the 70,000 āmoderateā fighters deployed in Syria was not just lying in the sense that Tony Blair lied ā because Blair persuaded himself to believe in his own dishonesty ā but something approaching burlesque. It was whimsy ā ridiculous, comic, grotesque, ludicrous. It came close to a unique form of tragic pantomime.
At one point last week, one of Cameronās satraps was even referring to this phantom army as āground troopsā. I doubt if there are 700 active āmoderateā foot soldiers in Syria ā and I am being very generous, for the figure may be nearer 70 ā let alone 70,000. And the Syrian Kurds are not going to conquer Isis for us; theyāre too busy trying to survive the assaults of our Turkish allies. Besides, arenāt the āmoderatesā supposed to be the folk who donāt carry weapons at all? Whoās ever heard before of a āmoderateā with a Kalashnikov?
The Syrian regimeās army ā who really are ground troops and who never worried about the āmoderateā rebels because they always ran away ā are the only regular force deployed in Syria. And thanks to Vladimir Putin rather than PR Dave, theyāre beginning to win back territory. Yet after losing at least 60,000 soldiers ā killed largely by Isis and the al-Nusra Front ā the Syrian army would be hard put to fight off an assault on Damascus by Dave Cameronās 70,000 āmoderatesā. If this ghost army existed, it would already have captured Damascus and hurled Bashar al-Assad from power.
Too much of a puff piece for Putin for my taste, though spot on in other respects.
Itās been pretty widely reported that Russia concentrated its firepower on areas not controlled by Islamic State, seeking to cause as much damage as possible to other groups opposing Assad, such as the Free Syrian Army - groups who were also fighting against Islamic State. The Russians sure as hell werenāt bombing the fuck out of Raqqah, Islamic Stateās de facto capital. Given Putinās friendliness toward Assad, some cynics reckoned that Putinās game plan was to make it a straight choice between Assad and Islamic State (Putin is renowned as a smart tactician but a lousy strategist, and this would fit that description perfectly); with this choice, what could other countries do but pile in against IS, regardless of Assad clinging to the reins of power in Syria? To paraphrase a sentence in the article, if Russia wished to destroy IS, why does it bombard ISās Syrian enemies?
Am I being overly cynical in thinking that, in many respects, Putin has now got pretty much exactly what he wanted? True, he didnāt foresee a Russian airliner being brought destroyed, but then given the lack of Russian attacks on IS up to that point why would he?
Beyond that, the article is spot on. The notion of a 70,000-strong armed force opposed to Assad, and also opposed to IS, is pure fantasy. The main forces ranged against IS, aside from the Syrian army, have been Kurdish (bombed by Turkey) and Syrian opoposition groups such as the FSA (bombed by Russia). Where exactly are these 70,000 armed and trained soldiers?
On a wider point, that article has it absolutely bang on, particularly in this excerpt:
No, we are not āat warā. Isis can massacre our innocents, but it is not invading us. Isis is not about to capture Paris or London ā as we and the Americans captured Baghdad and Mosul in 2003. No. What Isis intends to do is to persuade us to destroy ourselves. Isis wants us to hate our Muslim minorities. It wants civil war in France between the elite and its disenfranchised Muslims, most of them of Algerian origin. It wants the Belgians to hate their Muslims. It wants us Brits to hate our Muslims. Isis must have been outraged by the thousands of fine Europeans who welcomed with love the million Muslim refugees who reached Germany. The Muslims should have been heading towards the new Caliphate ā not running away from it. So now it wishes to turn us against the refugees.
To achieve this, it must implicate hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslim refugees in its atrocities. It must force our EU nations to introduce States of Emergency, suspend civil liberties, raid the homes of Muslims. It wishes to destroy the European Union itself. It wishes to strike at the heart of the European ideal by liquidating the very foundation of the union: by persuading us to tear up the Schengen agreement and to close our frontiers. And we are doing exactly that. Are we, in some auto-panic, actually working for Isis? If that gruesome institution did not ban alcohol, their members would be toasting with champagne our political leaders for their vacuity, their sophistry, the abject fear with which they now regularly try to inject us under the dangerous old cry of āUnify the nationā.
Incidentally, I heard Paddy Ashdown on the Today programme one day last week. He made some intersting comments about Saudi Arabia and its support for the Salafist, Wahabi creed - and about the lack of any such comments from our own government.
This is one of the reasons I asked āIs Russia about to resolve the Syrian crisis?ā. The crisis isnāt just about ISIS; the Syrian Civil war has to be taken into consideration, as do all the states funding it or making money from it. I expect some people simply equate Syria with āISIS problemā. If we somehow miraculously manage to get rid of ISIS without ending the civil war, weāll just have other groups emerge from the rubble and commit the same acts overseas, with perhaps slightly different names. Weāll still have the same people funding elements of the 70,000 troops Cameron reckons exist.
Itās already a farce at this point. May as well contribute.
Originally posted by @Fowllyd
Incidentally, I heard Paddy Ashdown on the Today programme one day last week. He made some intersting comments about Saudi Arabia and its support for the Salafist, Wahabi creed - and about the lack of any such comments from our own government.
Interesting recent opinion piece in the NYT pertaining to this
PS Can someone please remind me how to embed links properly.
Edit. Link added properly
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I am not sure I agree with the bombing. Indeed without detailed insight into the targets chosen, the success of hitting them, the collateral damage and casualties suffered and so on, I dont know how I will be able to judge. But how does anyone on here know if the existing bombing isnt having some success / causing some damage, deaths or financial loss to IS? We dont have that information. Yes of course the terrorist threat from IS seems to be growing but who knows, it may be even worse if their progress and ability to operate was going completly unchecked.
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How can we rely on the information given as where to bomb?
What is a legitimate target?
What is considered acceptable collateral damage?
What is the exit strategy?
Will ground troops be considered at some point? If so how many?
Who will fill the vacuum if and when ISIS are destroyed?
Why arenāt the Saudis being questioned on their lack of action in helping?
Why arenāt the Saudis questioned on their rigid interptretation of Islam and their funding of it elsewhere?
We should stay out, Iām saying it first and foremost for the sake of British nationals here and abroad.
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There is a unanimous cabinet majority for Cameronās plans, not that itās surprising. Demos going on in London and elsewhere at the moment.
All happening now. The Foreign Affairs Select Committee is not supporting the strikes. Crispin Blunt, the committeeās chair, is keen. The rest? Not so much.
38 degrees have a link if you want to send an email to your mp re bombing Syria.
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