Britain over Syria: your thoughts?
 

Personally, in some ways, I get this. It's a one-of-the-boys thing: French are bombing Syria, US are bombing Syria, so the UK are too. And they don't wnat to be seen to be either left out or not pulling their weight. But there's no direct threat to UK from Syria or IS at the moment, so I don't get it when Cameron says Britain will be safer thanks to this vote. How? I mean, if IS could be destroyed in a few bombing raids, sure, I would understand going in there and eradicating them so that they're no longer a threat to world peace. But they're not only in Syria. They're also in Iraq and other places, and at least two countries in Europe. I'm reasonably certain there are cells in Britain just waiting for the word.

Will this not make Britain by default less safe? Are they not now, if they were not already, more open to a Paris-style attack? And what exactly is Cameron defending in Syria anyway? Is this not another Iraq, for which the Labour Govt was so castigated by the Opposition at the time, who were ... these guys?

Reports say the vote passed "overwhelmingly". Well, a difference of 150 votes or so does not seem overwhelming to me. I mean, it was 397 for and 223 against. So that means, assuming there were no abstentions, or none worth considering if there were, that out of approx 620 MPs 400 voted for, but 220 or so voted against. It's 50% more for the yes, sure, but I still don't consider that as an overwhelming success for Cameron.

Am I missing something? I'd particularly be interested in hearing from monkey and Goofle and other Britons, as you guys are gonig to be in the crosshairs now, so to speak. How do you feel about this decision? How does anyone else feel? Do you think only IS targets will be hit, or will we soon be reading apologies from the RAF for hitting say a hospital or a school? Can anything good come out of this?

Comments welcome; and keep in mind that my main question here is the notion that it will make Britain safer, and the reasons behind the decision...

Dude, a 50% higher vote in politics is a hell of a majority. Maybe I'm just speaking from American politics, where 10% is a landslide, but if we could reach a consensus with a 50% difference (or whatever), then I'd **** myself in delight, as this would be an unprecedented show of solidarity.

Maybe Britain is different.

I don't think it's as much a one-of-the-boys thing as it is a member-of-the-international-alliance-because-it's-their-problem-as-much-as-anyone-else's thing. Just because your country hasn't had anything explode in it recently doesn't mean it's a good idea to ignore the people blowing things up in countries like yours.

Not that bombing them is going to fix anything. Would kind of require a ground offensive.

By being an ally they had already stepped into the crosshairs decades ago.

They can count themselves lucky that nothing massive has gone down in that time.

We have been for ages, our capital and provincial cities have been at risk for quite some time now, our terror threat level is currently at 'severe' which is the one down from the highest (critical - we've been at a critical level twice, the foiled plane plot in August 2006 and that time that guy tried to crash a car with gas cannisters into Glasgow airport in 2007).

There are people over here already that wish to cause us harm. Brits have gone over to fight for ISIS already. I am concerned. It's sad, but I believe it's inevitable someone will eventually slip through. It only takes a handful of people to cause great damage.

I didn't want us to bomb Syria btw.

the Allied nations the main ones have pretty much said if need be they will all go to war together

America
UK
France
Germany


are the main players

And sooo whats the issue...^

War is sometimes a nessacery evil.If it weren't it would not happen. And honestly its a sad sad part of life but none the less a part of it. Im just not gonna jade myself into thinking that if we drop French ticklers then things are gonna be ok.

Forgot to back my threat level point up, MI5 link - https://www.mi5.gov.uk/home/the-thre...at-levels.html

Toss in some anal beads any I think we could get passed in the House. Senate? Not so sure. Might have to add a Planned Parenthood de-funding provision.

It's funny that people are saying that we shouldn't bomb Syria because it's not our problem, well by that logic taking their refugees is not our problem either.
Syria are outwith the EU, they're not a former colony of the British Empire, they're not an international ally (France are by the way) and they're not a particularly important trading partner. We owe next to no obligation to take their refugees, yet we still did.

As for why we're bombing them, firstly we're targeting known IS strongholds. Despite what Jeremy Corbyn and his army of bedroom politicians and social media warriors would have you believed we're not just throwing bombs around willy-nilly. We're targeting the bad guys.

I've not heard any greatly emotionally wounded liberal come up with a better solution. We're not dealing with rational, logical people here, they are a threat to the Western world, Syrian civilians and themselves. They need to be removed.
We're already bombing Iraq in a similar vein and nobody cares about that anymore.

As for ISIS in Europe, I heavily suspect they have a stronghold in Turkey, just leave that one to Russia, eh?