Re: IS and the Western response : Mon Aug 25, 2014 5:49 pm  

Dita's Slot Meter wrote:

Okay, so you keep shouting 'leave them to it' - When do you suggest we actually get involved (if ever?).

When ISIS have steam-rollered Syria??....Or claimed Iraq fully as their own??.... Wiped Turkey away??....Increased the number of terrorist incidents in the UK?

I fully agree that if this was a simple Civil War between two historic enemies, fighting to gain control of an established patch of land, then we leave them to it - However, we have one side who have stated an intention of a long term strategy of establishing an Islamic Empire, which would take in areas with zero desire to become 'Islamic' (including ourselves).

Simple strategy for the West is to support Assad - Yes, it would be ironic and a tad embarrassing, considering we initially opposed him, but he is a Stalin figure, in that he is the lesser of the two evils - Wipe ISIS out, then attempt somehow to work with Assad. It might seem unlikely, but I never ever thought I'd ever see Adams and McGuiness playing polite politics in Northern Ireland, so we have to be positive that somewhere in the future some sort of calm can be restored to the World.... I just can't envisage ISIS ever being part of such a settlement, as its obvious we are dealing with something far beyond human with these particular extremists.

We should never get involved, not our issue, not our concern. We live on a island, unless they start taking sailing lessons. ignore them. ISIS are a wasp, leave them alone and they'll sting someone else.

Re: IS and the Western response : Mon Aug 25, 2014 5:51 pm  

Standee wrote:

We should never get involved, not our issue, not our concern. We live on a island, unless they start taking sailing lessons. ignore them. ISIS are a wasp, leave them alone and they'll sting someone else.

So we should have waited for Hitler to have come sailing up the Thames before we started fighting back??

Re: IS and the Western response : Mon Aug 25, 2014 5:57 pm  

Dita's Slot Meter wrote:

So we should have waited for Hitler to have come sailing up the Thames before we started fighting back??

had we not gotten involved, Hitler would have left the UK alone. We wasted millions of lives fighting an ideal.

Re: IS and the Western response : Mon Aug 25, 2014 5:59 pm  

Wont someone please think of the oil

Re: IS and the Western response : Mon Aug 25, 2014 6:24 pm  

Standee wrote:

had we not gotten involved, Hitler would have left the UK alone. We wasted millions of lives fighting an ideal.

That's an interesting opinion - The likelihood that Hitler would have left us alone after taking the rest of continental Europe (including Russia) seems highly unlikely though.

At best, through negotiation heavily weighted in the Nazi's favour, we would have become a meaningless colony of a German Empire - Perhaps allowed to 'govern' ourselves, but, ultimately, under the umbrella of the Nazis - There is no chance that Hitler would have left us alone considering we still had bits of our own empire scattered around the globe, bits which would have come under increasing attack from Nazi allies, which would be buoyed from an overwhelming European campaign.

I agree that ISIS are, at present, just an annoyance, but for the long term it would be advisable to do away with them now, than to allow them to grow into a serious threat.

Re: IS and the Western response : Mon Aug 25, 2014 6:42 pm  

Standee wrote:

had we not gotten involved, Hitler would have left the UK alone. We wasted millions of lives fighting an ideal.

A theory which doesn't really stand the acid test of "He probably wouldn't bother with The Channel Isles either".

Re: IS and the Western response : Mon Aug 25, 2014 7:17 pm  

Him wrote:

Agree entirely. That doesn't mean Britain & France were wrong to oppose Germany in WW1.

In the same way as it isn't wrong to oppose and confront dictators and regimes.

As you say, the wrong part of it is in not dealing with and planning for the aftermath of the removal of the dictators and regimes.

The US wanted a nice quick and easy war in Iraq. Get rid of Saddam in a few months, another couple of years of setting up a parliament and support and they'd be gone. Whereas they should've planned for 20 years of military and civilian support after the "war" had ended.

Groups like IS and others in Libya etc are always going to appear after a dictatorship is removed. It appears IS is much more extreme than most, which is why it's important to defeat them. But they're the next step that has to be overcome to reach a relatively stable, relatively democratic way of life for these countries. And we should be there to support them.

But the absolute stupidity of all of this is that following WW2, we (the Allies - mostly US & UK), apparently learned the lessons of post-WW1 and we set about rebuilding the infrastructure, industries and economies of Germany & Japan. The Japanese and to a lesser extent, the Germans embraced the philosophies of W Edwards Deming, they focussed on product improvement and customer service.

We bombed the shit out of Iraq and then did fookall else but allow Haliburton to steal billions of $ in the name of rebuilding infrastructure.

The major difference between now and post-WW2 is back in 1945, there may well have been opportunists but they'd look like rank-amateur Wild West carpetbaggers when compared to the vulture capitalists and NeoCons who control today's economies. These people don't want to see a thriving Iraq, Syria or anywhere else, they want to see a subjugated nation, willing to give away its natural assets for a bowl of rice and some clean water.

It is the NeoCons who should be brought to account, they have encouraged this situation, purely in the name of short-term profit.

If the economies of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria had been allowed to flourish, there never would have been an audience for ISIS.

The same goes for what Israel is doing to Palestine. If Sodastream had actually invested in Gaza, instead of looking at cheap real estate and even cheaper labour, it's extremely doubtful whether Hamas would be where they are now

Re: IS and the Western response : Mon Aug 25, 2014 7:19 pm  

Anyone using the word 'gotten' immediately renders their opinion invalid.

Re: IS and the Western response : Mon Aug 25, 2014 7:53 pm  

Standee wrote:

We should never get involved, not our issue, not our concern. We live on a island, unless they start taking sailing lessons. ignore them. ISIS are a wasp, leave them alone and they'll sting someone else.

Basically they want me, my wife, my kids, my parents dead, for no other reason than I dont blindly follow their fairy story, their version of Lord Of the Rings or Harry Potter

Get rid now

Re: IS and the Western response : Mon Aug 25, 2014 8:33 pm  

Starbug wrote:

Basically they want me, my wife, my kids, my parents dead, for no other reason than I dont blindly follow their fairy story, their version of Lord Of the Rings or Harry Potter

Get rid now

but you follow another story, because you're white and right?