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.

It seems lots of people are unaware that we've been bombing Isis in nightly raids from RAF Aktrotiri for the past 16 months. The Syria question is SEMANTICS only. The RAF fly alongside Syria and at the moment only drop bombs on the Iraq side. It's all IS held land, Syria or Iraq. It's happening, the squadrons are there and they will be bombing Syria by this time next week. Not saying whether I agree or not but this is the situation. Yet 16 months ago, no one seemed bothered when this all started.......

No.

The US have been bombing for over a year. Daesh has grown hugely since then. So have the displaced Syrians.

NO NO NO
This is not a difficult decision.
Counterproductive, illegal and morally bankrupt.

No
My answer would still be no but you have posed a very broad and simplified question, no offence. Good wishes to all...

Somebody posted this earlier - link for petition against bombing Syria on official parliamentary petitions page. Seems to be gathering momentum - currently nearly 44,000 'signatures'. It will get taken more seriously by parliament if the numbers reach 100,000:

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/113064

Judging by that petition I suspect that public opinion (unlike here) is firmly behind military action. 48,000 is a shockingly low number for that type of petition given how high profile this is.

I disagree, Booyaka. I think opinions are very mixed. Many people will be unaware the petition exists. There were around 28,000 names yesterday evening, so 20,000 have signed since then.

No.

Cameron only really wants to bomb Syria because the Tory government is backed by arms manufacturers and corporations who will make billions off the bombing and subsequent rebuilding of this region.

Why the hell is Turkey allowed to stay in NATO. How crazy is it to have a country in NATO that has totally different aims to the rest of it.

NO

Booyaka - there were around 20,000 signatures on it, when I posted the link. 27,000 signatures in 23 hours isn't too bad.

Booyaka: You cannot assume that the UK population apart from those who have signed the petition are in favour of war because they have not signed to. The government should have a mandate from it's people before it goes to war and should not assume that silence means everyone agrees.

No. I don't condone Daesh's actions one bit and given the chance if they could be wiped off the face of the earth with a guarantee of no civilian casualties, I'd press the launch button myself. But an innocent life, even one, is too high a price to pay.

I think in the years that come Hollande will come to regret the course of action he's authorised, and that the UK should remain as far away as humanly possible from atrocities like this.

RadicalRooster: "We could have stayed safe in 1939 by coming to terms with Hitler."

Rooster, are you very young? It strikes me that one of the big problems we have with the National Curriculum is that pupils learn a good deal about the Second World War, but very little about any other wars or other periods of history.

There's a saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and I think anyone who knows a bit about the Second World War but is ignorant of other 20th century wars, such as the First World War, the Korean war, the Vietnam war or, more recently, the Iraq war, has a deeply ill-informed idea about what going to war is likely to achieve. Most wars are not like the Second World War. ISIS differs from Nazi Germany in a number of obvious respects.

Perhaps worth going away and doing a bit of reading to help develop a more nuanced perspective?

No.

Yes, it's called history, very recent history

History is ideologically malleable

Intervention in Iraq in 2003 didn't make things worse for the Kurds, or the Marsh Arabs. Far from it. It also removed a fascist regime that Human Rights Watch declared guilty of genocide in the late 80's.

The big mistake was disbanding the architecture of that regime in the form of the Iraqi Army and Ba'ath party. It was disaffected elements of these former powerbrokers that constituted the initial insurgency, before AQI moved in.

And when US forces got their act together and combined with the Anbar Sunni tribes they ground AQI into the dust. Completely and utterly. It was only when Obama withdrew US troops and handed cotrol of Iraq to a Shia Govt under Nouri al-Maliki, who decided that the best way forward was a sectarian campaign against the Sunni, that ISIS emerged and began its rampage.

Lesson. Go in, go in big, and stay till the job is done. And bombing should be a precursor to that

Hackmum

I look forward to your analysis of Korea, Vietnam, George Kennan's theory of containment, and the Kennedy's doctrine of flexible response. And I presume of course that your response to North Korean forces launching an attack across the 38th Parallel would have been to let them absorb the entire Korean Peninsular? Of course, Macarthur's subsequent actions at Inchon caused significant problems in that tactical successes caused a form of strategic 'pull' unfortunately drew China into the war and thus transformed the nature of it, but sharper control of the civil military interface by Truman would have prevented that.

So, tell me what the lessons of the 1st Gulf war were, exactly. I await your insights with interest.

No, we shouldn't bomb Syria.

No. No. No.

That's between 20 and 60 people now dead after a Russian air strike hit a market in a town called Ariha.
Wonder if facebook will be providing us with an option to change our profile pics in solidarity....

No and petition signed

no all this makes me sad as hell why cant we just stay the fuck out just for once there are enough people bombing them why join in its not like they actually NEED us to join in we would just be joining in with my mate jack because jack's me mate and no one messes with my mate

You 'join in' because if you don't, then others get to dictate the future of that region in a way that you might fundamentally object to.

No.
We really should stop selling arms to corrupt regimes and then being surprised when it goes tits up.