SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
BBC reports:
MPs have overwhelmingly backed UK air strikes against so-called Islamic State in Syria, by 397 votes to 223, after an impassioned 10-hour Commons debate.
Four Tornado jets took off from RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus, after the vote. Their destination has not been confirmed.
A total of 66 Labour MPs sided with the government as David Cameron secured a larger than expected Commons majority.
The PM said they had "taken the right decision to keep the country safe" but opponents said the move was a mistake.
...
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn argued that the case for war "does not stack up" - but his party was split, with senior Labour figures, including members of the shadow cabinet voting with the government after they were given a free vote.
The 66 MPs who backed military action was equivalent to 29% of the parliamentary party.
[Editor's Note: For non-Brits, MP="member of parliament"]
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Friday December 04 2015, @12:19PM
I'm gonna get a bit shouty. It certainly isn't against you (although it is a reply), it's against the absurdity of the situation. What the hell is going on?
There's zero UN cover at all. Nada. None of it is anywhere close to being legal in any way. If people think Bush & Blair are war criminals then Cameron & Obama are war criminals right now. No ifs and no buts, no "Bush lied", no room for any kind of doubt, no need for any neverending bs inquiries and whitewashing investigations.
And there isn't going to be any UN support ever because Syria still has a government in good UN standing (unlike Saddam & Iraq), because Syria isn't a threat to any other nation state, because Syria hasn't broken a plethora of UN resolutions like Iraq did, and there's no stonewalling of UN (or other) inspectors because Syria cooperated with the removal of chemical weapons, and because everyone at the state level of just about all UN member states knows Syria is at this point in time fighting a legitimate war of self-defense against aggression.
There's just no way the majority of UN members are going to accept any kind of UN anything that tries to in any way lessen the sovereignity of Syria. Not going to pass the UN Security Council (China would be dead set against it, Russia too, but they shouldn't be alone in this) and even if it did it would in practice mean that the UN ceased to exist; just about every nation state except the US and UK would end up worried about their own sovereignity.
And anyway are they (the UK) bombing at all? (As if things weren't absurd enough at this point). The pictures I've seen released show the Tornados landing after their run with what looks to me like full loads. Anyone else notice that?
Here's a reference picture [wikipedia.org] to help out. It wasn't/isn't obvious to me from the landing photos that they dropped anything at all but I could be mistaken.
Of course even if they're not actually bombing anything they're still illegally breaching Syria's sovereignity. Compare that to both Afghanistan and Iraq where the US etc. were backed by UN resolutions (in Iraq) and legitimate self defense as codified by the UN & "world community" standard interpretation of sovereignity (in Afghanistan).
This leaves aside that it was all squandered into abysmal fuck-ups. Different topic.
Simple fact is that Obama ("left") & Cameron ("right") are far worse than Bush ("right") & Blair ("left").
I wouldn't vote for Corbyn because I completely disagree with him on immigration questions (and I'm not a Brit anyway) but Corbyn is right on this issue if one thinks the UN is meant to amount to anything at all any more.
As for all the muslims in Islamic State/Daesh, Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra, Saudi Arabia, wahabists, salafists, whatever, I don't care one shit about them and never will —they'e not sub-human: they're beneath life— all I'm saying is that if one wants to fly over and bomb Syrian (or any other) soil one better do it legitimately for ones own sake.
Why isn't there the massive turnout against this when there was so much against bombing Iraq? I was for bombing Iraq, I would have voted for Bush twice, Saddam was far worse than Assad is (although his father was on par and all three are Baathists which is basically a kind of nazi party), and anyone is welcome to say I was wrong (and I sure wasn't supporting the results we have seen, fuck I still thought the US government actually believed in their own consitution back then, I thought there was something to defend) but only if they oppose this shit otherwise they really have some explaining to do and first and foremost to themselves >:(
[P.S. I sat through nearly all the UN SC sessions (most of them were broadcasted in full) in the months leading up to the Iraq war and I think a hell of a lot people (still) have no clue just how much time and effort was spent on legitimizing the Iraq war. Blix and the rest spent months upon months being fooled around with by Saddam and his regime. For that matter lots of people seem to act like the US bombed Afghanistan the very day after 9/11 but no such thing happened; even that took time to get underway. The portrayals of it being some spur of the moment emotional bloodlust striking out wildly are simply lies and deceit.
It's easy to say that Bush and Blair lied and they did but in no way did they (or their parties or their countries) unilaterally decide things, they had to convince a whole lot of other people including the UN security council as far as Iraq goes and they successfully did so and however wrong and incorrect it was it's still an enormous feat that they managed to do that because it involved just about everyone. Hell even in the case of Afghanistan the Taleban got their chance to walk free but they didn't take it, thought they had some kind of bargaining position, and wouldn't turn over Al-Qaeda , Osama etc. (should have let the Soviets keep Afghanistan for everyones sake, that's 40 years of hindisght for ya)]
Fuck I'm annoyed (and probably annoying too, sorry).
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 3, Interesting) by cafebabe on Wednesday December 09 2015, @05:38PM
I've not noticed that but it brings to mind the situation in Catch 22 where senior air force officers are more concerned about bombing patterns rather than hitting any target of importance. You're suggesting a level of absurdity where the bombs don't even get dropped.
1702845791×2