So. “We” got rid of the dictator and set up a “democratic” political system and everything was supposed to be sorted, right? Now this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18420488

How long before one of these groups dominates the others and produces, er, another dictator, I wonder…

do somethign and you get criticised, do nothing

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18417952

and you get criticised?

Phew, the only two choices that I could possibly make in life are ‘do someting’ or ‘do nothing’. That makes it a lot easier!

Can’t we just nuke the middle east? Put an end to all this nonsense once and for all? They’re all absolutely bonkers anyway. They’ll eventually all kill each other, whatever we do. At least this way we’d save them the trouble of slitting young children’s throats, which i imagine gets tiresome after a while

I thought D-Day went well, to be honest

Failed foreign adventurism to fix the mess that was caused by our foreign adventurism and ‘we know best’ attitude 50 years ago.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE_1tCasi_Q[/video]

scuzz – Member
I thought D-Day went well, to be honest

The two are hardly equivalent.

The two are hardly equivalent.

Neither are Iraq and Syria. What’s your point?

do somethign and you get criticised, do nothing

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18417952

and you get criticised?

Is anyone currently suggesting an illegal invasion/occupation of Syria by America, without a UN mandate, followed by letting the country descend into even worse chaos, and stealing millions of dollars of their money?

Because if that’s the only option on the table then it’s probably best to do nothing.

Is anyone currently suggesting an illegal invasion/occupation of Syria by America, without a UN mandate, followed by letting the country descend into even worse chaos, and stealing millions of dollars of their money?

Yip. From watching John McCain’s speech to congress t’other day, that would seem to be exactly the Republicans plan of choice. Well…. they’re suggesting the former bit. The latter would be somewhat inevitable.

Until Russia and Chin achange their whole foreign policy any intervention in Syria is going to be US led.

The Saudi’s etc are happy supplying arms but have no intention of getting their hands dirty.

we are kind of already engaged in syria

suadi arabia and friends are supplying the opposition with weapons and funds , we in turn fund saudi buying their oil and sell them weapons to pass onto their opposition friends….

mean while russia (and china?) sell assad wepaons etc etc

i think shirley bassey has the gist of it

Its rapidly becoming another stupid, mindless war by proxy. No different from Vietnam or Afghanistan.

The Russians are apparently in the process of shipping a load of helicopter gunships to the Syrian government. So the whole escalation thing has a somewhat depressing air of inevitability about it already

The Russians are apparently in the process of shipping a load of helicopter gunships

Maybe the yanks will give the opposition stingers, it worked well in afghan……oh wait.

This is interesting though; the syrian opposition tried to do the exact thing that the other countries did in the arab spring and are getting a hiding for their efforts.
It seems that there is little support for military action by the western public. The ex-leaders of egypt etc would have been better off rolling their tanks out, nobody would have done nothing about it.

Can’t we just nuke the middle east? Put an end to all this nonsense once and for all? They’re all absolutely bonkers anyway. They’ll eventually all kill each other, whatever we do. At least this way we’d save them the trouble of slitting young children’s throats, which i imagine gets tiresome after a while

A similar suggestion could have been made of Europe in 1942 or 1994. It would have been just as moronic then as yours is now.

Well it would have been a non-starter before 1945 for technical reasons, obviously. After that I reckon, all things considered, Southern Europe would ultimately have been a bit better off. Clean slate and all that. Never did any harm in Dresden

Foreign adventurism. It just doesn’t work.

Erm, I think it does :

Iraq Opens Up to Foreign Oil Majors

Western producers haven’t had access to oil fields in southern Iraq since 1972, when the country nationalized production including concessions owned by the companies now known as BP, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Exxon.

Iraq Offers Up Giant Oil Fields To Foreign Firms

Iraq has opened up some of its most prized oil and gas fields to international firms that have been excluded for decades, part of new deals that could more than double its output within a few years.

There was a reason why when Iraq descended into chaos and hospitals, universities, museums, etc, were ransacked, the occupation forces did nothing apart from strictly guarding the oil ministry buildings. The British Defence Secretary even joked about it and the British Parliament thought it was hilarious.

Carry on looting, Hoon tells civilians in Basra

He told the Commons yesterday that most looting was so far confined to Iraqi citizens “liberating” items from facilities of the regime – “redistributing that wealth among the Iraqi people”.

To laughter, he said: “I regard such behaviour perhaps as good practice, but that is not to say we should not guard against more widespread civil disturbances.”

In other words do what you like but don’t touch the oil industry which will soon be ours. Or does anyone really think that oil company owning George Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq because he was spending restless nights worrying about the lack of democracy which the Iraq people were experiencing ?

Even if you take the official reason given for the invasion of Iraq, ie, to disarm Iraq of WMDs, remember Hans Blick, the UN weapon inspectors and how if Iraq complied there would be no invasion – war was not inevitable they claimed ? Then surely it hasn’t been a failure – Iraq has no WMDs.

It just doesn’t work.

Depends what you mean by “work” and what the objectives were on invading.

Depends what you mean by “work” and what the objectives were on invading.

Exactly