Should the UK bomb Syria? Yes or no thread.

[AnotherEffingOrangeRevel]

Shall we have a little vote, here and now?

It's a big "no" from me.

I have thought long and hard about this. ISIS terrifies me, and I think they will stop at nothing. Of course I want to see them wiped out.

But we went into Afghanistan, and we went into Iraq. So many innocent lives were lost. And what did we actually achieve?

We might wipe out ISIS, or at least destroy their power base. You don't hear much about Al-Qaeda these days, after all. Anything is possible. But destroying ISIS wouldn't remove the threat. What would be the next group to replace them, I wonder?

We need to tackle the problem at its source. Why do so many young Muslims get radicalised and sucked into this horrible way of thinking? I don't know what the solution is, but we need to find a new paradigm. Bombing them will just create a new generation of angry young men, ready to blow themselves up in our towns and cities.

No ...

We need to mind our own business, so the answer is no. We should also close our borders.

No

Not without a solid end game plan, no.

It's utterly stupid to see this as a short term 'bomb the bad guys' thing. Only a long term strategy to build solid functional nation states in the region will work

Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity, so no. Stop Turkey and the Arab states arming Daesh. By shaming the awful enabling fuckers.

And Russia arming Assad. And the US arming the 'moderate' rebels.

It's a bit late in the game to stop anyone arming anyone else.

And Assad is no better than ISIS. Not if you're Syrian at least.

No.

(I wish we had 'like' buttons for peoples comments).

I'm a 'naysayer'. Because the question asked in the thread title is about air strikes. Not "should we just leave ISIS to it?" I do think the international community should do something. A few more British air strikes is not the answer though. It doesn't mean I think that we should just leave innocent civilians to die. Just that IMO, air strikes are not a credible solution by themselves. And DC doesn't have a decent plan that doesn't involve hoping that the Syrian rebels are on our side.

Somebody needs to send in ground troops. US and Europe have to decide if they're going to let that somebody be Russia.

No

No

I'm not opposed to UN peacekeeping forces entering Syria and evacuating civilians when they here IS are on the move

Hear even

No

Air strikes now will lead to boots on the ground later. We don't have the military to do this now, even with the drawdown of Iraq and Afghan. The MoD are already trying to re-recruit those who left on Redundancy and offering financial incentives to get people back into specific trades. We don't have the manpower to make a significant difference.

So I'm a naysayer, but not for the same reasons as most others.

No

No

No and as for why labour shadow cabinet members are apparently threatening to resign because Corbyn set out his well known anti airstrike position .

No

"And Assad is no better than ISIS. Not if you're Syrian at least"

Assad is not a good guy but was way better than ISIS for Syrians.

I don't remember millions of them risking their lives to escape from Syria when he was in power.

"Boots on the ground" is a very bad idea. Choose the locals you want to support against ISIS, and support them well. Foreign soldiers on the ground will inevitably look like an invasion and will be used to recruit even more people to ISIS.

Iraq wasn't that long ago. I certainly hope that some lessons were learned from that disaster.

No

Choose the locals you want to support against ISIS, and support them well.

Didn't the US try something similar in Afghanistan in the 80s? It worked fantastically well for a while but wasn't so clever in the long term.

No.

They've already tried supporting and arming the locals. They all defected and sold their arms to ISIS.

No.

I thought the Private Eye cover this week was spot on:

Headline: "Cameron to bomb ISIS heartland."

And the bomber pilot saying:

"Belgium, here we come!

I think from a moral point of view, it's very very hard to justify killing innocent people. And we will almost certainly kill lots of innocent people, whatever Cameron may say, if we bomb Syria. And we'll also destroy schools, hospitals and homes.

Will we kill lots of ISIS terrorists? Probably not that many. They don't all get together in a village hall to make a convenient target. They hide among civilians.

And then what would we have? A load of angry civilians who might become motivated to join ISIS.

Another load of civilians who don't want to stay in a place where their homes have been bombed and so create an even bigger refugee crisis.

A greater determination by ISIS to attack Britain as well as other European countries.

And finally, we'd have all the homegrown terrorists in Europe who are completely unaffected by the bombing in Syria.