So called "Islamic State"

Well, if I dont respond to your posts you get all upset because I am ignoring you! Make up your mind.

 

Found this interesting.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29098679

Even that nutter isn't on board.

 

Unless under duress he is still playing the fatuous prat, claiming to speak for Islam on the matter of who can and can't be killed.

 

It's a moot point ZZ on who claims what on the basis of their dusty old tome. What's important is who lives their now (in some cases who got expelled) and all of them should respect the significance of the place to others.

Religions in conflict seem to like to end up in a ******* contest not worthy of their religions.

 

They're all absolutely mental. All of them.

 

I'm not sure whether it is a moot point or not, maybe. But the reason I raised it was not to make a judgement on whether Islam should be able to "claim" Jerusalem, but to counteract Squibba, who used the fact that stoning isn't in the Koran to imply it isn't an Islamic practice (in his post #116). I was just saying that in the Koran or not, it doesn't really matter. The discussion only continued because he said I was wrong, when I was actually correct.

 

The IS are not a uniting force of Islamic extremist organisations. On the contrary, there are deep and seemingly unbridgeable divisions with other fundamentalist groups. AQ don't care for IS, if I remember rightly. Neither do Hamas. It's all separate and different types of crazy.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ambas...tml?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

Nice to see some sense from Bosnia.

 

I wouldn't be surprised by Hamas not liking IS. Everyone calls IS "IS" because of simplicity and the ambiguity of the different acronyms that supposedly mean the same thing. In fact, IS want to recreate the caliphate that existed under the old Ottoman Empire. This is why IS should be called ISIL- the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Unfortunately for Hamas, the Levant includes its dearly-beloved Palestinian Territories (note I'm just using the name to combine both the West Bank and Gaza - I'm not going to go into the political kerfuffle around it neither am I showing any support or dislike for it) are under threat.

 

Obama declares wider war on IS.

 

David Haines beheaded, another British hostage threatened with the same.

But let's just blame everyone else.

As Godfather says, they know what they are getting into, that'll teach him!

Moose says that this is all happening because of Western intervention and so what can we expect?

And when I say that moderate Islam could and should do more to stop radical Muslims (instead of the West becoming heavily embroiled again) I'm shouted down as being anti Islamic.

Let's just see how all this develops, shall we?

 

They'll run out of stock of Western hostages at this rate.

 

The invasion of Iraq was illegal, it was stupid, and it led to what is happening today; our best policy is to leave the middle east well alone and let them find their own solution

Besides who is going to pay for air strikes? Janes estimates the flight cost per hour of a Typhoon at £8200. Add £12900 for a bomb like paveway or if its something smart like Brimstone add £105,000 a time. So is the UK tax payer is expected to fork out another couple of hundred million... ?

 

So you would just walk away? Just like that? Just after they have murdered a British citizen who was handing out aid to people in Syria?

 

You want the moral high ground? Half a million children died in Iraq under UN sanctions championed by this country and the USA.

Just imagine for a minute if a foreign power killed half a million British children, how would you feel about the people of that country?

 

The sanctions weren't on the Iraqi children or its people. It was on the brutal leadership.

Or should we just keep sending money and aid that's intercepted by those brutal leaders which means the children would have died anyway?

Those are the sorts of decisions that need to be made in regards to places like Saddam's Iraq. Pull the moral high ground out of that.

 

i'm not sure you understand how sanctions and embargos work.

 

That is a disgraceful misinterpretation of the truth. Even if you believe the propaganda no-one is actually saying that a foreign power killed 500,000 Iraqi kids. Except you.

But, the half a million figure has been widely discredited anyway.

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/politics-and-law/the-iraq-sanctions-myth-56433/

But, no one taking the moral high ground (even with justification) can excuse what is happening now.

 

Theres plenty of chavvy benefit cheating scum over here that we could export to Iraq to be beheaded.

 

ZZ I don't know why you keep on doing this. I haven't said Western intervention is solely to blame. It's a terrible habit to keep on reducing questions to with me or against me arguments.

It would be obtuse to claim that intervention in Iraq in 2003 wasn't a major factor, or that arming the Syrian rebels wasn't either. But the issue also has its own dynamics that will continue with or without more intervention.

 

You can quibble about sanctions, but without a doubt they contributed to high infant mortality. But putting those aside our bombing in the cause of a bogus war killed thousands of children and many others.

Any action we take now must be held to the highest possible level of restraint or we just kill more bystanders who them become recruiting posters for the millions ready to believe a simplistic West v (Sunni) Islam argument.

I believe in the superiority of democracy and personal freedoms in the West. But they ring utterly hollow when they are represented by Napalm and Depleted Uranium. We cannot allow any mission creep or bombing of civilian areas.

 

Please, do tell. I'd like some evidence of sanctions being imposed on the children of Iraq, directly by the UK and others.

 

The intervention into Iraq was idiotic, I demonstrated against it at the time, and it has incredibly complex consequences that are still being felt.

We did however need to aid the Syrian rebels, who had a legitimate mandate to govern. It was an obvious military decision which would have led to a quick transition of a stable government, with the majority of the country and the world recognising the need for change. However, the world did not want to intervene following Iraq, meaning that the dictator gassing his own people remained, leading to stalemate.

Many will now be raped, tortured and killed because we, as a world, failed to act during a genocide.

You know when Cameron and Obama are willing to go to war in the post-Iraq shadow, despite it being disastrous and unpopular decision, that it was the right thing to do. But I guess Syria can be added to the list of countries that will have to pay for the idiocy of a few.

Whatever is done now will be done far, far too late.

 

Well it's simple - I don't suspect Saddam ever went without food or medicines as a result, but 100's of thousands of poorer people and their children did. We might have said we were giving Saddam a back eye, but it probably felt personal to those who were malnourished or lacked clean water through the lack of Chlorine for chlorination.

It's not impossible that many who suffered might not have if Saddam had distributed what they had better, but we turned the heat up on a failing, fracturing state.

 

Anyone who thinks that Western sanctions, air strikes and the like don't impact the man in the street in the Middle East is in cloud cuckoo land.

We've had a very great impact on civilian life in the Middle East. We can debate the necessity/ethics of it until the cows come home, but justified or no, the fact that they have been impacted is indisputable.

If we're going to interfere in the affairs of other countries the least we can do is not do it with our eyes closed to the consequences. And even if we're right in taking action, we should be mature enough to realise that little Muhammed won't understand why we blew his father up. He'll just grow up resenting and possibly hating the West because that's what kids do.

I don't condone extremist action, but I think we're far too quick to dismiss the part we have had in creating some of them. Do we swat the mosquitoes or drain the swamp?

 

There are plenty of articles on the internet, here's one that came up with 30 seconds search (taken from the Scottish Herald - a UK paper so I guess we can consider this reasonably trustworthy) I'm sure you can find others.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/091700-01.htm

(It claims) the allies deliberately targeted, bombed and wrecked water treatment and sewage plants across Iraq (despite it being expressly forbidden in part 4 article 54 of the Geneva convention)

That led to epidemic levels of typhoid, dysentery, hepatitis, cholera and polio across the country.

Chlorine and essential parts to repair the plants were banned under the embargo.

Now for the interesting line: "...10,000 people died in July (2000) of embargo-related causes - 7457 were children, with diarrhoeal diseases one of the prime conditions. (By comparison) In July 1989, the figure was 378. Unicef does not dispute the figures."

I'm sure you can find plenty of other examples if you look. Is it possible they are all bull****? That is possible, it's down to you I suppose if you choose to believe.

 

War is now played out in the media rather then the trenches...and innocents being put in harms way is a sure tactic to gain support and front page news

 

Moose, Tempesta.

I didn't say that the sanctions didn't effect the person on the street, of course they do.

My point is, do they hold off sanctions against these dictatorial brutal leaders because of the person of the street which, realistically, is giving in to them. Or do they impose the sanctions even though it will effect the people and (hopefully) effect the leadership as well.

I'm simply saying that this is the sort of problems that the UN and the 'western' world deal with in these situations when trying to decide whether to impose them.

The bombing of required services as you have shown, Tempesta, is unacceptable and if proven should lead to punishment for those involved. It won't though.

 

The reality is the population will never overthrow a leader if they're content. Whether you like it or not, an efficient way to get rid of somebody in power is to starve the population into an uprising.

 

...unless that leader is willing to massacre his own people to keep control, which those you'd want to overthrow generally are. After all, the fact that they're not very nice is usually why you'd want them removed in the first place.

If Iraq had risen up against Saddam I have no doubt he'd have put them down bloodily. In times past civilian uprisings could conceivably challenge government military might on masse (Pilgrimage of Grace v. Henry VIII, for example), but advances in warfare have made violent uprisings in the current day something else entirely. The man in the street can't do a damn thing against modern armour, gunships, guided missiles, air strikes, chemical weapons et al.

The only thing he can do is hope the chap he wants to overthrow has no intent to use those tools on the locals; if that's not the case, no chance.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/01/world/iraq-sanctions-kill-children-un-reports.html

but of course that's just about the sanctions in relation to the children of iraq. my OP was that you don't seem to understand how sanctions work because you said something to the effect of 'the sanctions target the leaders.' of course, even the most basic and cursory research should inform you that the people at the top of the food chain remain secure while the people at the bottom (who are as representative of their regime as we are of cameron e.t.c.) deal with incredibly high food prices, restricted access to medicines and other such stuff. of course, i'm sure as far as you're concerned, since in name it attacks the people at the top, its entirely justified apparently

 

I'm not trying to justify the behaviour of ISIS, its abhorrent. And I'm not trying to say regime change in Iraq was not a worthy cause. But it should have been done in other ways and in sinking to their levels we became no better then the regime we were trying to remove. Crimes were committed under Blair and Bush which tantamount IMO to war crimes.

Every time we get involved in the middle east we f*** it up. Maybe its time to stop getting involved? Maybe where we can really add value is in humanitarian operations?


The other side of the coin is what happens in the UK and that is our responsibility. I'd like to see zero tolerance policy on hate preachers, terrorist financing, people going abroad to fight, and people trying to get back in to the UK.

 

So what do you suggest the UN do in cases such as Iraq under Saddam? Let them get on with it?

What should the world do when a people are suffering? Let them die?

 

Iraq rose up against Saddam in both the South and North several times, always violently suppressed, often by weapons we had supplied because Saddam was our mate standing up against the Iranians - until he upset us over Kuwait.