pominoz said:
JohnMaddocksAxe said:
Whilst your sentiments about Iraqi Kurds are correct and most people with any hint of humanity would agree that it is just that they were saved from persecution, how do you manage to rank their plight higher in importance and more worthy of 'intervention' than the plight of citizens of the dozens of other repressive and nasty regimes that have harmed their own people over the last 20 or 30 years?
Why do you rank the Iraqi Kurds as worthy of intervention and not the citizens of Zimbabwe, N. Korea, Chilie, Burma, China, several African countries and many others?
I agree that many Countrys have apalling human rights records,but we can not fight on all these fronts.
The main difference with Iraq,Afganistan and Lybia (to a lesser extent),is the direct threat they pose to us by funding terrorist attacks against us.
The other States seem more concerned with abusing their own people,as obscene as that is,as i say we can not fight everyone and have to tackle the most urgent threats first.
Thats the way i see it,anyway.
So, the main criterion now is not that people are suffering, as stated by the government, but that these states have links to terrorism?
As you say, given the attitude to Libya displayed by the previous government, the argument doesn't currently seem valid in that situation.
However, Iran, Syria and Pakistan have arguably much more direct links to terrorism that may threaten UK interests, with Iran and Syria both involving themselves in actions similar to those that Gaddafi was involved with at the start of this civil war - i.e. aggression against protesters.
But we have no interest in intervening on behalf of those people, even though they are subject to violence.
Also take into account that the extent of violence and war in Libya has almost certainly been encouraged, rather than prevented, by the UK and others actively seeking to advise and encourage 'rebels', an army in other words, to push their civil war activities.
Amazingly, at the beginning of the war we had the amazing admission from the government and Hague that we were getting right behind these 'rebels' but actually didn't have a clue who they were, what their aims are and exactly what they wanted to replace the Gaddafi regime.
If that, and the fact that our actions are specifically encouraging civil war, rather than seeking peace at the first possible opportunity, isn't evidence that the motives aren't entirely (if at all) humanitarian, then I don't know what is.
So, at a time when the same government is virtually persecuting the man in the street in the UK by slashing all over the place, the effects of which will become quite startling in the next five years, it sticks in my throat that there is absolutely absurd amount of money found money to fund military intervention that is dubious at best.
People's lives will be significantly affected be the cuts currently being pushed (and we all know some are necessary, but many others are driven by political doctrine and beliefs of Cameron and his cronies) and every bomb dropped could fund a school for a year or keep services available for thousands of disabled and disadvantaged people in this country.
When the aims and reasons for deciding to spend the money on bombs in Libya are so undefined and dubious, there is no argument for choosing that option over helping people in the UK, in my view.
(As a side point - isn't it interesting that these lot are 'rebels' and universally known as such in the media, yet in Iraq they had 'insurgents', again universally known as such)
