[Closed] Aleppo despair

What is a Leppo?

You're right, BTW...

****ed up situation.

Perhaps the darkest night of the year. Our Syrian brothers and sisters need our anger more than ever. Write to your MP, protest, raise your voice however you can. Help however you can. Do not think that there is nothing you can do, there are countless groups and organisations sending help, aid and supplies to Syrians, both in their own country and around the world, find them, offer your time, money, skills, voice or whatever you have to offer.

Make no mistake, this is a massacre. A massacre we can not ignore.

Indeed TMH, thoughts and prayers. Desperate situation. Civil wars generally end particularly badly. Many 10's of thousands of Tamil civilians where killed at the end of the Civil war in Sri Lanka.

May those responsible be bought to,justice quickly.

For starting the civil war ? For ending it ? For both ? For failing to intervene ? For intervening ?

this is a massacre. A massacre we can not ignore.

I think we'll find a way.

After all, what do you think we should or could do to actually stop it? invade Syria?

We could use some bigger bombs than those what they are using.
Another needless tragedy ripping apart another country..

After all, what do you think we should or could do to actually stop it? invade Syria?

Show the people of Syria that we are with them. Help them in any small way we can.

The following video is by Abdullateef Khaled, who is a ****ing hero in Syria, he's building a whole town for people whose homes have been destroyed, he's maintaining a network of orphanages and is risking his own life every day getting aid into Idlib and Aleppo.

My wife and her friends filled a container with food, clothes and medical supplies that he has since been able to distribute around Syria to those who need it most. The second container is going out before Christmas.

So no, **** it, there's nothing we can do. 🙄

What about the majority of Syrians who support Assad, and have had loved ones butchered and raped by Wahhabi / Salafi crusaders trained and funded by the West? Are they not 'Syrian' enough to deserve sympathy?

What about the majority of Syrians who support Assad, and have had loved ones butchered and raped by Wahhabi / Salafi crusaders trained and funded by the West? Are they not 'Syrian' enough to deserve sympathy?

To be fair, I don't get anything from the OP's post about taking sides, just that the whole situation is a human tragedy and expressing his emapthy.

Correct I wasn't. Merely disturbed (1) by reports last night of desperate citizens writing their wills as I sat comfortably watching TV and (2) by the moral questions, I was/am strongly against our military involvement largely due to the fact that we had no strategy and a history of making things a lot worse. But this position is challenged daily by the appaling suffering that is being witnessed in a daily basis.

An appaling, appaling situation.

They could just stop fighting..

That'd be progress.

But they choose to kill each other instead.

Leave em' to it.

Even the little kids?
N0b

Channel 4 news last night made for grim viewing. You felt genuinely sorry for the poor bastards stuck in the middle of all that carnage. What a monumental ****-p the whole situation is

[quote=teamhurtmore ]Correct I wasn't. Merely disturbed (1) by reports last night of desperate citizens writing their wills as I sat comfortably watching TV and (2) by the moral questions, I was/am strongly against our military involvement largely due to the fact that we had no strategy and a history of making things a lot worse. But this position is challenged daily by the appaling suffering that is being witnessed in a daily basis.
An appaling, appaling situation.

+1

HArd to see how we can help or make it stop though 😥

You could rationally argue that the sooner one side weakens, the sooner the other wins - then the current level of killing will drop drastically.

While both sides are being propped up as proxies the killing will carry on.

Originally I would have voted for some intervention, now I think that would just prolong the misery. We wont go to war with Russia, so perhaps the least worst outcome is to stop any support.

We don't have a good track record of interfering in other peoples conflicts.

Praying for them may make you feel better, but its as pointless as asking the Jedi to use their force to kill the baddies.

I'm not a N0b, you are able to write that word nob without the swear filter kicking in.

Everyone in that city knows someone who is connected to the war on either side, it's a well known and proven fact of war that.

Kids sadly are affected "obvz" but thier parents are connected to the war, yet they decide not to do something about it.

These are proven facts of War, read up on it.

N0b

Assad has inherited "form" from his father Hafez:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Hama_massacre

They won't stop until Aleppo has been virtually destroyed. I've been there many times; it's not a beautiful city but it was a thriving, important place and I ate the best meals of my life there thanks to the fresh local produce.

The trouble is that both sides are now at the point where they believe that if they waver or relent in any way then the other side will wipe them out and their entire ethnic or religious group will be either driven into exile or exterminated.

And the sad fact of the matter is that this fear is far from baseless on both sides.

Good old religion .....smiting the weak from the earth.

Its probably capitalising on the transition between Obama and Trump as well... maybe a push to finish ousting the rebels before January 21st, but yes, a desperate situation..

Stories this morning are not good. As I said hopefully this won't reach the levels of civilian casualties we saw in Sri Lanka.

@phil the civil war had little to do with religion, it was much more about the "Arab Spring" and trying to overthrow Assad.

I was in favour of airstrikes in 2013 to try and bring the war to an end, imo not doing anything has cost 100,000-150,000 lives. As Trimix says the best end to a war is a quick one. Public opinion post Iraq has very much been to not get involved, this I can understand but the cost can be very high.

Everyone is always so fixated on what our government and/or military chooses to do. Neither our government or our military are capable of acting in the interests of the Syrian people. Air Strikes kill civilians and make the fundamentalists' argument more appealing. Troops on the ground will drag the conflict out and suppress the inevitable civil war, which will break out again when we leave (see Afghanistan/Iraq). Offering logistical support to the FSA creates a proxy war (which is kind of where we're at) which will drag on for years to come. So there's nothing constructive that our government/military can do.
Then we have to ask ourselves what [i]we[/i] can do, either individually or collectively. Now, we can't put an end to the bloodshed, we can't stop the massacre. But we can do our best to support those who have dedicated their lives to protecting and supporting the survivors. We can show the people of Syria that they are not alone, that we are trying and they are in our thoughts.
We cannot control the war, but, like the aftermath of a natural disaster, there will be much to do. It will be done quicker and more lives will be saved if it is done with our help and support.

Don't wait around expecting your government to help, they can't.

THM, maybe now you and othera will finally understand the position of Christopher Hitchens in regards to Iraq. Worse things than this latest round of attrocities occured on Saddams watch. Doesn't matter though when it's Kurds does it? Because they aren't proper Muslims and so not worthy of the lefts outrage.

Sometimes the left ****ing sickens me.

Fin25 that's a cop out, once a society accepts losing face by asking for foreign intervention then western governments can help - we have done previously - I work with some Zanzibarians who want UN intervention in their country.

THM, maybe now you and othera will finally understand the position of Christopher Hitchens in tegards to Iraq. Worse things than this latest round of attrocities occured on Saddams watch. Doesn't matter though when it's Kurds does it? Because they aren't proper Muslims and so not worthy of the lefts outrage.

Wat?

Thank you Tom, please can you clarify what my position is for me and what I need to understand that I do not understand already. That would be helpful, cheers.

Fin, well said (edit) both times.

A mess we should feel guilty about

Interesting related viewing, if you've got a spare three hours. Adam Curtis - Hypernormalisation. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b183c

Just when you think the bottom of the swamp has been reached, it gets worse.

Shooting children.

Merry Christmas.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-38301629

How am I copping out by suggesting we all do more? I was actually suggesting that sitting around hoping the government fixes it for us is very much a cop out.

Methinks someone has a narrative they want to fit us all into.

You're comparing Zanzibar to Syria, right?
Because they're the same thing? I see where you are coming from, but the situation in Zanzibar is one where external intervention by a UN backed body may be helpful to avert further tensions spilling over into violence. I think Syria is a bit past that point, don't you?

With Zanzibar though, the fact that it has yet to really kick off could be an argument against intervening as you may push the situation into quite literally blowing up in your face.

But I don't get the worry about collateral damadge and hearts and minds, when every available barrel bomb and kayatusha is already being lobbed in every direction and the countries cities look like Stalingrad.

The only way we could make Syria worse now, is if we turned it into a nuclear playground with Russia.

So you're saying the best thing to do in international relations is to wait until all out hell breaks out, then jump in and blow the piss out of everything?

Thank you Tom, please can you clarify what my position is for me and what I need to understand that I do not understand already. That would be helpful, cheers.

second attempt, although it was never my intention for this thread to be [s]a w*nkfest[/s] derailed.

Sorry THM, should have ignored him, really.

Not at all, your paragraph above was a very valuable addition and no harm in addressing Tom's seemingly odd comments.

Mr Woppit - Member

Just when you think the bottom of the swamp has been reached, it gets worse.

Shooting children.

Merry Christmas.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-38301629

I thought the bottom of the barrel was reached when U.S funded rebels sawed the head of a 12 year old boy they accused of being a spy?

Maybe you didn't catch that video.

What we need are actions by goverments not thoughts and prayers but in the absence of that going on talking to a sky fairy is as helpful as anything.

jimjam - Member

Maybe you didn't catch that video.

Well I suppose that gets you the "One-Upmanship Award" for today. Well done.

Thanks for underlining the point, anyway.

😥

anagallis_arvensis
What we need are actions by goverments not thoughts and prayers but in the absence of that going on talking to a sky fairy is as helpful as anything.

You're clearly blind to the power Facebook Likes.

Mr Woppit

Well I suppose that gets you the "One-Upmanship Award" for today. Well done.

Not trying to one-up anything Mr.Woppit, just making the point that there is no bottom of the barrel here.

you're saying the best thing to do in international relations is to wait until all out hell breaks out, then jump in and blow the piss out of everything?

Well, if that offends you - maybe we should have intervened much much earlier 🙂

I'll explain myself more clearly when Im not posting from a mobile, but I will say the faux surprise from anti-interventionists that syria got like this really boils my piss.

dunno what you are all moaning about, civil war is good business.

The enlightened Hitchens view

What the left just does not get, Hitchens argues, is that "Islamofascism" is hellbent on destroying our civilisation, and unless you fancy being bombed back into pre-Enlightenment times, you should bloody well be out there on the barricades, fighting the good fight beside him. Anyone who disagrees is either stupid, cowardly, naive or too lazy to have bothered updating their political faculties "since Woodstock".

But this is from a disturbed mind

Now here was their chance, before it was too late, to prove their manhood....In 2006, Hitchens' wife, the American writer Carol Blue, told the New Yorker her husband was one of "those men who were never really in battle and wished they had been. There's a whole tough-guy, 'I am violent, I will use violence, I will take some of these people out before I die' talk, which is key to his psychology – I don't care what he says. I think it is partly to do with his upbringing."

😯

Urine at 101 degree after reading that kind of shite.

Threads like these always bring out the biggest dickheads on STW.

Fin - where can we donate that has most chance of humanitarian aid getting to those that need it quickly rather than being misappropriated to add to the fighting?

hitchen's seems to me to be pretty ****ed in the head..
He has some interesting ideas that are relevant to finding a way forward but his bitter vengefulness is all kinds of messed up..
he's definitely not very well

More sickness yunki

And so chief among Hitchens' emotions by the end of the day on 11 September was "exhilaration. Because I thought, now we have a very clearly drawn confrontation between everything I hate and everything I love. There is something exhilarating about that. Because, OK, now I know what I'm doing." Just as his father had felt during the second world war? "Yes, exactly," he agrees.

What difference would have early air strikes made? Who would they have targetted?