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Here’s some of the most active discussions this past 10 days:
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People should not be MPs until they are 40, says Andrew Marr;
Housing benefits caps.. good, bad or neither?;
Worse than being hated is being perceived as irrelevant;
Lib Dems vs the rest in the Europe debate;
Syria;
EU Referendum -time to listen and change policy.;
Why so few selections?;
Tom Newton Dunn says “Come on Lib Dems, grab our attention”;
Osborne’s Speech.
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Back on the campaign trail
1963: London's summer of the Hoverbus
Have resignations led to a rethink?
Chloe
Abrial Jerram
Neil Hickman
5 Comments
Can we get on with bombing IS in Syria? Turkey’s response has taught me that you can’t rely on regional powers for these things, despite what waffle Douglas Alexander is spouting in the Guardian.
Eddie,
Did you mean “we”???
Or did you mean that someone else should get on and do all this bombing for you?
At home in Southport I guess you are comfortable calling for the bombing and destruction of another country a long way away. The innocent civilians in Syria may not feel as comfortable as you as they are the ones who will die, or have their homes and businesses destroyed, or see their children blown apart or maimed by shrapnel.
Those civilians will be written off as “collateral damage”, a price worth paying,
The UK and the USA has spent most of the last 25 years bombing Iraq and now you want the RAF to get on and bomb Syria. I guess you must think that the bombing of Iraq since 1990 has been such a stunning success that the people of Syria will be delighted to have a similar privilege extended to them?
Bombing is such a simple and easy solution.
Ever thought that the situation in Syria might be a bit more complex than that.
Hi John, I just think we shouldn’t let Kobane get taken. I agree very much with Ming on this. Doing nothing isn’t going to save lives either, but I’d rather support the ones who look alright than just sit back as if they are all as bad as each other.
Douglas Alexander’s piece seemed to be neither supporting nor opposing airstrikes in Syria, but I really think now is the time for action, rather than hesitation.
As you know, I don’t back military action all the time, but I have been saddened by the way the media has moved Kobane/Kobani down the pecking order whilst prioritising Farage knocking on doors.
I am also aware of the slightly bad taste in calling for military action whilst not going yourself, which is why I’ve been thinking of joining the reserves again, but I’ll probably just have to make sure I don’t shout too loudly.
Eddie
If you check it out in Wikipedia the town of Kobani is only 100 years old. A railway town on a German built raiway in Ottoman times The people were mainly refugees from earlier wars The French Mandate ran Syria but did not do much for Kobani. At one time there was a large proportion of Armenians escaping an earlier genocide who mainly moved on again in the 1960s to the then Soviet Union. Recently it has been mainly Kurdish. The Turks have not been the Kurds’ best friends for the last hundred years either within Turkey or anywhere else. It is not so very long ago that Turkish armed forces would cross the border to chase down Kurdish “terrorists”, the Peshmerga who are now apparently everyone’s best friends because they are prepared to take on the Daesh, the guys with the black flags.
Until the civil war started in Syria a few years ago this unremarkable town got by and nobody in the UK even if they had a clue who the Kurds were would have been able to tell uyou which bit of Syria was mainly Kurdish. Most people in the USA probably could not find Syria on a map.
In 2014 we all love the Kurds and saving this small town from the nutters with the black flags fills our TV News every night. But in the 1920s Britain was happily bombing the Kurds for not paying their taxes quickly enough and Winston Churchill had to be held back from using chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians.
Nothing in the hundred year history of this title place leads me to believe that continued bombing by the RAF is going to make things much better.
Hi John, but we’ve had successful military operations in the past too. The police use force, so why is the military so much different? Having said that, I am interested in doing what we can to reduce civilian deaths. I don’t think these can be prevented 100%, but I’m not comfortable with what Israel did and just bombed civilian areas extensively, paralysing at least one child. However, it has to be said, that Churchill also did this during WW2. I am skeptical as how these help to win wars. Peace needs to be won by seeing to be fair, not through fear.