Originally Posted by Screw_The_Nut

Not sure what I missed, but when did we have troops in Lybia? Apart from a few "advisors".

did i say that? crossed wires. when i say that it became a mission for regime change in Libya i mean in that we went from defending civilians to acting as the rebels air force and targetting senior figures in the regime.

its a bad idea getting involved in civil wars as sooner or latter we'll pick the wrong side.

Originally Posted by Krek_Brizzle

Absolutely. Why should we care if the Syrian army decide to indiscriminately shell built-up areas? All those non-combatants being maimed and killed aren't our concern.

No Humans Involved. Their country, their civil war, their fucking problem. Not ours.

And if the UK gub'mint is dumb enough to get involved -which would'nt surprise me - what can Britain expect to get out of it? Even if we help the rebels win, there's no guarantee they'll be particularly well disposed towards us. IIRC, the only thing "we" got out of the Libyan adventure, apart from a certain amount of schadenfrued over Gadaffi's departure, was a nice photo-op for Call Me Dave. Not exactly a good return on our investment.

Originally Posted by Werewolf

No Humans Involved. Their country, their civil war, their fucking problem. Not ours.

And if the UK gub'mint is dumb enough to get involved -which would'nt surprise me - what can Britain expect to get out of it? Even if we help the rebels win, there's no guarantee they'll be particularly well disposed towards us. IIRC, the only thing "we" got out of the Libyan adventure, apart from a certain amount of schadenfrued over Gadaffi's departure, was a nice photo-op for Call Me Dave. Not exactly a good return on our investment.

So Arabs are not humans as far as you're concerned?

Originally Posted by Werewolf

No Humans Involved. Their country, their civil war, their fucking problem. Not ours.

And if the UK gub'mint is dumb enough to get involved -which would'nt surprise me - what can Britain expect to get out of it? Even if we help the rebels win, there's no guarantee they'll be particularly well disposed towards us. IIRC, the only thing "we" got out of the Libyan adventure, apart from a certain amount of schadenfrued over Gadaffi's departure, was a nice photo-op for Call Me Dave. Not exactly a good return on our investment.

While I don't disagree that it's not necessarily our problem, claiming NHI is going a little far, not to mention distasteful. Why don't you confine such comments to the NAAFI bar?

Originally Posted by Circus_Pony

A horrible "moral position" to take, but does not a continued, ‘low-level’ insurrection like Syria has been experiencing for the last 10-11 months not suit “us”?

All the time they [the Syrians] are looking inward, and are inwardly divided, they are not looking SW over the Golan Heights or West into Lebanon. They are not supplying weapons / training / intelligence to Hamas / Hezbollah / Hubba-bubba etc and are generally not making a nuisance of themselves in the outside World.

Regime Change is all well and groovy from a theoretical PoV, but with the old-style dictators of Tunisia, Egypt and indeed Libya, we "knew where we were". Opening them up to "Democracy" is not a good idea in a region where, either big "D" or little "d" democracy, has never been in vogue and the population does not know what to do.

Admittedly living under a dictatorship would not be that much fun, but when that is all you have ever known and in the case of Egypt has been pretty much the one form of government, under different names, for the last 4,000 years, suddenly removing the “safety net” leads to all sorts of unintended consequences; hands up who wanted a nice, liberal democracy in Egypt and was “shocked, surprised and saddened” to see the Muslim Brotherhood crawl out from under their respective stones and take power… Oops… Want to see Assad deposed and another bunch of formerly banned religious nutters and bigots take power? It seems it’s always groups like the Muslim Brotherhood that have the numbers and the “passion” to move on to Government as opposed to the nice, old professor at Cairo or Damascus University that has been writing papers about the democratic future of the Arabs for the last forty years…

Also; Israel must be crapping themselves seeing, one by one, the former strong men falling and potentially less stable and more hostile governments forming to fill the vacuum. What an irony if the “Arab Spring” was to turn into the “Arab (Nuclear) Winter”?

In short, the Chinese and Russian veto at the UN (whilst almost certainly in their own interest and having nothing to do with “not wanting to take sides in a Civil War) may well have done us a favour – without a UN Resolution it will be difficult (not impossible, but more difficult) for “the West” to intervene in Syria militarily even if it was just lobbing LGBs in from a-far.

We can just sit back, let the Syrian state muddle along with the current level of violence to keep them occupied and, genuinely, say “We cannot do anything”.

Expect the arms exports from Russia to the government of Syria to continue and remember that in the back of their minds both Russia and China are keenly aware that whilst “Syria today” may not be “us tomorrow” it could very well be “us next month” and the last thing they would want then would be any UN snooping and interfering in their internal affairs.

Firstly Both can and will deal with their own internal affairs(obviously Tibet and Georgia etc. have passed you by), secondly..UN..!!..you must be on some form of hallucogenic medication

Originally Posted by Krek_Brizzle

So Arabs are not humans as far as you're concerned?

Of course they are humans, what I think he means is that they should stop shooting at the government troops so why should the west jump in and support an armed uprising? Oh because apparently it is indiscriminate shelling and the only difference between the Syrian army using mortars in built up areas and the Israelis using heavy artillery in similar populated areas in Gaza is that the Syrians aren't using White Phosphourus, British AS90s fired cluster munition onto Basra, US fired MLRS onto suburbs of Baghdad, all perfectly legal and justified, depending on your point of view course

Naturally the Russians are the bad guys vetoing a dodgy UN resolution that was designed only to end in failure and military intervention, the Russians only support Syria because of they sell them arms and want a permanent naval base. Very similar to how some countries sell weapons and have bases in Saudi Arabia etc who are not exactly the shining light of democracy and human rights themselves.


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The depressing thing is that if you follow the timeline and the various steps of rhetoric, you wind up with something that could easily have come from Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and any number of other 'interventions' launched under a flag of compassion.

Without a realistic ability to put overwhelming force on the ground to disarm and separate the combatants, the humanitarian position is toothless and my gut feeling is that it'll wind up causing far more of a humanitarian disaster than it solves.

It would be a fucking clusterfuck if we get involved.
Arab League should sort it out

Originally Posted by Draft Dodger

Does anyone think there's any sort of realistic chance that we would get involved militarily here?

Looks as if we have just got involved my friend ..... Breaking News on the BBC reporting that Washington is to send humanitarian aid to Syria.

Question is .... how many weapons will be smuggled into those bags of rice.

Originally Posted by NorthfleetNinja

It would be a fucking clusterfuck if we get involved.
Arab League should sort it out

The Arab League is a definition of a clusterfuck!