Sometimes doing nothing is the only thing you can do. Unfortunately it is against the politicians creed. Soldiers and citizens don't generally start wars, they just fight and die in them. Politicians do the starting.
to try and blame anything on Obama being stooped and naieve is oversimplifying the issue,,,,,,, to further on NZdave's point, we should be aware that the US has already spent near on 1k million dollars on the " problem " of ISIS, ( which is actually Americas Frankenstein monster ) , this money is coming from the American tax payer and going straight to the military / war machine / industry,,,,,, tax payers money to private share holders......... the tax payer is paying for the profits of American military contractors.. no less significant and tragically more important is the hell that the populations of the mid east countrys are living and dying throo while the American masters of a phoney war make profit
brief resume of American history,,,,,,, first they fight with the natives until there are none ( or precious few ) left, then they fight with the French until there are gone then they fight with the Spanish until they are also gone, then they fight with the british until ,, etc.,, then when there is no one left to fight with they fight with each other !! now of course they fight with anybody anywhere ..:Banghead:
Wasn't it Pascal who said that all the problems in the world stem from mankind's inability to sit quietly in an empty room? I think he also said that never do men do evil so cheerfully and so completely than when they do it from religious conviction.
The fact is terrorism works, you only have to look at N.I. to see former IRA members in power and many of their ground troops released early and living freely despite being convicted bombers. I'd suspect in some years from now we will be negotiating with ISIS around a large Middle East caliphate stretching into Turkey if we don't decide to take a stand and actually eradicate their primary forces and occupy the countries. We have radicalised muslims in the UK fighting there, other western countries have the same challenges, these are educated people able to use modern media and they seem pretty effective. Our desire to have an inclusive country of freedoms means we give rights and freedom of speech to the very minorities who would deny us those rights if they had their way and imposed their religious views forcibly on us. At some point, we need to realise the futility of any negotiation from a weak standpoint and either give them a muslim stronghold in the middle east we respect or go to war full on. The current efforts won't do anything other than pander to people at home.
The right to free speech, which all of us have, does not include any right to threaten murder, to exhort people to commit murder, or to conspire with others to commit murder. Those kinds of speech are and always have been criminal offences. Yet the police have been strangely supine about arresting offenders. It seems the Home Secretary is not interested in enforcing vigorously the perfectly adequate laws we already have - she is more keen on passing new, restrictive laws which would diminish everyone's freedoms.
The Muslim question is a minefield. The first problem you have is that the Muslim religion, but more particularly the Wahhabite interpretation of it, goes fundamentally against all the liberal values that the West stands for by insisting on segregation of the sexes, the inferiority of women in society, arranged marriages, temperance, penalties for abjuring religion, laws decided by the Koran and denying free speech - the list goes on and on. That problem is compounded by oil. The Muslims have it and the West needs it, so we have to not only cohabit peacefully with people whose values we don't share, but actually make them very rich by buying their oil. This wealth is then used for the proselytising of the Muslim faith and again, the Wahhabite interpretation of it. The chief culprits here are the Saudis. TTonup is right: the Patrick Cockburn book (The Jahadis Return) - very short, not expensive, highly readable - is excellent if you want to know about the current ISIS war. I am now also reading Europe's Angry Muslims by Robert S. Leiken which is also very interesting. He quotes Pew Research Center study in 2006 which asked the question of Muslims in the UK, Germany, Spain and France whether they considered themselves foremost a Muslim, or a citizen of their adopted country (not even adopted in the case of 2nd generation Muslims). The results are interesting: in GB, 7% consider themselves to be Britons, 81% a Muslim before anything else. In France the respective figures are 42% and 48%. British multiculturalism, where people are encouraged to live in ethnic community islands rather than being part of a greater whole may be responsible for this. Britain doesn't really seek to include these people, it seeks to let them live as they wish unmolested. It's a laudable intention, perhaps, but it doesn't seem to be paying dividends. On the basis of these simple figures, it's not too hard to understand why British Muslims are happy to join global jihad. They often aren't really very British in a cultural sense.
An interesting, if long, read that may make you think twice. Jonathan Powell: How to talk to terrorists | World news | The Guardian Not sure if I agree in this instance or not.
i think we first have to consider who the are terrorists,,, is it the North Atlantic Terrorist Organisation . this is a complex issue and " daily mailesge" simplistic attitudes and jargon only muddy the waters,,, you may ask why ????,,,,,,,,,,,,,, if we are only going to view the mid east situation throo the telescopic sight of a british / us rifle then things are only going to get worse....
The more we step in the worse it gets . We need to sort out the trouble makers here for one thing . But oh no we are too scared to ! But sadly we have become Americas bitch .. This is like another Vietnam .. You can't win this .. It needs to be sorted out by it's own region . The more we do the more we will get hit at home . So we have a failing NHS ? People poverty stricken , old people suffering as we have no money ...... Yet always the money to go into battle ... Or war . Why ? Oil . Seriously we need to be like the Aussies for starters .. Look after out island vet people really hard and if you don't play right your out . I'm afraid the more we go in the more people with die . Every time we withdraw it kicks off again and in we go following the USA like baby sitters. Time to let them sort it out . Or in 5 years we will be back in
I'm afraid, like it or not, these people are mainly aimed at combating the west, they will get a strong foot hold in their region, then spread. It would be nice to step back and for everything to sort itself, but we did that in the thirties and look where it got us. No good sitting back and pussy footing around on this one. They are religious freaks and mindless criminals, should we let them continue to play their game? No one is sure of course, but one thing is clear, they are against all what we believe humanity and human rights stand for, it's as simple as that.
I was dead against the Iraq War, which was obviously stirring up a hornets' nest. Much as I didn't like Saddam, kicking off a needless war just to show the might of the USA seemed very stupid at the time, and a whole lot more stupid now. I have also not been in favour of a long and drawn-out war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. It doesn't look winnable (and never really did) and the locals aren't really worth helping, seeing as they enjoy the medieval, war-lorded, drug-dealing society they have developed and it isn't our job to impose anything else on them (however tempting it might be). But the ISIS thing seems a bit different. If you want to get rid of them (at least in Iraq) you're going to have to send in troops. Otherwise, you accept that you let a murderous regime gain permanent territory - one that will execute and torture and basically make everyone's lives a misery. In which case, what was the point of training and financing the Iraqi army to the tune of billions, and what was the point of the Iraq war anyway as you have admitted the defeat of democracy in the country? But if you do decide to go down that route, you are probably accepting an independent state for the Kurds (which Turkey probably won't agree to), and you still don't have a solution for Syria, seeing as you are against the Assad regime too. Syria seems to be a real problem - who exactly, are you supposed to be supporting, and what are the chances of success? It's a headache. The only positive is that the Kurds seem like decent people who you could actually help. That's probably where you want to start.
Also the situation in the middle east isn't nearly as clear-cut as thirties Europe. Nazi Germany was a self-contained sovereign state which committed clear acts of war against its neighbours. ISIS is not a state. It is an itinerant religious militia which receives covert funding from within the region. War against ISIS firstly confers upon the group the the status of statehood which it does not warrant but desperately desires, but also it would mean entering a wider war by proxy. Unless and until the nations of the region come out of their collective coma, unite against this menace and formally request outside assistance, which they have not - most are keeping quiet and keeping their heads down - western intervention will further destabilise the region and allow ISIS to spread like a disease. Which is precisely what they want.
I think that that is the common view - that they are mainly concerned with combatting the West, but I don't think (having read Cockburn's book) that that is really the case. The Islamist short term objective is to overrun Muslim lands. They want to get rid of all the Shias (apostates) - so that means "dealing with" the Shia minority in Iraq and then having a pop at Iran (which won't be easy...). They will also want to topple the corrupt regimes (monarchies) of the Arab lands (Saudi Arabia, Jordan et al). The West isn't really on their radar for land conquest (far too difficult) but having a go at Western interests is good for recruitment (a bit harder to explain that you want the genocide of other Muslims). And naturally, they will be keen if returning jihadis commit acts of terrorism in Europe - it's all grist to their mill. I agree - they need stamping out before it really is too late.
