So yeah, that.

We should not get involved

 

If we do we have learned nothing from Iraq and Afghanistan

 

What is happening in Syria is dreadful but over 1m died in Rwanda in the civil war, Mugabe has presided over the genocide of white farmers in the name of reclaiming land and thousands of other deaths yet where were the debates in parliament and urgency to bomb Rwanda or Zimbabwe?

 

Not our problem, stay out of it

We're involved in enough illegal wars, we don't need to add another to our collection.

 

There are enough targets on our backs, we don't need to go giving Bin Laden's BFF's more ammo.

We just voted it down. Common Sense PREVAILS!

We should not get involved

 

If we do we have learned nothing from Iraq and Afghanistan

 

What is happening in Syria is dreadful but over 1m died in Rwanda in the civil war, Mugabe has presided over the genocide of white farmers in the name of reclaiming land and thousands of other deaths yet where were the debates in parliament and urgency to bomb Rwanda or Zimbabwe?

 

Not our problem, stay out of it

We shouldn't get involved in military action and I am delighted that the Commons has voted against the government motion. However, the world cannot just sit back and do nothing if there is clear evidence that Assad (or senior members of his regime) ordered a chemical weapons attack. If that evidence exists, then everything possible must be done to get the people responsible up before the International Criminal Court.

Good news, I was getting a bit worried - I expect the Americans will still want to push on ahead however..

We should not get involved

 

If we do we have learned nothing from Iraq and Afghanistan

 

What is happening in Syria is dreadful but over 1m died in Rwanda in the civil war, Mugabe has presided over the genocide of white farmers in the name of reclaiming land and thousands of other deaths yet where were the debates in parliament and urgency to bomb Rwanda or Zimbabwe?

We should've bloody done though. The failure of intervention in Rwanda is pretty commonly accepted as a massive mistake.

We're involved in enough illegal wars, we don't need to add another to our collection.

 

There are enough targets on our backs, we don't need to go giving Bin Laden's BFF's more ammo.

1. How would this 'war' (in reality just a series of targeted strikes in order to try and influence Assad to stop gassing his own people) be illegal, precisely? Intervention on the humanitarian basis of stopping chemical warfare is entirely legal.

2. The generalisation of action against Assad as something that would trigger 'Bin Laden's BFFs' is pretty ignorant. In any case, the bigger worry would be that action against Assad would make it more likely for the opposition to win - which is at risk of being dominated by fundamentalists. But frankly, we wouldn't be getting involved to win the war for either side.

I wonder if Craig would be so blasé about this and playing the 'none of our business' card if Assad were gassing Israelis.

I'm still quite keen that we do something eventually. Probably not military action as that's clearly not what we need to be getting involved in right now but this entire war has gone on too long and there still seems to be no respite for the people of Syria, and it's only going to get worse if chemical weapons come into play.

 

It's an awful situation and they do need our help but I'm not sure what would work at this stage.

The last time a British PM lost a war motion was 1782. By a nice little quirk of history, MPs on that occasion voted to end the American war of independence.

 

Cameron has his place in history.

The Prime Minister deserves praise for putting forward a motion he believed was right even though there was a risk of defeat.

 

 

I am sick to death of people pointing to Rwanda or other historical mistakes as if they should be considered precedents.

 

Crimes against humanity are crimes against us all - any reasonable course of action to prevent them must be considered, and not dismissed in a flippant "it's cool to declare all military action as illegal" manner.

The Prime Minister deserves praise for putting forward a motion he believed was right even though there was a risk of defeat.

I am sick to death of people pointing to Rwanda or other historical mistakes as if they should be considered precedents.

 

Crimes against humanity are crimes against us all - any reasonable course of action to prevent them must be considered, and not dismissed in a flippant "it's cool to declare all military action as illegal" manner.

And when would you condemn a PM or other leader for putting forward a motion they thought was right? Cameron made a colossal misjudgement. He assumed he would get the support of the opposition without proper consultation. He assumed he would get the support of his own backbenchers without bothering to put out any feelers. Any PM who manages to suffer the first defeat of its kind in over 230 years is simply not up to the job.

And when would you condemn a PM or other leader for putting forward a motion they thought was right? Cameron made a colossal misjudgement. He assumed he would get the support of the opposition without proper consultation. He assumed he would get the support of his own backbenchers without bothering to put out any feelers. Any PM who manages to suffer the first defeat of its kind in over 230 years is simply not up to the job.

In fairness, Cameron did consult Miliband. That Ed changed his mind late in the day and added more conditions isn't his fault.

In fairness, Cameron did consult Miliband. That Ed changed his mind late in the day and added more conditions isn't his fault.

Are you seriously telling me that you believe Cameron's version of the discussions? With his record?

Are you seriously telling me that you believe Cameron's version of the discussions? With his record?

One that a couple of anonymous shadow cabinet sources have echoed (and more importantly, have echoed in favourable terms, indicating it almost certainly isn't being said with the intent of briefing against Ed). It's rare to find that kind of echo where there's no smoke at all, and it's pretty believable.

Edited August 30, 201311 yr by Cassandra

One that a couple of anonymous shadow cabinet sources have echoed (and more importantly, have echoed in favourable terms, indicating it almost certainly isn't being said with the intent of briefing against Ed). It's rare to find that kind of echo where there's no smoke at all, and it's pretty believable.

So perhaps Milliband changed course because his MPs made it clear they didn't support the government line. Or, to put it another way, he chose to speak for the majority of the country.

Perhaps he did. But that's pretty irrelevant to the original point being discussed.

 

In any case, you'd hardly know Ed was speaking for the majority of the country judging by his parliamentary performance, which...wasn't his best.

I'm still quite keen that we do something eventually. Probably not military action as that's clearly not what we need to be getting involved in right now but this entire war has gone on too long and there still seems to be no respite for the people of Syria, and it's only going to get worse if chemical weapons come into play.

 

It's an awful situation and they do need our help but I'm not sure what would work at this stage.

 

But the problem is, there's really nothing we can do that would improve the situation...Western military strikes would do nothing more than kill more innocent civilians, they would not destroy any of the weapons that the Syrians could deploy against their people and they would not stop further massacres from happening. And even if there was something we could do that would work, it probably wouldn't be desirable; as others have said, this isn't a black-and-white case of good guys vs bad guys, there's been many reports that the "rebels" are just as bad as Assad's forces (indeed, there's a strong argument that it was the "rebels" who committed last week's chemical attack, precisely so that they could get the West to intervene).

 

Obviously we wouldn't be human if we heard these reports of people being slaughtered and didn't on a gut-instinct level want to do something to help, but honestly the best thing we can do is probably to sit back, let them duke it out amongst themselves, and not contribute to the bloodshed ourselves.

Edited August 30, 201311 yr by Danny

Obviously we wouldn't be human if we heard these reports of people being slaughtered and didn't on a gut-instinct level want to do something to help, but honestly the best thing we can do is probably to sit back, let them duke it out amongst themselves, and not contribute to the bloodshed ourselves.

I'm not quite sure the point at which chemical weapons are being used on civilians is one that the term 'duke it out' could really be applied to. One might as well say 'let them just get on with it' while a man's stamping the hell out of another man on the ground.

 

Aside, the argument that it was a false flag operation by the rebels is one that seems enticing at first thought but it falls apart pretty quickly. Where exactly are the rebels supposed to have gotten these weapons from? I adamantly refuse to believe the secularist Free Syrian Army would dare dream of doing this - it'd be a total bullet through any democratic credibility they'd hope to have if they won the war. If it's from the al-Qaeda affiliated likes of Jabhat al-Nusra and the intelligence has come from there, I'd be surprised that this was the first time they whipped that out if the ability to craft/ownership of that kind of weapon was something they possessed. Rocket evidence at Ghouta when cross-referenced with the thirteen other chemical attacks alleged over the last year points pretty strongly at Assad as well.

 

There's a big problem that the fundamentalists could co-opt the revolution. You're right on that. That's why intervention with the express aim of regime change would probably be a bad idea. Intervention with the express aim of preventing further crimes against humanity like those seen in Ghouta is an idea which still has credence though, and it's why I'm in favour of targeted military strikes to dissuade Assad from carrying on using these kinds of weapons. I'd like him before the ICC as well, but it's difficult to see how that could happen without an invasion.