aibu to wonder why we are doing nothing about syria

[ThatVikRinA22]

why are we doing nothing?
labour clearly sitting on the fence because of iraq as are the rest of the jittery gvt....

ive heard all the "its not our busniness" arguments - the same was said in WW2 until it was too late.

i cannot comprehend why we would advocate doing nothing - rwanda all over again.
m sickened tbh that people feel so able to wash their hands when people - children - are being napalmed and gassed.

what about what is morally right? forget politics - are we really just going to do nothing??
because its not us?

im not advocating another iraq war - but surely we cannot stand on the sidelines and watch this without doing anything?

Seems pretty obvious that there is more to this than meets the eye. Every day thousands, and millions of innocent people are killed either purposefully or as 'collateral damage', but all of a sudden the world stops because of this case.

We all know they have been after this Asaad guy for weeks now, and that the rebels had used gas before, and that the US threatened war if gas was used. How stupid do they think we are?

The vote wont change a thing, sooner or later we will be carpet bombing this place like everywhere else in the middle east, without the slightest care for the death toll of innocent kids, that will make the current lot insignificant.

Its like the sharks have smelt one drop of blood and now can legitimately start a feeding frenzy.

Vicar

the most harrowing thing i ever read was in the guardian magazine - accounts from people in the UN who watched the massacre in Rwanda, and who were forbidden to help, because their role was as observers only

The first time I went into Bosnia it was wearing a UN beret. It was harrowing. It was frustrating, depressing, sickening and all the other adjectives used to describe something awful. We were completely powerless, unless we were fired on. We had to stand by helpless watching men and women being dragged into the back of Pantec Vans, supposedly being taken to 'detention centres' but knowing in reality it was the last time those people would see their families again.

The UN is toothless. If anything is going to happen it has to be NATO led. And that is looking unlikely.

All we can do at the moment is support the refugees and send aid, or open our borders.

Well said stooshe

I think the way the commons vote went is just what dave wanted. He can be seen by the world at large to be wanting to do this unknown something but then blocked by the house of commons.

Win Win for him as he now looks to care about dying children but doesn't have to start bombing anyone.

I only hope that congress is as sensible as our house of commons and they put the leash on Obama too.

If a western force intervenes it can and will provide more resentment from Muslim countries around the middle east and create even more bad feeling for us.

What is needed is maybe a nearby country with a credible armed forces and that doesn't have a long logistical tail with airfields close by.

Impartiality is the key however and any Christian/Western force will end up being attacked by all sides.

Therefore the only country that fulfils all the criteria for intervention would be Israel.

If Israel intervened, Iran (which supports Assad) would be in there like a shot. Iran has nuclear weapons too.

Israel has it's own problems. ZA

That would go down well then

ZA was baby typing, sorry!

Well said Peggy upsets me to see poor children dying [:(]

This is the classic situation of being damned if you do and damned if you don't.

The rebels/freedom fighters (depends on which side you are on) are backed in some areas by Al Quaeda so what do we do, support the terrorists who killed 4000 on 9/11?

Missile strikes in areas controlled by government forces and kill more civilians?

Upset further a Middle East which is already teetering on meltdown?

We supported rebels/freedom fighters in Egypt and they elected the Muslim Brotherhood who were clamping down on individual freedoms. Now there is conflict again there.

Don't even go there with Iran and Afghanistan! No UN mandale, no WMD, no Al Quaeda. All left to fend for themselves and will no doubt descend into civil war and chaos with the Taliban in Afghanistan regaining control.

To go in with missiles would be a disaster.

Assad knows all this, the people of this country and America know this, even president Obama knows this and is using the vote in congress to do a Herod act! Cameron is set on doing a Blair. The sentiment is right but the thinking isn't there.

Rwanda was not the same. Stopping genocide would have been justified. The region was not the powder keg the middle east is.

Of course it is horrifying and a war crime to gas innocent civilians but would missile strikes make their lives any better?

I think those who are demanding that we take action should be given a gun and shipped to Syria. It's easy to demand action from the safety of your armchair.

Our country does not need any more war. We don't need to send any more of our men and women to there deaths.

My younger brother fought in Iraq. He came back a broken man. He lost friends and other friends came back minus limbs. Now he can't find work after being medically discharged. Is this what you lot want? A generation of fucked up men and women who have been sent to help countries who despise us?

I have other family members in the army and i don't want to see them die in another war. We are not the worlds police. I hope to god that we pull out of every country we are in. The army should be at home, controlling our borders, keeping our people safe.

We cannot afford it either.

Sorry if you think i am being horrible. I sat with my brother when he had internal bleeding.
We should not get involved.

I have respect for Obama because he is taking it to Congress to vote on as he is supposed to do, according to the constitution, before declaring war. Certain 'advisors', like those associated with the Project for a New American Century ( their 'manifesto' published in September 2000 is worth a read), are frothing at the mouth and demanding he take immediate action without putting it to a vote (eg Vali Nasr).

What the chickenhawks don't seem to accept is that we really don't have the men to lose due to demographic changes (mostly brought about by the after effects of previous wars). Those men that we do have are understandably not too keen to forfeit their lives for those whose long term policy only seems to benefit them and their small group of cronies and leaves everyone else injured and impoverished. My brothers know very well if they joined up, they'd come back to nothing (job, education, housing) with probable injuries to boot.

I'm sure this is a double bluff from cameron. If he goes into Syria he will lose the next general election

Seems the Israelis and US have just carried out a missile test in the Med.
11.28am BST Israel confirms missile test

www.theguardian.com/world/middle-east-live/2013/sep/03/syria-crisis-2-million-refugees-live

This is basically a Shia-Sunni conflict, going on for centuries. Assad belongs to the Alawite sect ( a minority in Syria), a subsect of Shias and hence supported by Iran who are majority Shia. The rebels are the majority sunni in Syria, hence supported by Sunni Saudi and others. But the christians and other minorities support Assad as they feel more secure with him rather than an ultra conservative saudi style regime. There are no easy answers. I also find it weird that assad would choose to use chemical weapons when the UN inspectors are about to visit Syria. That is shooting oneself in the foot! Personally think it is more the work of terrorist organisations. In the light of this, I find it unjustified to send our young men and women into this mess, to die , to get maimed and destroy their families. The only solution is dialogue between these different sects conducted under the UN offices to find a suitable and workable solution for all involved.

I would personally be in favour in channelling some of the (preposterous amounts) of aid we sent to places such as India and some of the African nations and refocussing that on helping the millions of refugees and displaced people in Syria, they will need medical supplies, food, clothing and shelter. That is something that urgently needs addressing.

I do not think wading in with our military will help, unles they can neutralise their cache and production of chemical weapons, which is probably nigh on impossible to do.

OP - There were many genocides between WW2 and Rwanda, wiki only has some of them in this list.

If we really want to say 'never again', maybe we should look at the genocides-in-waiting currently going on in Europe that the media and governments are choosing to ignore. We have Roma communities being walled up right now, in EU countries, what do you think is going to happen to them?

The media only talks about conflicts that have a benefit to someone. No one is ignoring Syria because it isn't about us, we're saying military conflict is wrong because conflict shouldn't benefit us and we need to learn that war should not be the means of peace. We can make change without war, we need to make change without war.

Goldenhandshake - Those countries give far far more to us than we ever give in aid to them and there is already aid pointed towards Syria, it's getting it in that's a bigger problem.

Thespork as awful as those statistics are (and I agree the rules need changing drastically) I still feel little sympathy when the aid we do give has no audit trail and despot leaders are purchasing jets, overseas properties and expensive cars, rather than helping the people the money is intended for, we know how corrupt many of these countries are, yet still blindly hand over millions of pounds.

I realise aid is allocated to Syria, but it's unlikely to be anywehere near enough, when there are now millions of displaced people. The aid we do have should be going through via the red cross or similar organisations in the form of food, water, medical supplies etc.

As an example, between 2013 and 2014, over £200 million pounds is earmarked for Nigeria, Dfid insists the money is to be used for specific projects, however it lists that 30% of this money is earmarked for 'other' projects that are not clearly explained, the cynic in me suggests they don't really have a clue how that 30% is being spent. I cannot get my head around why we are giving away this amount of money to a country with it's own space programme, when so many of the population live below the poverty line. We are far too soft, until these countries can prove they are doing everything they can for their people, we should not be subsidising them to such a great extent.

Do we? Which ones and how much are they already in our pockets? Pretty much all aid these days is tied to particular projects with long audit trails, not handed over wholesale to particular governments as you describe - that is usually bribes given by corporations in exchange for access to resources. That's two separate issues. Nobody is blindly handing over millions for nothing - it's all with a reason, usually for our own benefit. That's why it is so hard to establish equal trade and tax enforcement laws, they wouldn't benefit us, we'd rather import grain from poor countries, keep them dependent on income, then send lesser aid in later to combat the starvation we're causing. It's why it's so hard to get the government or media to discuss that other EU countries are in the early stages of genocide or most of the ones going on around the world. The one is Syria likely will lead to resources for us as did the Iranian one (which the UK was actively involved with and still gets dividends from).

There are several projects that could be donated to to aid Syrian refugees, the UK government may already be involved, but we could bring a lot more to the table if the government put in more effort, if it could beyond military intervention.