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So, we're not going to war - for now
*Seany*
Deactivated Posts: 51 Boards Initiate
Last night, something very interesting happened in Parliament. The UK Government was defeated on a 3 line whipped foreign policy issue involving military action. This hasn't happened in living memory.
Interestingly, the UK Government does not legally have to follow Parliament's wishes when it comes to sending the military off to intervene/fight - the Government has something called the Crown (or Royal) Prerogative which essentially allows the government to carry out executive duties without parliamentary consent. The Prime Minister has stated that for the time being there will be no military intervention by the UK in Syria, however there will be another vote after the UN's weapons inspectors have completed their report into the chemical weapons attack last week.
What do you think? Should we be off to Syria to stage some form of intervention? Should we leave it to someone else?
What's the point in having a parliamentary vote that's not legally binding?
(Interestingly, in the US, the House vote is legally binding, but it seems to be ignored an awful lot.).
Interestingly, the UK Government does not legally have to follow Parliament's wishes when it comes to sending the military off to intervene/fight - the Government has something called the Crown (or Royal) Prerogative which essentially allows the government to carry out executive duties without parliamentary consent. The Prime Minister has stated that for the time being there will be no military intervention by the UK in Syria, however there will be another vote after the UN's weapons inspectors have completed their report into the chemical weapons attack last week.
What do you think? Should we be off to Syria to stage some form of intervention? Should we leave it to someone else?
What's the point in having a parliamentary vote that's not legally binding?
(Interestingly, in the US, the House vote is legally binding, but it seems to be ignored an awful lot.).
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Comments
What has irked me is listening to those who are firmly against military action equivocate on their reasons by hiding behind the prevarications of the U.N. and the vetos from China and Russia. The moral case for action (or inaction) stands regardless of if you think we're merely U.S. lapdogs or what the tyrannical leaderships of China and Russia think. Dianne Abbott, as usual, is an egregious example.
To me this is a humanitarian crisis that demands we show solidarity with the innocent civilians of Syria. Were these horrors being inflicted on the British people - dropping incendiary bombs on schools being the latest horror - I'd hope to God the rest of the world wouldn't sit on its hands (or wring them, in some cases) while innocents are being slaughtered. Our obligations to our fellow man don't stop at the borders of our country.
It would help if we were Turkey, but otherwise the only people who are going to get here are those that can afford a rather expensive airfare.
It's grandstanding...
I agree, its a hugely complicated issue and I'm not sure there's a right or wrong answer; going in results in killing, staying out results in killing - the only difference is who's doing the killing and who are the ones being killed.
I'm not against liberal intervention but I think you've always got to ask yourself does it help in the long term and if it does you can't go in half-measures.
I think one of the problems with Iraq was that they did go in half-way, one of the things we've since learnt is the amount of penny-pinching by both the US and the UK and thinking they could win the war with cheaper firepower and stint on having many more expensive boots on the ground. The problem was that the bombs could only knock out the conventional Iraqi forces they couldn't stop the insurgency(s) and without defeating the insurgency you couldn't bring about democratic governance and so we got stuck into a quagmire which has taken 10 years to sort (and arguably still hasn't been).
If you're going to go into Syria it seems to me the wrong approach to say we're not taking sides and that we're just going to go into punish one of the players and destroy his chemical capacity - it doesn't work and just prolongs. You've got to say we are going to overthrow this regime, and then we're going to stay in with enough blokes on the ground until there's a stable democratic Government in place (and if that means then going against those rebel elements who want to replace his secular dictatorship with a theocratic one, well that's what we do).
But all this means blood, of British soldiers and of innocents who happen to be mistaken for Syrian soldiers or are in a school when a bomb misses the barracks next door and you have to either accept it or don't, but don't pretend there's an easy or morally good answer.
I suspect our role would have been fairly minor anyway.
The thing that bothers me most, is that whilst i would like to think everyone that voted against the government did so because they genuinely believed it was the wrong thing to do to intervene.
I suspect lots did so just to try and make a tit of the prime minister... playing party politics when hundreds of people are being slaughtered is slightly sickening.
And it didn't work... I actually think Cameron has come out of this quite well
Part of their economy is based around oil
What concerns me is that they were not talking about an all out ground war, and it was made very clear as to the extent that the govt wanted to act. I'm not a war monger-er and perhaps I don't have the answers as to what action we need to undertake, but appeasement doesn't work. Perhaps the threat of action was what would bring Assad to the table, now we shall always be known as the Biscuit eating surrender monkeys.
There won't be. Each major world power is so wrapped up in the affairs of other world powers, any world power (think USA, UK, France, Rest of Western Europe, Russia, China) launching an attack on another would destroy their own economy. It's not written about much, but the second world war devastated the economy of Germany because of all the trade embargoes that were placed on it.
As for the Syrian issue, we don't have the resources to be getting involved in another brush fire war in the Middle East. Our country is wracked with debt, and we are no longer the police of the world. The billions of pounds needed to fund it have to come from somewhere.
Who do you think the UN peace keepers will be?
One of the US and UK's closest allies and Israel? That'll go down well...
:yes:
Although I would like to point out that emerging research actually suggests that people aren't "militarised" in the UK because of foreign policy but because they are vulnerable teenagers experiencing a disconnect between their cultural heritage and their upbringing which is exploited. Foreign policy later becomes an excuse for teaching them violence.
Look up Four Thought on Radio 4, Yasmin Hai I think was the speaker.
Well, let me explain, if british troops are sent in as part of a UN peacekeeping force it's because the UN general and security councils have agreed that it's needed. It means that it's an internationally approved action, it means it's legal, it means it's necessary. Anything else is an invasion.
Thanks
Let me counter explain
Foreign western troops on the ground mean the same thing over there, no matter which country they are from, or there under the UN flag or not. The forces currently in Afghanistan are there at the invitation of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, but they still have a problem with deaths and IEDs.
Which is why it would be extremely handy to have proof that the Syrian government were responsible for the recent gas attack, and not rebels gambling, Ozymandias-style, on international intervention.