Publius you are now advocating invasion of Syria, it seems you are a firm believer in the use of military might to support your Country’s and you own viewpoint. Let me make it very clear I do not support the Syrian regime; however your posts over the past few months have made me wonder if you have served in the military or are posting as a citizen.
If you have served in the military on active service then you should be aware of the true horrors of any war justifiable or not. You may have been put in the terrible situation of having to kill or be killed; you may also have seen first hand the dead or badly injured civilians who the powers that be call “collateral damage”.
If you have not served in the military then your experience of war will have been limited to what you have seen on television, heard on the radio, or read in magazines, newspapers etc. This is by no means a put down, but would you not agree if your are getting your information from your own media it could well be somewhat biased and sanitised giving you a rather one-sided impression?
For the men and women engaged on active service in any war there are two basic ways of handling it after the event. One is to ensure you remain convinced that war was the only option and that the horrors you have seen and endured had to be so to protect your country and kinfolk. The second is not so easy, that is when after the war you become disillusioned with the rationale behind the war and thus find yourself unable to accept the horrors you have seen. There are countless brave men and women whom after a war find their mental and physical health wrecked because they have doubts over the war they fought in – Vietnam is the classic example.
I am not claiming to have any smart solution that could have got rid of Saddam without war, neither am I suggesting there is a smart solution to sort out Syria. I will state though there are far worse dictatorships in the world still being sold weaponry because it suits Western big business. I would advocate this though, if half of the funds spent on this war had been put at the disposal of individuals with the right intellect I feel they could have found a way to deal with the dictators of this world without an aggressive war. The problem with that thought though is in the modern era big business (which really runs our so called democracies) sees dictators as a means of controlling other Countries economies, and war as the option to regain control if they step out of line as Saddam did.
There is no way I condone the way Saddam and his henchmen killed and brutalized Iraqis, but as an ex military man I am not convinced our troops who have come home in body bags, and the Iraqi civilians who have died (or have been maimed) died in a just war this time. Whilst I did not have the solution to Saddam, I still feel the war was unjustified particularly as the basic reasons given for going to war remain unproven.
In another thread you wrote to me as follows: -
“Listen friend, if you can't be level-headed on this board I suggest going elsewhere “ and in the same post “You ranted in thread-after-thread with the likes of Patch, Musp, MeDo, Pacifist, and countless other failed Lefties and, in the end, when the Iraqis cheered the fall of Saddam, you were left dumbfounded and scratching your head. Welcome to the real world. Politics is more than copying and pasting vapid screeds off of the internet.”
You lumped me in with Pacifist etc conveniently forgetting how many times I have disagreed with his posts in writing on this very message board. You also refer to me with others as a “Failed lefty” which shows you do not have a clue about my real politics. I am certainly not left dumbfounded not am I scratching my head, I use this board to give my own thought out viewpoint and to discuss, debate and argue it with others. Unfortunately you are now coming across as an armchair warrior whose only purpose of posting is to “shout down” anyone who does not agree with your own viewpoint.
