Yeah, Saddam and Ghadafi were deposed by their erstwhile ally, the U.S. who changed policy from supporting stable if unsavoury regimes to supporting regime change .... which destabalised the entire middle east along the Shia/Sunni faultline.

The west needs to stop thinking Saudi Arabia is freindly. It is not.

And Western politicians need to listen to historians before they repeat the mistakes of the past by interfering in the internal affairs of other countries.

The Russian airforce isn't 'overstretched' in Syria, if anything it is the western powers who are overstretched, and that includes Britain, with our handful of planes based in Cyprus. Don't overestimate the capability of the Israeli airforce in a shooting war with Russia, it would be suicide for a little nation like Israel to take on the bear.

There's some truth to this. We assume that modern democracy works for us therefore it'll work for everyone but sadly this doesn't seem to be true. Many of us were cheering on the Arab spring and yet most of those countries have been in a state of constant chaos and war ever since. How many are safer than they were before?

Not with Allies like the Americans and NATO.

Saddam was never a US ally. he was a close Russian ally, and a lucrative French market. They, the Sunni states, South Africa and N Korea, armed him. He had zero US equipment in his armed forces. As the enemy of the US enemy, Iran, in the immediate post 1979 period , he was seen as the least worst alternative for a while, but that didn't last long.

The US supported regime change in Iraq because Saddam kept on invading neighbours, committing genocide , breaking the 1991 treaties, and hiding his WMD activities from UN inspectors. Also because minority Sunni rule over a Shia and Kurdish majority was both bloody and unsustainable - and already had required. western military, ground and air intervention, on top of needing continuing attacks on his WMD sites. The alternative to supporting the opposition in Libya, was allowing the minority to suppress the majority, and Gadaffi to commit genocide there too - which he had promised, and had tank columns dispatched to start, in the east. You either block genocidal dictators, or share the blame ,for your inaction.

Saudi Arabia may not have a religion some like , but its not pointing missiles at us, working on nuclear weapons, or building Shia forces, to destabalise Yemen or Lebanon, or to support minority dictatorship, committing genocide, in Syria. if anything, its been too ineffective backing the Sunni in Syria, and forcing a negotiated settlement. The west has quite a simple choice , we either help the Sunni defend themselves from Shia Iran's attempts to change the regional status quo , or we end up with the whole region looking like Syria, and having to deal with Iran ourselves.

I honestly don't know what we were supposed to do in Syria.

Say that the West has launched a full blown military intervention to overthrown the government. You're talking about taking sides in a civil war between 22 million people and the various foreign backers. Maybe we get lucky and (like in Iraq and Afghanistan) the government forces fall relatively quickly and without too much bloodshed. We're then responsible for a war torn nation that includes vast numbers of militant Islamic forces being funded by other nations ready to start a gorilla war (like in Iraq and Afghanistan).

Then there's the opposition that you've helped put in power - they're not exactly a harmonious or 'respectable' ground of people. Maybe better than Assad but you've got no way of knowing that they won't act the same was as the new governments did in Iraq and Libya. So you're also responsible for ensure that they do start engaging in wide spread revenge killings, stirring up ethnic tension or secretly funding the Islamic rebels (who Assad was fighting as well).

All of this isn't going to go down too well with the international community or your voting public, especially as Iraq busts back into flames (as it still would) and Libya goes down the toilet. Combined with the coup in the Ukraine Russia gets paranoid that the west is gradually taking out all of it's long standing allies and so goes into hyper defensive mode. Iran isn't too impressed with the US invasion and decides that it probably does need those nuclear weapons after all.

None of this sounds much better than the current situation. I mean, yeah, we've managed to remove a Russian ally in the region and establish another pro-NATO foothold but at what cost and for how long? Is that how the world gets better for us?

A dam sight better one then the one west would have put in his place.

I have no words

NATO without the US military couldn't fight its way out of a paper bag. And America is in no fit state to have a fight with Russia.

Good, reality has sunk in then.

People talk about democracy as though it is something that can happen overnight. I think successful democracies develop over time. After all, the transition from Magna Carta to universal suffrage took over 700 years in Britain, it was a very slow process.

In countries that have historically had systems that are just a few steps away from being governed by tribal warlords, it's unrealistic to expect a western style democracy to emerge from the ruins. The foundations to build that on simply don't exist.

Maybe it has or perhaps I need to go on a five paragraph rant why you are wrong, but alas I cannot be bothered!

How do you see Syria developing once Assad has won the war? What are his best options in securing order in his country?

You seem to have forgotten that Saddam and Gadaffi threatened the petro-dollar, and that was the main reason they had to go.

A peaceful period of several years while they rebuild. Remain in power till the Syrian people don't want him in power anymore.

Russia wouldn't be able to fight Israel, as it would involve the US, who the Russians definitely don't want to fight.

This is the most idiotic conspiracy theory that's been debunked here and elsewhere. Neither Saddam or Gadaffi threatened the dollar being used to buy/sell oil, and if you honestly believe that it is clear you've never studied economics.

He's just spouting random conspiracies and low-rent propaganda. Going back and forth with him is a waste of time.

While the West's capitalising and resource needs still exist they never will.
Back to Lybia now and so the cycle will continue.

Your logic is unsound. Assad will not give up power therefore the people will not get that chance for a peaceful transition.

You want to try that one again?

Boris Johnson in 2013: (Before the Syria vote)

"How is it supposed to work? How are we meant to furnish machine guns and anti-tank weapons to one set of opposition forces, without them ending up in the hands of men like the al-Qaeda-affiliated thugs who executed a child for telling a joke?
This is not the moment to send more arms. This is the moment for a total ceasefire, an end to the madness. "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...er-be-won.html



Boris Johnson, today:

"There is another inescapable reality that I’m afraid members must accept, which is on August 29 2013, this House voted by 13 votes not to use force against Assad even after he had poisoned hundreds of his people with sarin nerve gas.
We as a House of Commons, we as a country, we vacated that space into which Russia stepped, beginning its own bombing campaign on behalf of Assad."

Nope, it prefers the stealth model of funding radical mosques all over the place and turbocharging Wahabism.

Not to mention the utterly detestable way it treats minorities in the country itself.

Completely classic Bojo.

How can anyone ever trust a solitary word that comes out of that man's mouth?

Yes, little old UK has been punching well above its weight militarily and economically for some time. With only the ageing fig-leaf of a Trident nuclear-armed sub covering our strategic nakedness, and our reduced military having more top-brass than top-guns, we are yesterday's heroes, which makes the strutting pomposity of Defence Secretary Fallon look quite ridiculous - he is just an empty bag of wind. Thank goodness Miiliband kept us out of Syria, otherwise we would have been seriously embarrassed. Now the UK is getting ready to cast off from the EU the future looks to be even more parochial. I keep asking myself where all the money has gone, but answers find I none.

What does Putin get in return for helping Assad?