Non of the other nations who had an Arab spring ended up with ISIS, so the idea that an insurgency against the Baathist would have still created the same in an alternate history is shite
Shamima Begum, IS teen wants to come back to the UK
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
You maintain that the RAF has killed countless civilians in Syria.
For this to have any relevance you need to be more specific on what you mean by countless.
I have checked the MoD website and up to the end of 2018 the RAF had carried out less than 1200 actual strikes; all of which were using targetted smart bombing.
It is not possible to find out any precise numbers for obvious reasons (who is a civilian).
However, you can guarantee that had the RAF killed, to use your words countless civilians we would have heard about it in any of the anti UK news outlets.
I have carried out a search with zero results.
On that basis I would confidentiality say that you are incorrect unless you can substantiate your claim.
I'd interview the people they murdered but they are dead, can't get a word out of them
The Nazis wanted to facilitate a Third Reich. Just one problem though, if the only way to do it is through genocide you are kind of past the point of the goal sanctifying your means.
Fair in the sense the fairest from the 3 possibilities you mentioned.
now Sufyan Mustafa (Abu's son) wants his citizenship reinstated as we cannot prove the fought for Isis.
I'm sure the MoD would be an unbiased source there, too. Western militaries have worked hard to solidify the perception that smart munitions are ridiculously accurate and don't harm non-combatants. They are still prone to error, whether that results from bad intelligence, mistakes in ground targeting or atmospheric conditions. The destruction they cause is also indiscriminate and never confined to the land the target occupies. People choose to ignore these realities, though.
There are quite a few articles and reports on the subject. Here are two from the first page of Google search:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...sponsible-civilian-death-toll-not-seen-since/
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde24/8367/2018/en/
The Amnesty report doesn't exactly throw out numbers but it paints a sorry picture of the civilian experience in Raqqa.
Syria, Libya, Egypt and Yemen all did. Other places which have previously ended up with ISIS-type movements include north-east Nigeria, Somalia and Afghanistan. The common theme here is not Western intervention, it is the collapse of the state and subsequent chaos which the jihadis filled. That is one of the necessary conditions for an ISIS to emerge, and it could easily have played out that way in the event that a Ba’thist Iraq collapsed in the Arab Spring. All the more so since we know now that ISIS was largely led by ex-Ba’thist officers inspired in part by Saddam’s Salafi Faith Campaign of the 90s. But of course it’s impossible to know for sure.
The one who’s father was imprisoned in the US for life on terror charges and who himself went to fight in Syria?
He fought with terrorists against the legitimate regime.
Top man.
This input is relevant and informative but the Amnesty report talks of hundreds by the US lead coalition.
Bearing in mind that we are talking about the RAF element and knowing what I know I am still of the opposition that they (UK) have not been responsible for countless civilian deaths, whatever countless actually means.
The problem is there are multiple factions, some of which were armed by Western forces. It was multiple rebellions. It would be a bit hypocritical to now say all rebels are bad, when we needed them to fight Isis as well as Assad. Assad is not the friend of the West.
So.. your plan is murderous, too.
The RAF is part of that coalition, though. A lack of clarity in the tabulation of civilian casualties doesn't absolve a coalition partner from responsibility.
This isn't to say that pilots are individually culpable. The responsibility lies with the leadership and governments involved that choose to use heavy munitions in dense urban areas. It seems that overkill in Syria has led to avoidable civillian casualties, as it certainly did in Iraq and Afghanistan, too. These conflicts and our military actions in them are going to reverberate negatively in our societies for decades to come. The root causes of our involvement are dubious at best, hence some people's opposing views here.
Yes. I did know that the RAF was part of the coalition.
However, for the majority of the time they had eight Tornado GR4 jets. These are precison bombers with two man crew and only operate with smart weapons - Brimstone and Paveway with the occasional Stormshadow. They also uniquely operate with the RapTor reconnaissance pod which is a world leading capability allowing real time high quality images for both in flight and ground based analysis.
These are all extremely expensive but also extremely accurate ordinance.
Being extremely expensive means they are used for a reason. To minimise civilian casualties.
Whether one agree or not, it is clearly evident that UK caused civilian deaths cannot be classified as 'countless'.
Right...
ISIS Libya
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant_in_Libya
ISIS in Tunisia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISIL_insurgency_in_Tunisia
ISIS in Egypt
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinai_insurgency
ISIS in Yemen
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant_–_Yemen_Province
To be fair, countless is a good adjective here because we don't know. There could be thousands of dead civilians under all that rubble. There could be a few hundred, or only dozens. So for now, they are countless. People might mistake countless for millions but that's illogical and seems a bit on the defensive side.
That Paveway bomb seems like a lot of overkill for the dense urban areas in Syria. They'll have a large blast radius that negates the accuracy of their guided systems. Even 100m in an urban setting is going to severely injure and kill people who weren't targeted.
I do understand your points.
However, the context that the word countless was used infered a large number.
Regarding the use of Paveway, in the instances you identify, Brimstone would be used.
Again, this weapon is unique to RAF Tornado and now RAF Typhoon jets.
Anyway. No point continuing this discussion as we will continue to disagree but it was beneficial to have made our thoughts known.
I question your googling skills
Small groups of no prominence.
Someone reads their Janes defence Weekley and gets a stiffy.
Accuracy is meanigngless when rules of engagement can be written to excuse civilian deaths. But I'm sure the survivors are comforted by the knowledge their love ones died precisely.
Small groups who took the ISIS name when they were a good recruiting tool. Never grew large and never in charge. Non emerged during their nations uprising but only after
Fair enough. "Countless" is typically hyperbolic in its general use.
I'll have take your word for it on the operational uses of each ordinance. I based my inference on the half a billion dollar order for Paveway munitions the RAF made recently, which seemed to imply they'd used a lot of them.
Still, I think @Mozza is taking an unfair amount of heat for questioning the West's underlying motive when it comes to conflict in the middle East and the origins of ISIS. I agree with him that our governments have a lot to answer for. War, after all, is simply the continuation of politics by other means and the true motives for our engagement there remain obscured.
Send her to Canada.
We'll take anyone, even you!
They were building a state by means of death and destruction. Eliminate anyone who you feel may stand in your way, terrorise the powerless to break their spirit, enslave and abuse people, declare some people less than human based on their religion - it doesn't get much worse. They are exactly like the SS in the concentration camps, in my view. They murdered indiscriminately and in the cruellest possible ways, all for a crazy vision of some future world where they'd be calling all the shots.
Despite all that, I'd like to see Shamima be allowed back to Britain and treated fairly under the rule of law, because we're better than ISIS.
No I'm comparing them with a woman who was brainwashed and went over to be the bridge/cleaner who went over to support them. You're the one comparing them incorrectly. You have to call the spade the spade, even if it makes you uncomfortable because you want to hold her responsible via guilt by association for larger things she wasn't responsible for. Even if she did support them.
That isn't saying what she did is okay, or that she did nothing wrong. She is a part of it for sure, and she deserves to be prosecuted for what she did do - but that's it, the legal system should be holding her accountable to what she actually did.
But this should be dealt with via the legal system, and not via the hotheaded nature of the British public quick to anger for anything foreign in the Brexit climate. She's our citizen, who commited a crime and should be dealt with accordingly. Washing our hands of it in an illegal manner because we don't want to open the inevitable can of worms that's coming for others who are also going to be returning home from Syria is lazy at best.
Must confess that I had never previously heard of haiku.
Not a fan of Japanese poetry.
I simply try to make posts easier to read in line with the forum formatting recommendations.
Let's agree to disagree.
By the way, I do not read Janes and while I have an interest in Military aviation I am far too old to get a stiffy.
Is this the story that's supposed to distract us from the whole shooting ourselves in the face thing?
I've come full circle on this. Everyone deserves a second chance. Speak to her, see what she says and monitor her however we see fit. She's probably no more dangerous to Britain than JRM and the rest of the ERG.
This is what it comes down to at the end of the day.
Has anyone here actually suggested otherwise? That’s really not what he’s been taking heat for.
I think he's taking heat for offering nothing whatsoever to the discussion other than random statements without any factual basis, smugly replying things like 'so it's a no then' and then posting things himself where that would actually be an accurate response back to him with a sprinkling of random conjecture and hyperbole.
Being the second most active poster in this thread while offering feck all, but apologising for isis does indeed put some heat on him. I fail to see why that is weird.
Fair enough, he's said some dumb shit but others have chimed in with statements like we're attacking ISIS because they've killed innocents, blatanly ignoring how many innocents the west have killed in the Middle East since 2001 with our ends justifies the means approach, or the fact that the only reason we're there is oil and feck their swarthy, worthless brown lives.