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I feel like we should all calm down about Syria. Both the "Lets nuke them" and "WAR IS ALWAYS BAD IN ALL CASES" sides of the argument ignore huge swathes of the issue and basically stifle any meaningful discussion on the subject.
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@ceruleanspark I get that. Had the same debate on twitter. sorry if I appear blunt and show lack of nuance.
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@redash Only on the internet or in politics. Real people tend to show more nuance.
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@ceruleanspark Thing is, whilst war is justified in many cases, even if it does cause lots of harm, in this particular case there's nothing clear on who caused the attacks and there's information hinting at both the Syrian government, terrorists/rebels, USA, or even two of those at the same time so the best course of action is to do nothing about it until it gets clarified.
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@vcgriffin I've not really seen any of yourr commentary on it so far actually, so I wasn't talking about you in particular. Whilst I'm in no hurry to go and waste a load of money and human lives repeating the Iraq fiasco, I feel like, if chemical weapons really are being deployed offensively there, the compassionate course of action, the one which will preserve the most lives overall, might actually be an armed intervention. Of course, this is the sort of thing the UN should handle, but they're kind of a huge joke so good luck with that.
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@redash Yes, it helps employment and generates a feel of patriotism. It is useful to shift attention, create unity when a country is rid with infighting, and as a measure some governments use to remain in power when they screwed up in a major way because people consider more important to fight the foreign enemy than to purge their own authorities.
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@ceruleanspark I know you weren't. The UN would be the prefered use, but they haven't done anything significant probably ever. The Hard thing for the public to swollow is that we have been here before with IRAQ (kinda) and the big question for the military is who are we supporting because there are so many fractions in syria and it dint work out 100% in Lybia (the Bengazi attack ocourd after the removal of Gadaffi)
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@redash Well the USA defence budget is $664.84 billion and you need to have some sort of justification for that level of spending, and while war acts as a slight distraction its better for keeping people scared and since Bin-laden has been removed a new enemy needs to be found, Russia may be on the rise but a stop gap is needed. Its not just the USA the UK annual export market for Arms was £17bn in 2003, so its the only part of our economy is still boyent
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@redash Well USA isn't by any means alien to poorly justified invasions for profit and to swipe their own problems under the rug, but the thing is that it doesn't matter if this war helps USA or not, the important thing is wether it helps the people of Syria or not.
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@ceruleanspark The only thing I've noted about Syria is that Ed Miliband actually disagreed with the government on something. This is a first.
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