h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm stumped.

I'm not anti-war on principle. But I just can't see how this will help anyone. Terrorists DEASH/ISIL are bad people doing nasty things. But bombs will cause more destruction and give them more recruits.

It was always going to happen politically. Not doing so would have isolated the country within Europe and Nato. And those soft-focus media shots do sell a lot of Brimstone missiles.

And nobody's got an alternative plan for a peaceful settlement yet. Maybe one day they will.

Traveller in Time thinking
"It shows 'them' they made some people angry. Angry enough to make them accept collateral damage, whether political or a hospital . . .

Can we talk to these people? Perhaps, would they be persuaded by any argument? Probably not.

Alternative is to freeze the flow of valuables in the region; oil, art and money. This would still have most impact on the 'innocent!' civilians. "

"Not doing so would have isolated the country within Europe and Nato."
[Icy North]

I've been crazy busy with other things this week, so I'm hazy at best as to who is bombing, and when. Why is probably a no-brainer.

Is a European country going to do the bombing? If so, why would this cause isolation? Hardly anyone is in favor of what Syria in particular and the world's terrorists generally have been doing.

"Terrorists DEASH/ISIL are bad people doing nasty things. But bombs will cause more destruction and give them more recruits." [Wolly mammoth]

That argument, almost word for word, appears in the novel "Saturday" by Ian McEwan, which featured hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating against the U.SD. invasion of Iraq after 9/11 in 2001.

Syria is having a civil war. Vietnam had one in the fifties and sixties and beyond. Spain had one in the thirties. The U.S. had one in the 1860s, and Oliver Cromwell had a featured part in one in the 1600s.

This is a recurring dilemma, then. Do you stand by and let some other country commit atrocities against its own people for political or ethnic reasons, or just because whoever is in charge should be in a home for the delusional? If so, do you want to risk the outcome that Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler risked in the late 1930s? Remembering, though, that the future course of events cannot be predicted? Letting Syria continue with its atrocities might draw other middle eastern countries into a larger war. Or it might not.

Here in the West, we go to see movies about plucky Afghani women who insist on their right to an education. Who in the West agrees with the Taliban? But even with foreign troops stationed in Afghanistan, the plucky woman involved still had to move to the U.S. in order to feel safe. Also in the U.S., we now have Syrian refugees settling in, but many states are resistant to allowing more such refugees to come in. Some presidential candidates here are urging the middle eastern countries to take care of their *own* refugees.

Maybe a companion question should be "If you don;t support military action against the regime in Syria, would you support giving sanctuary to the millions of refugees who are fleeing that country?"

Just asking.

To be honest, I'm not sure, but Obama's early engagement probably earns him the movie rights.

I bet Obama wakes up at night sometime and wonders why he wanted that job in the first place.

What did the terrorists want?; war. what did we give them?: war. they're already won. QED.

They also win if we don't go to war. They get to keep doing what we don't want them to do. That's why it's a nasty situation.

I can't see how that is the case. when the opposite, engagueing in warfare, just results in more deaths, which as that is their ultimate aim, is just helping them along with it. Engaguement in war is misdirected anyhow, if we eant to kill terrorists, bomb Birmingham in the UK, seeing as that is wehre half have gone from out to be 'trained' as it were, of course, that wiould b e a rediculus suggestion, just about as rediculus in fact, as bominbg a country, to defeat a so-called enimy, that isn't restrained by country boundrys in the first place. More deaths won't achieve anything other than more deaths.

Some people will say this is one.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/flesh-eating-bug-rise-syria-094027672.html#CHJlDXl

err... so bombing them, adding mor e rotting corpses to the country, will just add to the rise in that. this group which be not a group that we can't decide apon a name for as there is no single group to name, is not geographically isolated to a single country, and isn't necessarily something determined by borders, as we keep seeing, yet the answer is to obmb a signle country... either we're being lied to again by our politions, or they really are so stupid as to believe something this insane. we may as well be sending bombers over to bits of North Nigeria, as to syria... so why one, why not the other? as I said before, sned the troups out onto the streets of towns/citys in the UK, from where recruits come... because, all of them are as bonkers ideas as each other. But .. nope, I can't understand it at all its too illogical a response.

I know how you feel 2legs..I too fail to see why Cameron said in October that the Russian bombings in Syria would just cause radicalisation and here we are in November bombing Syria..It's very confusing.

They believe they will win the governments believe only way to halt them is to fight back.

What is overlooked is that Daesh also have control of around 1/4 of Iraq.

Today's ordinance is very accurate, and much more reliable than 20/30 years ago. However their effectiveness is only as good as the intelligence received.

Also Daesh would have no fear of using civilians to attempt to prevent bombing by the West.

Terrorism or Guerrilla warfare is very hard to prevent as there is no uniform.

A difficult situation.

MMF

"I know how you feel 2legs..I too fail to see why Cameron said in October that the Russian bombings in Syria would just cause radicalisation and here we are in November bombing Syria..It's very confusing.erm" [Still Incognitas]

I have no great love for what politicians say, though I'm going to cut Cameron a very *tiny* bit of slack here: something happened on Friday, November 13 in Paris. When something significant happen to change things, it's not inappropriate to take another look and see if you still believe what you believed before.

"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof." [John Kenneth galbraith]
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/johnkennet109909.html#v52MF1qaJq0pUM9J.99

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-ways-to-keep-terrorists-from-ruining-world/

Also it is not as if it is only the US and UK deciding to attack Daesh.

Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Uae, Jordan, Canada and France are all involved, and now Germany has agreed to help the coalition.

However, it is not just Daesh that are involved, and who the specific enemy, if there is one, is. There are a number of factions involved, to a greater or lesser extent, fighting on both sides, but all wanting power.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24403003

And, don't forget, this goes across the border into Iraq. It also appears that the numbers are small, but their reach and power is large, as is the tally of dead, mutilated and raped.

One thing that has been learnt in the last one hundred years, a guerrilla/terrorist army/organisation is very hard to kill, as its members are very hard to identify.

They are like plain clothed detectives. They look like us!

MMF

I honestly don't know what to think, but let's take a look.

Will it make things worse for the civilians living under daesh rule ? Not much. They're already being converted by force, brainwashed, tortured and raped.

Will it harm daesh ? Probably.

Is that reason enough ? Well, going to a concert and having a drink in a cafe is reason enough for *them* to kill.
But do we want to think like them ?


And I still honestly don't know what to think.

With regard to all those other civil wars (Paulh?) and do we want to intervene, the problem as far as I can see is it's not just one half of a country fighting another. It's one part of a country inflicting death & destruction on other countries. That can't be ignored.

With regard to the name issue (2legs?) I reckon we should lump them all under one name rather than giving the individual groups any airtime. Terrorists Working Against Terrestrial Safety.

I honestly can't make up my mind about whether I agree with bombing Syria. I very much want to be anti-violence, I certainly don't agree that the way to deal with bullies is to hit them back, and I really do believe that, no matter what's gone before, "an eye for an eye" will kick in and whatever we do to them, they will retaliate. Where does that end? We bomb them because Paris was the last straw. They carry out some atrocity in some some other city in retaliation. So we bomb them some more. So they retaliate again. It's really scary.

On the other hand, they will probably continue with their campaign of terrorism because that's what they do.

This is all very muddled. I don't really know my own mind on this one, and I suspect I'm far from the only one.

Deb