Jeremy Corbyn

[glasshand]

Jeremy Corbyn on the Andrew Marr show today talking about his view on possible airstrikes on Syria

 

[sadmanbarty]

Well he's right to oppose cameron's strategy:

https://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/2...how_recommendations=false&view_mode=slideshow


That being said Kurdish success in Kobani and Tal Abyad as well as the capture of Brigade 93 display the effectiveness of air support when coupled with an effective ground force.

FSA's withdrawal from Ayn Issa due to lack of air support shows that air strikes are decisive in this regard.

Proposing this policy would make sense politically too. Maintaining our alliance with France and the US, placating the hawks in Labour, discrediting Corbyn's lefty-pacifist image and generally portraying labour's foreign policy as more level-headed then the tory's.

 

[baboon2004]

http://www.theguardian.com/politics...accuses-corbyn-of-being-terrorist-sympathiser

Wow. The Tories constantly find ways to sink yet lower.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...anks-and-countries-funding-isis-a6739081.html

sensible thoughts, and surely this is the line of counterattack that Corbyn needs to make his primary one against the Tories to put them on the back foot, showing that there is a clear alternative plan of action for fatally weakening support for Isis; rather than making his primary counter about the Vienna peace talks and the end of the Syrian war, which looks incredibly optimistic at best as a solution to Isis - does anyone think Russia is going to give up Assad any time soon?

 

[craner]

Hilary Benn just destroyed Corbyn. Brilliant speech. The only new war being declared tonight is within the Labour Party. The debate was not about a new war, but a war that has been being fought for 14 years. (Badly, sadly.) It's a new campaign in the fourth world war in our collective lifetime.

 

[sadmanbarty]

I think a big problem was Corbyn made it a debate about whether the abstract notion of bombing I.S. in syria is a good idea or not. Because of that the commons debate (including Benn's speech) was of the calibre you'd get in a sixth form common room. If it had focused on tangible military and strategic concerns, the results would have been far more constructive.

While I agree with bombing I.S in Syria, Cameron's plan is an utter shambles. A level-headed counter proposal by the opposition could have done some real good.

 

[droid]

Hilary Benn just destroyed Corbyn. Brilliant speech. The only new war being declared tonight is within the Labour Party. The debate was not about a new war, but a war that has been being fought for 14 years. (Badly, sadly.) It's a new campaign in the fourth world war in our collective lifetime.

Amazing, simply amazing that anyone believes in the idea that morals play a factor in the actions of great (or not so great) powers. Especially in the case of the murderous cretins who run the UK and who are culpable for every death caused by IS.

If Franco was alive today Benn would be denouncing the international brigades as terrorists. A laughable performance aimed at the historically illiterate and the ethically bereft.

 

[sadmanbarty]

Amazing, simply amazing that anyone believes in the idea that morals play a factor in the actions of great (or not so great) powers.

I agree that for the most part they don't. However the 2003 Iraq invasion was motivated by neo-conservative idealism rather than realism of Thucydides, kenneth waltz, et al. Likewise there have been a few cases of humanitarian intervention, which don't particularly serve the intervening countries interests.

 

[droid]

I agree that for the most part they don't. However the 2003 Iraq invasion was motivated by neo-conservative idealism rather than realism of Thucydides, kenneth waltz, et al. Likewise there have been a few cases of humanitarian intervention, which don't particularly serve the intervening countries interests.

Jus bellum iustum? Possibly two cases in history, and even then, dubious.

 

[luka]

Craner is a troll. He's been trolling himself for 15 years.

 

[luka]

It's possible to get so bored and contemptuous of your own self that you start trolling yourself. Its a recognised psychological phenomenon

 

[luka]

I wonder how many of you would accept craners premise, that the fight against Muslims is WWIV? Barty clearly does. I wonder how different people characterise our engagement with the Muslim world and the Middle East in particular
This is the essay in which craner lays out his thesis. He considers it a work of outstanding insight and oracular prescience https://kirkpatrickmission.wordpress.com/2004/10/28/world-war-four/
Please familiarise yourselves with it

 

[sadmanbarty]

I wonder how many of you would accept craners premise, that the fight against Muslims is WWIV? Barty clearly does. I wonder how different people characterise our engagement with the Muslim world and the Middle East in particular
This is the essay in which craner lays out his thesis. He considers it a work of outstanding insight and oracular prescience https://kirkpatrickmission.wordpress.com/2004/10/28/world-war-four/
Please familiarise yourselves with it

I don't think there is or should be a fight against Muslims (I was proposing air support for Kurds, who are predominantly Muslim). I don't think jihadism is in accordance with Quranic teachings and as such shouldn't be equated with Islam.

Using the following definitions you could argue it's a world war:

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/world-war

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/world war

In the colloquial sense of "world war" however the phrase doesn't fit; there are low casualties, the threat to most nations involved isn't existential, widespread use of non-conventional warfare, the prominence of non-state actors, the use of proxy's, etc.

 

[craner]

Classic essay.

 

[luka]

BARTYMAN WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF CRANERS ESSAY? GIVE A FULL CONSIDERED AND COGENT RESPONSE

 

[sadmanbarty]

BARTYMAN WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF CRANERS ESSAY? GIVE A FULL CONSIDERED AND COGENT RESPONSE

Bartyman = battyman?

It's unfair to judge something with over a decade's hindsight, but I thought it was good.

Again, I disagree with the use of "world war"; I consider neither the Cold War nor the "War on terror" to be world wars, but the taxonomy isn't particularly significant.

I think the House of Saud has always been fairly stable (even in '79).

Proliferation of chemical and biological weapons was overstated at the time (though some are suggesting that Al Nusra has developed Sarin in the last few years).

 

[baboon2004]

Hilary Benn just destroyed Corbyn. Brilliant speech.

It wasn't even a particularly good speech - which we know to be an objective fact, as Michael Fallon said it was brilliant. Noticeable also that he (Fallon) waited until this morning to highlight the elephant in the room yesterday - that the bombing campaign will be going on for years, rather than months.

 

[IdleRich]

"Amazing, simply amazing that anyone believes in the idea that morals play a factor in the actions of great (or not so great) powers."

This is it basically isn't it? Once you realise this then it's hard not to become cynical about everything. But although I'm sure there was a time before I'd realised that I can't really remember it unfortunately.

 

[droid]

It wasn't even a particularly good speech - which we know to be an objective fact, as Michael Fallon said it was brilliant. Noticeable also that he (Fallon) waited until this morning to highlight the elephant in the room yesterday - that the bombing campaign will be going on for years, rather than months.

Hilary Benn's speech was not the masterstroke of a consummate statesman; it was disingenuous nonsense. Even on the level of pure rhetoric: he imitated better speakers by occasionally varying his tone, rising from a sincere whisper to tub-thumping declamation without much regard for the actual content of what he was saying; this is now apparently what passes from great oratory. The speech was liberally garnished with dull clichés: "clear and present danger", "safe haven", "shoulder to shoulder", "play our part", "do our bit". He said "Daesh" a lot, and mispronounced it every time.

And then there's what he actually said. Hilary Benn has form here: he voted for the 2003 war in Iraq (making him far more responsible for the rise of Isis than some of the people who will die in the airstrikes he's so passionately promoting) and the disastrous 2011 air war in Libya. Much of his speech is familiar invocation of the just war doctrine: laying out the brutality of Isis, as if the eight British jets we're sending could put an end to it; asking "what message would [not acting] send?", as if the self-image of the British state were worth a single innocent life.

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/hilary-benns-speech-930

 

[baboon2004]

I think a big problem was Corbyn made it a debate about whether the abstract notion of bombing I.S. in syria is a good idea or not. Because of that the commons debate (including Benn's speech) was of the calibre you'd get in a sixth form common room. If it had focused on tangible military and strategic concerns, the results would have been far more constructive.

While I agree with bombing I.S in Syria, Cameron's plan is an utter shambles. A level-headed counter proposal by the opposition could have done some real good.

Agree with this apart from your support for bombing - which I don't understand anyway, as surely you're making the issue into an abstract question again. Presume you mean in certain, very particular circumstances?

 

[baboon2004]

This is it basically isn't it? Once you realise this then it's hard not to become cynical about everything. But although I'm sure there was a time before I'd realised that I can't really remember it unfortunately.

and we know this very clearly because the UK ruling class doesn't give a shit about poor people in its own country, let alone poor people in Syria.

Nothing wrong with being cynical about a form of politics where shark-eyed careerists raised on spin are overwhelmingly the type who rise to the top.