Mazzer2:
Rjan you attack the Conservative party and call them a bunch of lunatics yet you support the Labour party which within it’s ranks also has a fair number of lunatics, just watched on the news an interview with a women who was liberated from Bergan Belsen a place which according to some members of the Labour party never existed or the death of 6 million Jews. When attacking political opponents your arguments will hold a lot more water if you refrain from name calling, something the left find very hard to do. People wander why Britiish politics are in the gutter well the inability to put forward an argument without name calling is one of them.
I attack the Tory party but I don’t usually call them “a bunch of lunatics”. I refer to the “right-wing loons” frequently, but that’s because the Tory party does have a significant number of these. I don’t have much time for the Rees-Moggs, the Foxes, the Hunts, the Shapps, the Howards, the IDSes, or the other crooks and loons, but I quite like the Clarkes, the Davises, and a few other figures - Rory Stewart is always worth listening to on foreign policy (or was, when he spoke freely before he became a Tory MP!). More broadly, I like ex-Tory MPs like Michael Portillo, Michael Heseltine, even Gyles Brandreth. Even John Major seems statesmanlike nowadays, now most people’s memories are fading of the appalling government that he headed (consisting of it’s own fair share of crooks and loons). And I quite like and respect Tory figures in the media like Andrew Neil. And, although not in the Tory party, I quite like Nigel Farage.
As for “Labour party members”, can I really be called upon to defend every individual member of a political party, who say or think god knows what?
I think you’ll find that my arguments hold a great deal of water, notwithstanding that I’m willing to characterise many parliamentary members of the Tory party as liars, crooks, and loons.
As to the arguments for or against military action if you are happy with the gassing of innocents then be against it, if the most saintly of US presidents Obama had shown some balls during his presidency then there is a good chance we wouldn’t be where we are today.
The silence from Merkal is an interesting factor after all she wouldn’t want to jeopardise her countries cheap energy supply deal that is not far from completion with Russia so nuch for European unity. Anyone who thinks Putin is not a threat to western democracies has their head firmly in the sand
It’s not a case of being “happy with the gassing of innocents”. The fact is that the greatest threat to Western democracies comes from within - from the corruption of wealthy elites, and from the contempt for democracy itself (however conceived) that most politicians have been showing.
Frankly, I doubt that “innocents” much care whether they are gassed, shot, bombed, burned, crushed in rubble, starved, or simply have their civil societies ripped apart. We have neither the power nor the obligation to be the world’s police force on behalf of the “innocent” in such a wide-ranging manner, nor can we simply make wishes come true.
Even if we were to intervene (again) in Syria, it should follow international law and proper norms of conduct (such as sending in inspectors). But more broadly, the best solution in Syria will be to allow the war to play out and allow the state to shore itself up. It’s not doing any Syrian a favour by feigning outrage about chemical weapons, and then taking a variety of steps that simply prolong the civil war for another 5 years, reducing infrastructure to rubble, causing tidal waves of refugees, destabilising law and order in neighbouring regimes and regions, and so on.
Your attitude to international relations is the equivalent of insisting “men should not hit women”, so when you find your neighbour doing so, you set his car on fire, or worse break his front door down and snap his legs. The fact is even the beaten wife will not thank you for your concern, because she’ll say “hold on, that car was a significant family asset” or even “who is going to fix the broken door, and who the hell is going to go out and earn a wage for this family now you’ve snapped my husband’s legs?”.
Real effective interventions in other societies cost sums of money equivalent to a moon landing, cost lives on all sides, require huge armed forces presences, require huge subsidies to rebuild civic infrastructure, and is a virtually thankless task. Unless we are willing to put the resources where our mouths and moral pretenses are, and do it in almost every case (rather than just those cases where we have no interests at stake), then we must tailor our moral claims to reality, rather than engaging in gestures which really only aggravate the situation.
The idea that Assad, wrestling with a society in civil war, is going to be chastised by a few more buildings being razed to the ground by missiles is laughable, but all we do in the meantime is probably kill a few more people, add symbolically to the war damage that Syrian society has had to bear and visibly involve ourselves in it, and by engaging in such actions without inspections, without accepted international law, without trials for those responsible, without even the consent of our own parliament (despite there being no urgency to the retaliation, and despite so many other follies in recent years, again and again and again, which if nothing else justifies the executive government being subject to greater scrutiny when embarking on military adventures in the Middle East from now on), then we simply compromise many of our other moral claims.
Even the Nazis were put on trial for god’s sake, with many of those with upper organisational responsibility either hanged or thrown in prison for decades, we didn’t simply bomb the Berghof as if that were an appropriate response to gassing millions and razing Europe to the ground.
And if we truly decide that Assad is the best of a bad bunch and that he is going to stay, and that he is going to be allowed to win, then we have to lie in the bed we make for ourselves, and let Syrians lie in the bed they have made for themselves. The laws and morals we have are primarily there to set the standard and govern the behaviour of settled, developed societies, not to cope with societies that are already in flaming chaos and give us licence to throw more fuel on the fire.
The more sensible reaction in cases such as Syria who use illegitimate military means in war, would be to assure the regime that, once the war is considered settled, the world will have a long memory, and the leaders will be arrested and put on trial afterwards and imprisoned. Just like the Nazis, and just like several other war criminals.
That is how international law and order is properly maintained on matters like chemical weapons - through a legal process that is applied fairly and consistently, and through the threat that those held responsible will be permanently and personally attainted, not through a peppering of missiles fired at the leisure of a handful of Western nations.
