Out of Pod Experience

A lot of ranting there.

I am deliberately avoiding talking about religion of any kind - it isn't really truly relevant. Anyone with true religion would not council this fight.

I agree that the Afghan/Syria fights are becoming related. It would be my strongest reason for leaving the conflict. - neither side is right. Both sides will have to back down before we can meet in the middle.

That's a bit scary =)

Nope. I do not.

I'm ordinarily not cynical, but after observing for 48 years........well, lets call it 37 (I was 11 when the deal with Sadat was made), it's honestly just hopeless.

The danger is all this spreading to nearby Pakistan and thus across India.

Than the Chinese move in there and it's all over with at that point.

The same old themes, over and over. The bad Western-ish dictator vs. the populist movement. It used to be the populists were mostly Communists, now they tend to be religious fundamentalists. No clear and easy choices about whom to support.

Well, at least it's clear that WMDs really are involved. On the other hand, al Qaeda may be involved as well. Both of those were used by our last U.S. President to justify a war, and both proved to be fake justifications.

Noone wants war, its about the most extreme thing we can do bar firing the Nukes off for a decapitation strike.

It happens when nothing else works, where sides misjudge each others intentions and resilience, and irreconcilable positions clash. In this case, we the West are opposed to civilian massacres by any faction as an intention for political purposes. Assad is either trying to break the back of the opposition through demonstration of what he is prepared to do to underwrite it, or the Opposition are desperate enough to do it themselves to drag in someone who can take him out and leave a shattered nation for them to conquer.

Honestly, we wrote most of international law and chose to bring in other nations as equals and decolonise, the UN was built because thats what the Superpowers in the immediate aftermath of WW2 desired. If it wasn't then it wouldn't be there, along with international law. How hard would it have been for say the Western Allies to conquer the world in Operation Unthinkable, incorporating the Wermarcht into the Allied forces and assaulting the USSR under nuclear bombardment.

That's what we avoided, it might be the most arrogant thing the west can say, but its true that at that point nothing came close, with the US being the lone nuclear power, Britain having only its side of collaboration in the Manhattan project and the Soviets pouring over theoretical papers.

Hence the current arrangement of those Nuclear Superpowers eyeing each other as equals that could cut deals with each other to avoid actually using the Arsenals that maintained their power, and keeping the club exclusive to avoid an unstable nation (ie Pakistan) gaining the fire-power to disrupt the peace. There was absolutely nothing fair about this, it was power politics on a global scale to avoid large scale warfare and history has proved that its been the most effective enforcer of the Industrial age, Europe since the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Peace is on the one side, fairness on the other, and human nature permeating the whole thing, which chose peace.

And if the planet is going to carry on regardless of our existence, I would much prefer humanities demise far, far in the future and steps taken to ensure that.


Missed this line earlier, but why would either side agree to share a cake they can kill the other guy over, claim it just and have a whole cake to themselves, never grumbling about compromise and old wounds?

not so much Britain and france but more like William bloody hague dragging us into war ...Christ on a fkn bike why cant the bloke just shut his bloody mouth

10-4 - Nasal idiot drags us into something that has nothing to do with us.

anyways as far as I understand it Cameron and the rest of the bloody idiots have been told that they cant put boots on the ground ....cos the made too many of poor fukers redundant

The schism between the different factions of Islam seems to be following down the path of the historical schism in the Christian Church during the late Middle Ages (also known as the Dark Ages). Strangely enough during that time Islam was the centre of scientific and academic study, while the Christians were busy burning women at the stake for owning a cat and slaughtering each other for having a slightly different interpretation of the Bible.

The whole Shia and Sunni thing is pretty much mirroring the history of western religion, except these days the belligerents have the means to kill each other in much greater numbers, and with more efficiency. The radicalisation is mainly the fault of fundamentalist Imams putting their own spin on the Koran while ignoring or twisting the bits of it that talk about tolerance for other religious beliefs, ignoring the fact that in the past Islam allowed, and actively encouraged women to get an education and anything else that doesn't match their blinkered ideology.

Even as a dyed in the wool atheist I respect the beliefs of those that are not, as long as their beliefs don't advocate murder, war etc; each to their own.