General Election 2017

[HanoiVillan]

I don't understand what the Tories are doing here. She's calling 'outrageous' something which is basic common sense. No wonder people are disagreeing. Why not say, 'there may be some connection, but there's no excuse for terrorism, and Jeremy Corbyn is a terrorist-sympathising weenie' or something?

[mjmooney]

I've noticed that the people who support UK military action overseas only seem to like it when it consists of air strikes and drones - high risk to random brown people on the ground, not much risk to British servicemen. The minute it's boots on the ground and Brit casualties start, they're the first with the cries of "Bring our boys home" and "Not our fight, let them sort it out themselves".

[HanoiVillan]

2 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

I've noticed that the people who support UK military action overseas only seem to like it when it consists of air strikes and drones - high risk to random brown people on the ground, not much risk to British servicemen. The minute it's boots on the ground and Brit casualties start, they're the first with the cries of "Bring our boys home" and "Not our fight, let them sort it out themselves".

I think the point is that almost everybody 'supports the troops', but very very far from everybody 'supports British foreign policy'. How Amber Rudd is missing something this basic is beyond me. 

[Chindie]

 Democracies tend to be fairly casualty averse.

There's an argument to that actually making our conflicts worse, extending them and making them have a more devastating effect on civilian populations, through the use of remote forms of offence.

On the other hand its also been suggested as part of the reason democracies don't often go to war.

[bickster]

1 hour ago, magnkarl said:

Anti-campaigning at its best. Both parties, including followers, need to start talking about themselves, not the opposition. This sort of thing puts the person that is on the fence  off rather than convince him/her. All it does is make hardcore followers happy, and Labour doesn't need to convince these people any more than they already have.

What's this got to do with Labour? Got to admit it's a good summer tune though

[Dodgyknees]

Neil going for the 'ask the same question again and again and again and again and again'

[Awol]

28 Egyptian Coptic Christian school kids were murdered on a bus by Islamic terrorists today. 

Pretty sure they weren't killed in revenge for Egyptian Government foreign policy debate. 

 

[Awol]

Just now, DK82 said:

Neil going for the 'ask the same question again and again and again and again and again'

No he's just skewered him on Islamic State's own statements. 

[magnkarl]

6 minutes ago, Awol said:

28 Egyptian Coptic Christian school kids were murdered on a bus by Islamic terrorists today. 

Pretty sure they weren't killed in revenge for Egyptian Government foreign policy debate. 

 

I'd like to see Corbyn comment on this. I guess his statement would be more on the problems we made there during ww2.

Edited May 26, 2017 by magnkarl

[Dodgyknees]

8 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

 I guess

Agreed

[magnkarl]

In any case, the fact is that the world is in what is called the "great peace" right now. There's been no war on a great scale since WW2. If our foreign policy, along with USA's foreign policy helps retain that peace I am all for it. Would you rather we let states like ISIL flourish unhindered so they go and start a war on for example Turkey or Israel? Corbyn for all his ideals thinks that he can talk to someone like Al-Baghdadi and make him stop being a nut case. This is a pipe dream and impossible.

[snowychap]

3 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

If our foreign policy, along with USA's foreign policy helps retain that peace I am all for it. Would you rather we let states like ISIL flourish unhindered so they go and start a war on for example Turkey or Israel?

That's just some really bizarre stuff, there.

[Chindie]

2 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

In any case, the fact is that the world is in what is called the "great peace" right now. There's been no war on a great scale since WW2. If our foreign policy, along with USA's foreign policy helps retain that peace I am all for it. Would you rather we let states like ISIL flourish unhindered so they go and start a war on for example Turkey or Israel? Corbyn for all his ideals thinks that he can talk to someone like Al-Baghdadi and make him stop being a nut case. This is a pipe dream and impossible.

There's a lot of war going on for a great peace. And a considerable part of that great peace was set against the backdrop of being one bad day away from total annihilation.

You might also want to look into why ISIS has such power. It's because huge swathes of Iraq and Syria are ungoverned, giving them a foothold. They originated from Al Qaeda in Iraq...

He's also explicitly he wouldn't speak to them.

[sharkyvilla]

21 minutes ago, Chindie said:

There's a lot of war going on for a great peace. And a considerable part of that great peace was set against the backdrop of being one bad day away from total annihilation.

You might also want to look into why ISIS has such power. It's because huge swathes of Iraq and Syria are ungoverned, giving them a foothold. They originated from Al Qaeda in Iraq...

He's also explicitly he wouldn't speak to them.

It's difficult to know what his plans for ISIS are if he generally wants a foreign policy shift towards diplomacy but he won't talk to them.  I agree that we've made big mistakes in the past but I was a bit nonplussed as to what his plan for the future is in that regard.

[blandy]

6 hours ago, peterms said:

Sounds like you've been reading the dreadful Alex Massie, Pete.  He did a piece accusing Corbyn of rewriting history on this.  Ironically, Massie wrongly claimed (or rewrote history) that Corbyn was on the board of Labour Briefing, so that he could attribute to Corbyn responsibility for things he didn't actually write.  A tv interviewer recently tried to press the same accusation, and seemed baffled by Corbyn explaining that he had been a contributor but not an editor, because it didn't fit her prepared line of attack.

Corbyn supported the cause of a united Ireland, as did the IRA (and Nelson Mandela...).  He did not support the tactics pursued by the IRA.  To say he won't condemn them is wrong.  A recent interview tried to get him to condemn them without also saying that the violence employed by the British state was wrong.  When he wouldn't issue a unilateral condemnation, that was presented as a kind of endorsement of IRA violence.  It's a cheap debating trick, not a serious point. 

It was very helpful that Corbyn and others spoke with Sinn Fein.  Only by demonstrating the possibility of successful political engagement could Adams and McGuinness very slowly build the case with the IRA hardliners that the armed struggle was not the right course of action.  Of course Corbyn and friends weren't the only ones doing the talking - people like Whitelaw and Thatcher held meetings with both Sinn Fein and the IRA, though for some reason we never hear about that, despite it being another helpful and necessary step in the slow journey away from violence.

No, I've not read this Alex Massie, Peter.

What I do know is that (as you say) Corbyn supported/supports a United Ireland, that he voted against the Good Friday peace agreement in Parliament, naming that as his reason. I know he attended many Sinn Fein/IRA meetings, that he invited them to Parliament shortly after the Brighton Bombing, that he has never, (to my knowledge) condemned IRA violence - the kneecappings, extortion, intimidation, drug smuggling, punishment beatings and all the rest. He has condemned bombing, though. He had the chance to say the other day in the Sky interview that he condemned the IRA, but he declined to do so. Given his history it was a reasonable and fair question.

I have no idea whether his support for Sinn Fein/IRA helped or was of no impact on the subsequent peace talks. I don't think him voting against the good friday agreement suggested that peace was his sole motive. I think he put his view of a United Ireland above the chance for peace, by his vote.

I think that it's reasonable to say "we are where we are now, for all sorts of reasons, and that people like Martin McGuiness, despite their history with the IRA saw the chance of peace and took it. It is possible to condemn the violence, murdering, etc and still recognise subsequent good acts - condemn the clearly evil and acknowledge the subsequent good. Corbyn hasn't done that. He should...unless he doesn't believe it.

You absolutely do not have to always link "well the Army did bad things" to "the IRA committed atrocities and I condemn them and what they did".

Personally I don't believe that what Corbyn and Abbot and others did helped in the peace talks and subsequent peace, or that it contributed to them at all. It's fine to differ from that, but that's my opinion.

As a tactical thing, aside from the past, in an election campaign, to let the issue be a millstone, and it is when he had a chance to move on, suggests he's a fool.

Further his refusal to condemn the IRA - the IRA ffs!  - suggests to me that people like me who are suspicious of him, who suspect him of duplicity, of being all too willing to turn a blind eye - whether to anti-semitism, to IRA atrocities of the past, to all kinds of nefarious conduct by some of his followers have good grounds for concern. I don't trust him one bit.

[blandy]

3 hours ago, Risso said:

Non-partisan, they you post an article from Skwawkbox?  

Quite - and written by Corbyn's assistant, to boot.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, mjmooney said:

I've noticed that the people who support UK military action overseas only seem to like it when it consists of air strikes and drones - high risk to random brown people on the ground, not much risk to British servicemen. The minute it's boots on the ground and Brit casualties start, they're the first with the cries of "Bring our boys home" and "Not our fight, let them sort it out themselves".

I dunno about that Mike - I don't doubt your experience, but mine is slightly different. As is my outlook. Of all the various (mis)adventures abroad in recent times, the only one I was sort of OK with was the first gulf war, and Kosovo and Sierra Leone all the others, no. But there are people on this board, Corbyn supporters even, who were posting that we should do something, take action when Libya kicked off, for example.

This is glib, I know, but if Politicians in voting for war had to either go to the war zone themselves or their family did, there would be a lot less war all round. It's always easier to send other people into danger. So yes, people and politicians (there is some overlap still) will never like seeing their countrymen dying and injured abroad - airstrikes of any kind minimise the risk of that happening. The standards the UK adopts are perhaps more strict in terms of minimising risk to civilians abroad, as well, than some other nations.

But my experience is mostly of people saying "don't go there to start with" rather than "bring 'em home".

[blandy]

4 hours ago, Xann said:

Don't think he was onboard with blowing up soldiers for a minute.

Absolutely agree. It's just be a good thing to condemn the murdering,criminal IRA

[magnkarl]

1 hour ago, Chindie said:

There's a lot of war going on for a great peace. And a considerable part of that great peace was set against the backdrop of being one bad day away from total annihilation.

You might also want to look into why ISIS has such power. It's because huge swathes of Iraq and Syria are ungoverned, giving them a foothold. They originated from Al Qaeda in Iraq...

He's also explicitly he wouldn't speak to them.

Yeah, so much war right. Let me show you some data to show you what that long peace, a universally acknowledged term, looks like.

This is a graph that shows deaths, civilian and servicemen/women from armed conflict since 1940. I don't see your narrative of "war kills all and ends all" on there. Do you?

If you invert this graph to show how this correlates to the amount of people alive today your theory of "so much war" goes down the toilet. The foreign policy and political climate since 1945 has been extremely successful at stopping mass murder and conflict deaths, even though people like Corbyn doesn't like to admit that.

You can argue that there'll be a spike over the last few years due to Syria (estimates around 0,5 million people dead), however you are still waaaay wide of the mark with your comment.

In fact, I'd even take a gander at saying that Europe has never been as peaceful since Rome had established their empire. If you'd ask anyone born around 1900 what they thought about conflict levels today they'd say that we're lucky. Each to their own I guess.

Edited May 26, 2017 by magnkarl

[snowychap]

14 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

This is a graph that shows deaths, civilian and servicemen/women from armed conflict since 1940.

From armed conflict where?