Monday 7 December 2015

So what next now the dogs of war are slipped?

So whilst I was in the far East last week, quite a big fuss was made on the news agenda there about this debate that was happening in the UK about bombing Syria.

Firstly, I had hoped to avoid this debate, so it was a bit disappointing to still be assailed with it.

Then the debate, as ever, meant nothing. There is no plan to get rid of ISIS, there semms little mention of unhelpful facts that the Russians keep bringing up like the role of Turkey and then the peaceniks just say war is bad as if that is all that needs to be said.

Anyway, there was a vote and now we are bombing tiny bits of Syria as well as tiny bits of Iraq. Already the blowback has started, with stabbings in London and now in Abingdon today 'triggered' by our involvement.

Where was the real debate about WTF to do about radical Islam in our own country? This surely is the real pressing security need. Wiping out ISIS will be fun and is no doubt nescesary, but it is not the top level defence of the realm requirement.

Indeed, given attacking Syria will likely increase domestic terror attacks (it has already) then surely the most important thing to do is investment and working towards curbing these. Then thinking about the partial source and inspiration - preferably after long chats with friend and foe to find an actual workable strategy.

At the moment, Syria looks a lot like Libya on steroids, in fact had Gaddafi survived he would be a Assad clone for how the West viewed him. Libya did not work out so well, so how will Syria.

Finally, more to the point. How stupid are our politicians? Having the wrong debate about the wrong issues and turning it into a big deal?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

@ How stupid are our politicians?

Wow, the difficult ones first.

Anonymous said...

War is bad.... so why not 用間,用间 or even a Utopian solution.

Raedwald said...

The government are being fundamentally deceitful in gulling folk that (1) Eliminating Daesh-IS in Syria will make us safer in UK (2) throwing more money at police and MI5 will improve the detect rate and make us safer. Neither is true.

All the old models of terrorist cells with one member in each cell in contact with a pyramidal command structure leading back to Mr Bad has long gone. New Islamist terrorists are told "Yep, OK your sign-up has been accepted now go off and find innovative ways of killing as many kuffir as you can before achieving martyrdom. Don't write. Don't phone. Once the feds identify your exploded corpse we'll look you up on the card index and claim your hit as Daesh-ISIL's".

So you can destroy Daesh-ISIS completely in Syria and the rogue killers will still be in out midst, planning atrocities. And because they're not linked with other self-detonators they slip under the MI5 radar. And the government can do exactly nowt to keep us safer.

dearieme said...

The politicians aren't being stupid, they are being deceitful. The only useful things they could do quickly are beyond the pale in their views, so they do a bit of humbugging instead.

Electro-Kevin said...

The PM, BBC, Benn... everyone else who wants to deflect blame has at least got a useful soundbite out of the first of the Syria backlash:

"You ain't no Muslim bro !"

Aside the double negative the British of 70 odd years ago would not have understood it at all - not the sloppy patios language, nor its cultural significance. They were used to rallying calls of the calibre "We shall fight them on the beaches..."

So we are to be united by what we are not rather than what we are ?

There will be atrocious violence but it will have nothing to do with Islam, the religion of peace, of course.

I understand the reasons for adopting "You ain't no Muslim bro !" but it is desperate and pointless. It is an attempt to appeal to these monsters' sense of shame.

Is that the best we have ?

Now that the barbarians are within the city gates and the vast majority of our citizens are unarmed I suppose appealing to their better nature is our best hope.

Bill Quango MP said...

Arming the citizens is a bad idea.
A really, really bad idea.

In the USA, a terrorist attack is likely to be put down far quicker than in Europe. because of all the armed police immediately available. Not the armed citizenry.
I can't recall any terror incident where the terrorist was shot by a member of the public.
In fact, thinking about the last few major shooting incidents in the US... That congresswoman getting shot...the reporter and camera crew..The blind firing into a recruiting office..
None of those had a civillian response.

The death by terrorist numbers for the UK are average under 100 every year since 1960. Even the years of the IRA bombings.

In the meantime, on US stats, if the UK was armed to the same extent as the USA, the UK would experience about 7,000 gun related deaths each year. Of which a third, according to the pro-gun organisations, would be suicide..

The gun stats for accidental death in the US are ridiculously low and cannot be trusted. The pro gun lobby cite 600 a year. Which seems ridiculous. They must include drunkenness as suicide or something.

But, even accepting 600 is the real figure, that would still average out 120 UK deaths by accident, by firearms.

Now ..Tasers .. that would be better. Because even if the damn things don't work, which 2/3 the time they do not, it wouldn't make us more likely to die than the situation at present.

Electro-Kevin said...

OK.

But we need a far better armed and deployable police. Perhaps a larger territorial army (home guard) - along the lines of the lifeboat/fire brigade/mountain rescue type volunteer and on-call system. So that these people are vetted and they can't get their hands on guns willy-nilly.

Perhaps time will tell if it's needed. What we don't need is Trident.

Jan said...

When my son was in the TA he liked the idea of helping out in emergencies eg the recent flooding but as soon as it looked as if he might be sent to Afghanistan or Iraq he left and I must say I was relieved. He liked the theory of being sent to war and enjoyed the weapons training but when it came to it he didn't want to fight other peoples' wars. I don't think he was the only one. It was really brought home to him when one of his fellow TAs was killed in Afghanistan. I'm sure he wasn't the only one who would have preferred a role at home along the lines EK proposes.