comment by Clever - son son son (U18599)
posted 52 seconds ago
King Of Britain ^^^^^^^^^ (Always pay your tax) (U18007)

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When did 24 become a film?

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don't mind me, probably because I've got the DVD

Let the Arab League deal with it. We cannot put troops in on the ground as we do not have enough. Successive governments have drained this countries armed forces. I was in the RN for 25 years, we had more ships than admirals, now it really is the reverse.

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I'm good thanks King - no, not yet - in fact, I've been offered another job
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bloody hell!
good for you mate

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4,5,6 I'll conflate. There's interesting proposals on the table from the Russian's with regards to putting Chemical weapons in the hands others - ie, giving them up. Notice also that this "red line" on the use of chemical weapons only applies to the regime, and not the rebels.
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Funny enough, it was Secretary of State John Kerry who suggested handing over the weapons but I don't think it was intended as a serious suggestion

Let the Arab League deal with it.
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There is no such thing. They are just US puppets who do as they are told from the whitehouse

Aren't the Rebel fighters the Muslim brotherhood, who have links with Al Qauda?
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yes and that is one of the principle reasons as to why I don't want us to join. am very sceptical as to whether the rebels are any better than assad. would you want to be one of the main people responsible for that to happen? also, another scenario, equally as bad if not worse would be for hezbollah to get hold of those weapons....

First thing to say is that this is primarily happening because of geopolitics. To little people like us things like crushing violence against civilians matters. But the bigger is what drives picture powerful nation states. All sides invoke the language of ethics, but the fact is that most of the major military interventions of the last few decades have been in strategically significant areas, particularly around oil producing countries, particularly around the Middle East. Over the same time, millions have been killed in low-tech conflicts in Africa with the lives of hundreds of thousands of children marred. We have barely heard of these conflicts, let alone been mobilised to consent to military intervention.

Syria is strategically important to the USA because it is close (geographically and politically) to Iran and a conduit for Iranian influence on the region. It's important as a potential transportation route for oil. Syria matters to Russia for similar reasons, with the added factor that it is close to the Caucasus region of southern Russia, which has its own instabilities, namely separatist movements with an Islamist element. Moreover, the Caucasus is strategically important to Russia because it is rich in natural resources (minerals, oil) and borders the major oil-producing Caspian sea region.

I don't know at what level these big questions of geopolitical interests start to get replaced by the vocabulary of human rights. Maybe the interests of ruling elites push kind of invisibly in a certain direction and a lot of the politicians kind of believe they are acting on their conscience. Maybe some politicians know deep down that they are making a messy compromise between things that are possible, things that are hard to avoid and things that are right. I don't know enough about how power structures work, and I suspect they don't work in the same way everywhere and all the time. Anyway, that's a question for another time.

In terms of the immediate question of whether there will be / should be a military strike is very important to the people who live in Syria, despite my cynicism about the motivations of the international players. My feeling is that it would be good if an international precedent were established that chemical weapons can't be used without consequences. Best of all if this happens without firing missiles, but if the Russian plan works out.

By the way, the real precedent would be that weaker countries are not allowed to use chemical weapons without the permission of more powerful sponsors. The USA demonstrated that superpowers can use them without fear when they deployed white phosphorus in Fallujah. Nor has Israel felt any international heat for using the same substance in Gaza on numerous occasions since then.

2. No we shouldn't. We'd only be escalating the violence. There are better alternatives available, such as Israel mobilising forces along the northern border, forcing the regime to the south.

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IMO one of the worst things that could happen. It will galvanise the Middle East into a larger conflict with Israel. You don't want to go there.

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There is alot of propaganda going on and the US seem to be behind it.

The US have tried to go to war with IRAN but failed in their attempts because they could not prove IRAN was producing chemical weapons.

Syria and Iran have strong ties so what the US is doing is by going into SYRIA, automatically draws IRAN into the equation and then they have the war they wanted.

There are conspiracy reports that QATAR (an ally of the US), provided the chemicals to the rebels who used this against the regime. This is so the regime can be framed and allow the US the grounds to go into SYRIA.

The regime is no better either as the dictatorship of ASSAD does no favour for the SYRIAN public.

The de-stabling have the middle-east has not happened by chance. Egypt, Yemen, Lybia are some of the countries that had all these sudden uprisings. These countries are unofficially run by tribes.

Divide and conquer is the biggest ideolgy and techinique used to de-stabalise united countries. Afghanistan is current example where they have a US puppet as a president/prime minister but he cannot go to every part of the country because the tribes will just kill him.

The US is ruthless, they will go to war whether UK wishes to join or not, its all part of the masterplan for a NEW WORLD ORDER. (One world government).

A good and thorough post Red Russian

I agree - geopolitics are the driving force behind most, if not all the major decision making.

Can i recommend that people should watch Charlie Wilsons War - very good and a portrayal of the problems with such decision making both in the present setting and just as significantly - the future

The US is ruthless, they will go to war whether UK wishes to join or not, its all part of the masterplan for a NEW WORLD ORDER. (One world government).
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To give a different point of view:

I recently took my kids to a birthday party and found myself chatting to one of the other parents - a doctor from Syria. As the kids jumped around wildly, he shared his reflections on the tragedy. He says a lot of the opposition groups are unsavoury extremist types who aren't going to win any admirers in the West if they take power (and who are reasonably feared by the religious minorities in the country). On the other hand, he still blames Assad and his regime for creating a situation in which the religious nutters have some credibility in the country. He and his father have crushed opposition, crushed any chance of political pluralism for so long and so brutally that a lot of normal people have come to the conclusion that anything must be better than Assad.

He also reckons that nothing can happen in the Middle East without the secret consent of the big powers, above all the US. While I totally agree with him that geopolitics is the elephant in the room, I'm a little sceptical that the USA has the puppet master's power to conduct events. The USA has influence and it has the power to take down any regime but I don't think it engineer outcomes in most cases.

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They have still to ascertain who used the chemical weapons, they are keen on telling people it was the regime, but as of yet have not given any conclusive proof.

It is more likely that the rebels, backed by foreign governments were given chemical weapons as a pretext for Western intervention.

I haven't worked out the West's interest in Syria yet.

Iraq is a major oil producer, Afghanistan has $3 Trillion worth of mineral reserves, what has Syria got that's so important that America and Lapdog Cameron want to bomb it back to the Stone Age?

makes it all the more interesting that Russia has a naval base in Syria .

Syria is an ally of Iran, it's probably possible that America wants their own people in Syria so that it's easier to take Iran in a year or two.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNOWeUH1PDk

We should stay well away, it has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with us despite what william "warmonger" hague will tell you, however it's only a matter of time before more young men are sent to their death in another mid-east conflict.

You get into Syria then invading Iran is just a formality. They can attack Iran from all corners as well as breaking the allegiance of Iran and Syria

comment by Henrik- Marcelino's Biggest Fan! (U6171)posted 2 minutes agoThey have still to ascertain who used the chemical weapons, they are keen on telling people it was the regime, but as of yet have not given any conclusive proof. 

It is more likely that the rebels, backed by foreign governments were given chemical weapons as a pretext for Western intervention.

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What intervention? They have no intentions of entering the war or providing constant aerial support like they did in libya from what they said.

In any case, the people who refused the UN investigators entering were the syrian govt. I would like to believe the people hindering the investigation have something to hide.

In any case, it might be the CIAs work, but all I know is if some of justice is not done (flawed or justified) the message being sent would be a lot worse. What scares me more than getting it wrong is doing nothing.

Boris "Inky" Gibson

It's a strategically crucial country. It's right in between two major oil producing areas: Arabia / Iraq to the south and east; the Caucasus and Caspian to the north. I don't know the geography and geology of the area well enough to guess whether it is a potential route for pipelines, but even so, having influence over Syria when its neighbours are on the oil transit routes is massive. Add to that the fact that Syria is Iran's one ally in the Arab world, through which it spreads its influence over Lebanon and beyond, I don't think we struggle to work out motive.