5 Comments

• jedibeeftrix 16th Jun '13 - 1:07pm

  Shame he is so completely tone deaf with regards to defence.

• Daniel Henry 16th Jun '13 - 1:08pm

  If you listen carefully, Danny has good answers, which you can hear if you listen sympathetically.
  Unfortunately, most people won’t be.

  Soundbites get a lot of criticism for being “shallow”, but I see them as a brilliantly concise and effective form of communication. Surely there’s ways to slim down long worded rambles, loaded with obscure technical terms, into a clear and concise punchy one liner that more effectively gets the point across?

  (I know this is an ironic post seeing as it also rambled with technical terms, but I’m pitching at a different audience here! :p )

• Daniel Henry 16th Jun '13 - 1:11pm

  He was strongest with his last answer.
  Not sure whether it was because he got warmed up, maybe it’s because he was speaking freely for himself rather than having to “keep the government line”, but he came out with a clear reasoned position and you could sense that there was more conviction in his voice.

• Jack Herer 16th Jun '13 - 4:43pm

  There are already at least 93,000 dead in Syrian, 1,500,000 refuges, and millions more displaced. How long does Danny want to wait to see if arming the Syrian majority will “make a difference” when Assad’s forces come to kill them and their kids next?

  I fail to see how it is anything but unrealistic to hold out for a “negotiated settlement” with a dictator who commits such brazen and widespread atrocities. Any negotiation for Assad means a relinquishment of power, which means a step closer to justice . But this vain and vague hope is our current reasoning for inaction, and we are proposing for it to continue, which means damning countless people to die at the hands of their own well armed dictatorial and brutal government.

  The arming and manning of Assad by foreign powers isn’t stopping with our inaction. There is no way Assad will negotiate by our inaction either.

  Syria isn’t Iraq. It is far more like Bosnia. Except it has already passed that desperate need need for humanitarian intervention. When it now comes to stopping a tyrant massacring innocent people, Syria has to live in Iraq’s shadow, even though Iraq was about potential, supposed, and as we now know categorically, false, not open, ongoing and brutal actions.

  Doing the right thing on Iraq was the main reason I became a firm believer of the Lib Dem cause. However, and I don’t want to sound like a prima donna here, but the current call for inaction in Syria is fast becoming a reason for my desertion, because it means continuing indifference to the suffering of its people.

  Decrying an entire opposition as “terrorists”, in whatever manner, seems a cruel joke to cement a people’s terrible fate against such a tyrant.

• Simon 16th Jun '13 - 8:40pm

  No Syria isn’t Iraq that was where our intervention sparked a war where more than 100,000 Iraqs lost their lives and where violence still continues.

  Iran has just elected what by there standards is a new president who has made positive noises on talking to the west. Instead of seizing that oppertunity and looking for the political solution that Syria needs the US and her allies, as well as the Russians, are looking to play cold war games (or in ours and Frances case Great Power games).

  Pooring more arms into Syria risks making the killing worse.