@ kimbers – It didn’t fail though? The oil fields are under American contractors control as is the puppet government. When the rest of the oil countries do the right thing 😉 and cooperate with America the bombing will stop, their economies won’t suffer as much outside intervention, sanctions will be lifted, sponsored uprisings will cease, except for the locals who recognise they have a puppet government, sales of C-Grade arms stock will deal with them! It’s simple really and nothing new in this game of world chess.

It was only ever about oil.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=348&v=6u_UGw7pKyg[/video]

The situation we have now is that wars are less about capturing territory and populations, and more about “war-ing” to gain power either politically or ideologically. Modern soldiers do not necessarily wear a uniform and as such are extremely difficult to capture or neutralise. In fact, even if you physically invade another country with your ground troops, the only way to “win” that war would be to kill everyone in that country. This modern gorilla warfare is a very difference situation, and in fact, the word “war” is not really necessarily applicable at all, and hence legally i’d suggest it’s a very grey area!

There have been plenty of successful counter insurgencies.

FARC have been pretty much decimated by the Colombian government, Chechnya, the Rhodesian Bush War, Malaya, The Tamil Tigers, Northern Ireland, The Dhofar Rebellion etc etc etc.

The issue is, that it’s the Europeans who should be getting involved with this along with the Turks, with Europe hopefully moderating and influencing Turkish policy towards the Kurds….. and not the Americans getting involved – however to quote the Economist “”The biggest barrier to European superpowerdom is that European elites refuse to bring their postmodern fantasies about the illegitimacy of military ‘hard power’ into line with the way the rest of the world interprets reality,”. Europe is utterly devoid of any vision and leadership, so none of this will ever change.

I see the Russians are now sending a force of considerable size to Syria, so again, Europe is at risk of becoming an utter irrelevancy on the world stage.

Tom_W1987 – Member
Europe is at risk of becoming an utter irrelevancy on the world stage.

Not getting involved in these conflicts hasn’t really lead to China becoming an utter irrelevancy on the world stage….

China not involved????

Anyway they have their own mighty problems right now…

Not getting involved in these conflicts hasn’t really lead to China becoming an utter irrelevancy on the world stage….

China is involved in plenty of military mischief….they plan to kick the Americans way beyond the first island chain.

And China isn’t taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees whilst looking on and shrugging it’s shoulders.

Northern Ireland,

eh?
we rolled over, released the prisoners and accepted sinn fein into government, and it was the right decision, because it ended the violence

The Tamil Tigers

yeah just get all the civilians onto the beach and shell the shit out of them

eh?
we rolled over, released the prisoners and accepted sinn fein into government, and it was the right decision, because it ended the violence

The IRA never achieved their real goals did they?

Compromise isn’t a loss.

yeah just get all the civilians onto the beach and shell the shit out of them

They got the job done though didn’t they?

Tom_W1987 – Member
Not getting involved in these conflicts hasn’t really lead to China becoming an utter irrelevancy on the world stage….
China is involved in plenty of military mischief….

selling arms aye, but bombing campaigns and troops over the 20 years? Where? Google suggests they may have started helping nigeria with drones against boko harum, but not much more. Unless you count pissing off the americans by island building the south china sea.

I don’t see them invading or bombing many countries

Regardless, point is their relative lack of actual miltary action has done everything but lead to obscurity in the last 20 years.4

Funny how it’s the communists that embrace the world markets at face value more than the capitalists rather than trying to change them by force! 😆

selling arms aye, but bombing campaigns and troops over the 20 years? Where? Google suggests they may have started helping nigeria with drones against boko harum, but not much more. Unless you count pissing off the americans by island building the south china sea.

China is simply biding it’s time, when it sees opportunities to seize land or influence world affairs through force, it has done so.

Why would they develop expeditionary capability if they never intend to use it? They could sit back, line their coast with anti-ship missiles and SAMs and carry on as usual. They aren’t though.

Tom_W1987 – Member
The IRA never achieved their real goals did they?

They never were going to via the armalite and the bomb, they’ve known that for a long time.

The people in the nationalist/republican movement know that a UI must be achieved through the ballot box and that it’s a long long game, though you will still get the hard of thinking demanding the right to armed resistance and claiming the move to politics as a defeat, which it isn’t.

They never were going to via the armalite and the bomb, they’ve known that for a long time.

That’s a small digression, my point still stands that there have been plenty of counterinsurgencies that have worked for a variety of reasons.

weve just spent the last 15 years brining to bear our ‘military hard power’ on Afghanistan and Iraq and its achieved what exactly?

apart from create IS and motivate them lads from bradford/leeds and blow themselves up on the tube?

weve just spent the last 15 years brining to bear our ‘military hard power’ on Afghanistan and Iraq and its achieved what exactly?

Afghanistan hasn’t been that great a disaster, Iraq was and that is because we dismantled the entire freaking country and left early.

It was a lesson in not chickening out early and now that the entire region has gone to shit, mostly because we left early, we’re happy to watch and do nothing. More washing of hands.

Tom_W1987 – Member
Why would they develop expeditionary capability if they never intend to use it? They could sit back, line their coast with anti-ship missiles and SAMs and carry on as usual. They aren’t though.

I think we will see a more agressive China develop, but the point still stands in relation to yours that lack of miltary action hasn’t held them back. Could be argued that their friendly approach to the world has helped them immeasurably.

I think we will see a more agressive China develop, but the point still stands in relation to yours that lack of miltary action hasn’t held them back. Could be argued that their friendly approach to the world has helped them immeasurably.

Ask anyone from an ASEAN country about China’s friendliness and you will get a curt response.

Tom_W1987 – Member
I think we will see a more agressive China develop, but the point still stands in relation to yours that lack of miltary action hasn’t held them back. Could be argued that their friendly approach to the world has helped them immeasurably.
Ask anyone from an ASEAN country about China’s friendliness and you will get a curt response.

Maybe so, but have they bombed he shit out of any of their continental neighbours recently?

Tom_W1987 – Member
They never were going to via the armalite and the bomb, they’ve known that for a long time.
That’s a small digression, my point still stands that there have been plenty of counterinsurgencies that have worked for a variety of reasons.

and many that have utterly failed.

it’s a 50:50 proposition, which is a shit investment.

The alternative seasoamh, is that Syria and Iraq are replaced with “Here be Dragons” on world maps – a region on the border of Europe that becomes a haven for sex slavery, terrorism aimed at Europe and one that has the right conditions for the complete annihilation of groups likes the Kurds.

Now if that isn’t a justifiable war, then I’m not sure what is.

We could make it work, if we were really willing to commit and we actually involved local players more.

it’s a 50:50 proposition, which is a shit investment.

Tell me, how the hell could we make it worse, right now? I’m not sure that is possible.

Afghanistan hasn’t been that great a disaster, Iraq was and that is because we dismantled the entire freaking country and left early.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/05/afghanistan-sharp-rise-women-children-casualties-2015-taliban

and the spillover http://pakistanbodycount.org/

It was a lesson in not chickening out early and now that the entire region has gone to shit, mostly because we left early, we’re happy to watch and do nothing. More washing of hands.

up to a million dead people, most of them civillians, not enough for you?

You’re out by about a factor of 10 kimbers.

You don’t think that Saddam would have ended up killing that many people by engaging in another on of his bloody wars with Iran? I mean…if we extrapolated Saddams body count over the years it wouldn’t be much different… who knows. Saddam managed to kill at least 500,000 people between 1979 and 2003 when you factor in the repressions and Iran war.

And I never said I agreed with Gulf War 2, just that we didn’t stay long enough to get the job done and justify the loss of life.

Our problems with our military interventions have nothing to do with the actual military intervention – they were extremely successful. Iraqi’s were thankful initially of us ridding them of Saddam and welcomed the coalition forces. The wider region was thankful. The problems came from pulling out too early and not supporting the countries once we purged them from the Taliban, al-Quaida or whatever dictator was in charge etc. We simply have not accepted the fact that the solution here is gong to be generations long in the support we need to provide these countries after the end of any military action – helping them building infrastructure, economies, training police forces and their own military services – something you can’t do in a couple of years; it took us hundreds of years. Instead we just declare victory, pull out and leave them to it, ill prepared.

Exactly the same thing has happened in Libya, we rid them of Gadaffi (a good thing) and left them at the mercy of IS, and it will happen in Syria if we are to start intervening. The arab spring demonstrated that the people of the middle east want democracy, but they lack the ability to achieve it.

It’s a proper catch 22. If we do nothing we will be attacked by IS and have to deal with the tens of millions of refugees and watch as IS grabs more territory and impose their brand of evil wherever they can. If we intervene we do so without a really coherent plan for the aftermath of the initial intervention. It’s a properly screwed up situation.

Better to have left the dictators in place and turned a blind eye than to dislodge them and turn a blind eye to the aftermath. At least the dictators played by a consistent set of rules the population could understand and live a relatively normal life under them.

Maybe we’ve all got it wrong and turning a blind eye is a cunning ploy by our politicians. Let IS take whatever territory they want, displace the refugees to other countries and leave IS to build their caliphate. Then once they are all sat around in their ‘Islamic’ state smoking their shish-as and raping women and after they’ve thrown all the homosexuals off tall buildings, nuke them from existence.

Tom_W1987 – Member
The alternative seasoamh, is that Syria and Iraq are replaced with “Here be Dragons” on world maps – a region on the border of Europe that becomes a haven for sex slavery, terrorism aimed at Europe and one that has the right conditions for the complete annihilation of groups likes the Kurds.

Now if that isn’t a justifiable war, then I’m not sure what is.

We could make it work, if we were really willing to commit and we actually involved local players more.

it’s a 50:50 proposition, which is a shit investment.
Tell me, how the hell could we make it worse, right now? I’m not sure that is possible.The here be dragon signs are already up. They already cut the head off the last dragon and this one popped up in it’s place, it can get much worse.

The US/UK miltary ability for the forseeable will be limited to special forces and drones/air power, and throwing more arms in to the mix. Under those circumstances they are just stirring up a hornets nest that will continue to get worse.

seosamh77 – Member

Tom_W1987 – Member
I think we will see a more agressive China develop, but the point still stands in relation to yours that lack of miltary action hasn’t held them back. Could be argued that their friendly approach to the world has helped them immeasurably.
Ask anyone from an ASEAN country about China’s friendliness and you will get a curt response.

Maybe so, but have they bombed he shit out of any of their continental neighbours recently? [/quote]

Traditionally China don’t care less about anyone even if you are near dying in front of them.

The current refugees … ya, what is that? A tiny drop in the vast Chinese ocean … How many people died during Cultural Revolution? (not counting WWII etc) Ya, the number would be much more then entire population of Syria … easy!

China have enough of their own internal problems (feeding the people) then to care about anything beyond China.

China usually use their influence regionally but never invade others unless you are landlocked like Tibet and with a strategic importance.

Openly you will Not see Chinese army fighting with foreign forces but look carefully you will see that they do support their neighbours like N.Korea or Vietnam (because they asked for help from China)… you can shoot until you run out of ammunition but they will keep coming … As Merica and alliance found out …

China is all about generating wealth ethically or unethically. It is in their blood. They are much more capitalist then the west … the only time they slow down for being capitalist is due to the Marxist influence on them that turn them into a communist state (bloody stoopid foreign ideology) but that does not mean they loss their roots in trading/business/wealth generation etc …

China is better off being communist but this is just a temporary stop gap between their corrupted capitalist past and their current situation. Anyway, time is changing so their capitalist past is making a slow return … nothing last for ever even for the communist.

China does not have to fight a war coz they can just buy you up without even using a bullet.

In Borneo the bloody corrupted politicians practically sold the entire forest to China … You may say that money cannot buy your soul but don’t be too cocky about that coz everything is for sale.

Say £1Billion to buy your soul? Hmmm …? You want? Good money! You good at making money ya?

The reasons why other Asian/S.E.Asian nations hate China because of their competitiveness and their domination of the market … Not because of their military strength coz we know that they will not invade us. Even if they do invade us there is hardly anything much we can do to prevent them … they would just suck up all the natural resources to feed themselves.

You want refugee from China? I am pretty sure they will gladly let you have them … how many do you want? 100 million? 200 million? 300 million? …

😛

@kimbers – million dead ? Iraq is around 250,000 most of these indeed civilians killed by other civilians (militia) in sectarian violence. Similar numbers in the Syrian civil war mostly civilians killed by the Syrian Army but with a high number of military, FSA and ISIS casualties.

I’ve recommended this book a few times but for a real insight into Iraq Emma Sky’s book “The Unravelling” is a must read. The big errors where made under Obama in his haste to withdraw

You are priceless jamby….

The big errors where made under Obama Bush in his haste to withdraw invade

Doesn’t absolve the west of it’s responsibility to see the job finished though, does it?

We made a booboo, Britains polls indicated that 51 percent supported the war, as a nation – what is happening is on our hands. Yet we don’t want to take hundreds of thousands of migrants and nor do we want to expend money and lives on cleaning up our own mess.

Nice.

.

Whilst I accept your point – millions of our chickens have come home to roost and we have a moral duty to house them all – those 51pc were all under the impression we were 45 minutes away from nuclear Armageddon and the there was further secret intelligence that made an invasion necessary. I’d assume several MPs were voting on the same basis.

+1

The “dossier” and it’s influence seems to have been forgotten.

Kind of OT

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/oilprices/11768136/Saudi-Arabia-may-go-broke-before-the-US-oil-industry-buckles.html

Wonder what sort of cluster **** a disintegrating Kingdom would look like? Not exactly a shining example of a state as it is.

Why does this always become about “us”? It’s “our” responsibility or “our” fault/guilt, “our” mission to sort out, the impact on us etc.

That’s BS. It’s not about us at all. We are not players in this and that is how it should remain. There is a new cold war going on between two not-traditional players who are rarely identified and every more rarely understood. The old players remain on the sidelines with messy attempts at intervening compromised by the lack of understanding. This hidden cold war erupts into occasional hot spots with Syria being one of the two most pressing current examples.

We should avoid getting involved in things we do not understand and where objectives are unclear. Noone wins from that. Restrict ourselves to providing humanitarian support and leave it there. The world will be a better place for it.

Now what type of lube today….

@ piemonster
Its a pariah we just tolerate it because it obeys the two golden rules
1. It has oil
2. Its friendly to the west

Obey those and you can do what the **** you like to your citizens and you can even be the central part of the philosophy behind the vast majority of the terrorist movements. Hell you can even fund them and provide their shining lights and we will turn a blind eye.

Oh, I get all that.

I was more trying to imagine how the region would look if they went bankrupt.

Whilst I accept your point – millions of our chickens have come home to roost and we have a moral duty to house them all – those 51pc were all under the impression we were 45 minutes away from nuclear Armageddon and the there was further secret intelligence that made an invasion necessary. I’d assume several MPs were voting on the same basis.

I remember it being widely known or at least suspected that the evidence was shakey before it all kicked off. At the end of the day we have historically voted for successive governments that have felt the need to poke their noses into things – so it’s not like the dossier removed responsibility from the British voter.