Should the UK bomb Syria?

[Smudger]

David Schneider (off of Alan Partridge) put this together for Huffington Post...

[peterb]

Tempted though I am to ignore the simplistic view,

Doing nothing will cause Daesh to completely stop their attempts to create a Caliphate

Doing nothing will allow Assad to become a benign democratically elected president and stop the persecution of his own people

Doing nothing will allow the Kadizi people to live in peace in their own state

Doing nothing will send a powerful message to Russia, who will immediately follow suit.

Doing nothing will immensely improve the human rights of people living in the region

It is impossible to predict what doing nothing would have done in Libya or Iraq, although it is likely that Kuwait would now be part of Iraq, and the Kurds would have been gassed out of existence. Gadaffi would now be be peace ambassador to the UN. (Not)

In fact reading that article really re-I forces why we should intervene, because however bad intervening might be, doing nothing is likely to be a whole lot worse.

[Zak33]

But why was the RAF the only one that could help in that time? Air support is (in my completely non-expert opinion) better able to be provided by the US and French from their carriers, or the Russians from their base *in Syria*. If it's a question of cost, we don't we just help out financially and make more efficient use of that money? Or if we have an airbase in a good location, why not allow these other nations to make use of it?

honest answer - we've got the best kit and the best pilots for this job.

Seriously.

[kalniel]

honest answer - we've got the best kit and the best pilots for this job.

Seriously.

Pilots, I'm honour bound to agree. Kit? I'm not so sure. I don't doubt we've got some incredibly useful bits, but I don't think they're game-changers, and it would seem to make more sense (again, from a position of ignorance) to supply those bits to our close allies for them to deliver from their superior platforms. Yes I know, platform integration is not simple or cheap, but other than pride I don't know why you wouldn't want to deliver the best weapons from the best platforms.

[Smudger]

It is impossible to predict what doing nothing would have done in Libya or Iraq, although it is likely that Kuwait would now be part of Iraq, and the Kurds would have been gassed out of existence. Gadaffi would now be be peace ambassador to the UN. (Not)

It was the 2nd invasion of Iraq and the invasion of Afghanistan on spurious, fraudulent grounds, which probably led us to the current situation. I'm pretty sure the plight of the Kurds did not even present a flicker in the minds of Bush and Blair, it was just a happy coincidence.

[The Hand]

It's perhaps undeniable that Islamic State is the most vile regime that has arisen in living memory.. arguably worse than the Nazis (in principle at least, not in scale) as IS flaunt and terrorise the world with their crimes; The Nazis tried to hide their atrocities in an attempt to reconcile with a more civilised mindset, be at home or abroad.

The problem is politicians know this action won't stop any future incarnation of fascistic Wahhabism, even if Islamic State is wiped out at least as a geographic entity. This rationale of bombing IS is about backing up a fellow, like-minded Western democratic ally, which can create it's own advantages and inevitable drawbacks.

It's anyone's guess where this is leading. There are massive geo-political,socio-economic,historical factors, that are simply not being given adequate coverage in the media, be it the sectarianism within Islam, Saudi Arabia's role in Wahhabism and fellow arab world to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and food and oil prices influenced possibly by climate change.

Islamic State is a malignant cancer and one that will kill if not removed, but why did this cancer form in the first place? There are no simple answers to this question and bombing alone is too simple.

[Zak33]

Pilots, I'm honour bound to agree. Kit? I'm not so sure.

Tornado's are old planes but they can carry Brimstone missiles.
Typhoons are newer planes and can carry Paveways

Only Saudi have bought Brimstone so far I think. US and France would love it and we will cable clip it under the wings of F35's when we finally get them

Meantime... if you want the highest chance of hitting what you aim at and not killing many innocents.. you use Brimstone, even if it means asking the RAF to bring it to the party

[Zak33]

here .. this is better than me

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brimstone_%28missile%29

[kalniel]

Tornado's are old planes but they can carry Brimstone missiles.
Typhoons are newer planes and can carry Paveways

Only Saudi have bought Brimstone so far I think. US and France would love it and we will cable clip it under the wings of F35's when we finally get them

Meantime... if you want the highest chance of hitting what you aim at and not killing many innocents.. you use Brimstone, even if it means asking the RAF to bring it to the party

Which is exactly my point - subject to the platform difficulties I mentioned before - if we're being asked to participate just for brimstone then why not give brimstone to our allies who are probably better placed to deliver it?

I think that's more likely to be a gracious excuse to allow the UK to play in the skies alongside the US and France, and to attempt to justify it's continued place in the world military order.

[Zak33]

give it to them?

please dont be offended, but to install it, learn it and practice with it takes years! You dont just plug it in fella. It's a MONSTER integration and then eternal hours of practice and perfection.

Unlike a rifle that you could make and send over and train to a soldier who would then spend a few months perfecting.. a missile system is so intricate and so .. integrated into an airforce, that it's a mammoth challenge covering YEARS.

[Top_gun]

It seems we haven't learnt the lessons from the Iraq war and other campaigns. All what the bombing does is to act as a recruitment drive for these terrorist groups. Destroy one terrorist group and another one pops up. Even the Daily Mail understand this!

The only way to deal with this conflict is an holistic plan involving political, economic and humanity aid to these areas in conjunction with military force on the land.

I'm not against the principle of military force but really painting Corbyn as a terrorist sympathiser in order to carry out attacks in Syria smacks of playground behaviour. Clearly Cameron and others just can't do grown up debates.

[scaryjim]

... What this motion was about was targeted air strikes on Daesh, and ONLY Daesh, in Syria. It's not like we'll be carpet-bombing Raqqa. ...

I 'd love to trust our government and military commanders to stick to the tight line on this one. I dug out the wording of the motion, and the key bits IMNSHO (after all the preamble justifying/legalising military action) are "the Government will not deploy UK troops in ground combat operations" and "taking military action, specifically airstrikes, exclusively against ISIL in Syria".

The first strike was launched an hour after the vote was declared and targetted ... an oil field. Effective at reducing Daesh's ability to generate income? Potentially, in the medium to long term. But it also looks like a great way to devastate the infrastructure and reduce Syria's ability to generate income if Daesh can be defeated and a legitimate government installed. That's an oil field that's out of action until some very expensive rebuilding work is completed.

If the government genuinely believes there's a credible ground force available in Syria, and they don't want to commit ground troops to the effort, I don't understand why they didn't authorise air support for ground actions, rather than air strikes targeted at - as has now become apparent - Syrian infrastructure. I'm pretty sure there are more effective ways to lock out Daesh's finances and disrupt their supply routes than just blowing things up...

[Zak33]

i'm gonna try to better explain my comparison of differing missile sets

Imagine a country with intel motherboards, using AGP slots and VGA cables, but with Windows 10 and mouse keyboard combos.

Imagine a friendly country with AMD cpus and PCI express card with HDMI cables running Apple OS and using touch screens and no mouse keyboard

Both countried systems are equally advanced, and if you got in one you'd boot it and use it to surf the web with no issues and 20 hours training.
But one does only CAD and one does only Excel

now try to swap graphics cards to get the excel machine to run the CAD. Wrong slot, wrong cable, wrong driver package, wrong input interface and wrong operators who cant use the other software.

I think thats a better shot at an analogy

[opel80uk]

The first strike was launched an hour after the vote was declared and targetted ... an oil field. Effective at reducing Daesh's ability to generate income? Potentially, in the medium to long term. But it also looks like a great way to devastate the infrastructure and reduce Syria's ability to generate income if Daesh can be defeated and a legitimate government installed. That's an oil field that's out of action until some very expensive rebuilding work is completed.

If the government genuinely believes there's a credible ground force available in Syria, and they don't want to commit ground troops to the effort, I don't understand why they didn't authorise air support for ground actions, rather than air strikes targeted at - as has now become apparent - Syrian infrastructure.

When the west embarks on these middle eastern escapades, after the dust from all the bombing settles who do you think wins the contracts to repair, and then run said infrastructure? If they really wanted to hit ISIS's finances, they'd look to Saudi Arabia.......smoke and mirrors, and we've seen it all before.

[The Hand]

If the government genuinely believes there's a credible ground force available in Syria, and they don't want to commit ground troops to the effort, I don't understand why they didn't authorise air support for ground actions, rather than air strikes targeted at - as has now become apparent - Syrian infrastructure. I'm pretty sure there are more effective ways to lock out Daesh's finances and disrupt their supply routes than just blowing things up...

All this talk of Brimstone bombs by the establishment hitting targets moving at 70mph and they then bomb a static old field?

Hmm. Is the "truth" already being twisted to suit particular goals as suggested?

[goldfinger247]

We're already bombing in Iraq... it's just shifting the borders a bit

When the west embarks on these middle eastern escapades, after the dust from all the bombing settles who do you think wins the contracts to repair, and then run said infrastructure? If they really wanted to hit ISIS's finances, they'd look to Saudi Arabia.......smoke and mirrors, and we've seen it all before.

Very true, look at Halliburton in Iraq