Manchester Bombing *** Please remain respectful and refrain from antagonising posts ***

Is sad that so many see not bombing another country, killing innocents and combatants alike, as ¨the cowards path". Violent intervention should always be a very last resort.

I wasn't necessarily ascribing that to Corbyn - just that those type of people who will only ever want to take the soft option are always going to be right sometimes - that doesn't mean their way always works every time or that it is a better way in general.
 
Corbyn is a classic case of a broken watch being right twice a day. When it comes to things like foreign intervention you have to do the best you can with the information you have at the time (and to finish the quote "and hope there is a forgiving god") - people like Corbyn who forever advocate doing nothing/appeasement/the cowards path will always be right every now and again but that doesn't make them always right.

indeed - perhaps with him in charge in the 90s we'd have stood by and let more Bosnian and Kosovan Muslims be massacred... or are we supposed to have intervened then because the bad guys were serbs and Orthodox christians aren't likely to carry out suicide attacks in retaliation... seemingly it is 'obviously' wrong to intervene in other scenarios based on the whatever deity the people carrying out the oppression worship.

We should just cave in and let the extremist Islamists dictate our foreign policy - though for those advocating for this I doubt they'd feel the same if we let the extremist Islamists dictate our immigration policy... perhaps if in addition to no intervention in Islamic countries we also said no to Islamic immigration and asylum - I mean not having a muslim population here in the first place would also reduce the risk of domestic attacks substantially.
 
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All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke.

Great quote, quite appropriate.
The problem is that it's not always clear whether you're the good man or the evil man, and sometimes not for many years after.

The road to hell is, after all, paved with good intentions.
 
indeed - perhaps with him in charge in the 90s we'd have stood by and let more Bosnian and Kosovan Muslims be massacred... or are we supposed to have intervened then because the bad guys were serbs and Orthodox christians aren't likely to carry out suicide attacks in retaliation... seemingly it is 'obviously' wrong to intervene in other scenarios based on the whatever deity the people carrying out the oppression workshop.

We should just cave in and let the extremist Islamists dictate our foreign policy - though for those advocating for this I doubt they'd feel the same if we let the extremist Islamists dictate our immigration policy... perhaps if in addition to no intervention in Islamic countries we also said no to Islamic immigration and asylum - I mean not having a muslim population here in the first place would also reduce the risk of domestic attacks substantially.

Are you actually saying we should intervene in other countries without considering the possible consequences? Treat every situation, no matter the circumstances as the same?
 
Are you actually saying we should intervene in other countries without considering the possible consequences? Treat every situation, no matter the circumstances as the same?

no, I'm saying we should't be beholden to islamists. I was pretty clear about that so I'm not sure why you're trying to twist it into something else.
 
no, I'm saying we should't be beholden to islamists. I was pretty clear about that so I'm not sure why you're trying to twist it into something else.

But you can also look at it and say if us getting involved doesnt make the situation any better in the country we are dealing with and makes things worse for us at home with terrorists?

If the Foreign policy is to get involved and quite often make a pigs ear of it or get involved for totally the wrong reasons, shouldnt we look at changing our foreign policy rather than saying, no we must keep going on exactly as we were or it will be seen as bowing down to them?
 
We stood by and watched plenty of Syrians be murdered recently and THEN added fuel to the fire.

indeed, thanks to the UK parliament voting against it and a weak US president backing down over his red line* - and we'd see more of the same if we took the non-interventionist's approach in general.

*not that the current one is exactly a good change - this is where Hillary is more hawkish and could have made a difference though
 
Explain.

Collective morality could easily be found to be flawed if a large number of people together made the wrong choices.


The reason we have a better world now than 100 years ago is what we've all agreed upon as being a good person, it's the reason the world is better than it was 500 years ago, 1000 years ago. We as a society create a moral structure to live within, you see it with tests on monkeys regarding fairness.

Individual morality on the other hand can delude people, add that in with a splash of hierarchy and you get situations like the final solution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

Notice the link between Guantanamo..interesting stuff.
 
But you can also look at it and say if us getting involved doesnt make the situation any better in the country we are dealing with and makes things worse for us at home with terrorists?

that isn't necessarily true, of course there aren't always easy fixes to these situations but just because some interventions haven't gone particularly smoothly doesn't mean that a non-interventionist approach, as comrade corny would like, is a good idea

What would the Balkans look like today had western leader's taken his approach back then, or Sierra Leone for that matter. I think we saw quite clearly how devastating non-intervention can be when the genocide occurred in Rwanda.
 
The reason we have a better world now than 100 years ago is what we've all agreed upon as being a good person, it's the reason the world is better than it was 500 years ago, 1000 years ago. We as a society create a moral structure to live within, you see it with tests on monkeys regarding fairness.

Individual morality on the other hand can delude people, add that in with a splash of hierarchy and you get situations like the final solution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
Blair's excellent decision to invade Iraq would suggest you don't even need a majority of people to undertake bad actions if you start from a sufficiently powerful position.
 
We stood by and watched plenty of Syrians be murdered recently and THEN added fuel to the fire.

Yet strangely we arent bombing or sending troops into the Sudan, Samolia, Central African Republic, Myanmar. All places where millions of people are currently facing genocide. Even more extreme stuff going on in those countries than Iraq or Lybia.

I dont mind been the worlds moral police but at least be consistent. We werent bombing and killing people in the Iraq and other places because of humanitarian grounds although that is how it is sold to us voters but purely for selfish reasons that the end result would be better for the UK.
 
indeed - perhaps with him in charge in the 90s we'd have stood by and let more Bosnian and Kosovan Muslims be massacred... or are we supposed to have intervened then because the bad guys were serbs and Orthodox christians aren't likely to carry out suicide attacks in retaliation... seemingly it is 'obviously' wrong to intervene in other scenarios based on the whatever deity the people carrying out the oppression worship.

We should just cave in and let the extremist Islamists dictate our foreign policy - though for those advocating for this I doubt they'd feel the same if we let the extremist Islamists dictate our immigration policy... perhaps if in addition to no intervention in Islamic countries we also said no to Islamic immigration and asylum - I mean not having a muslim population here in the first place would also reduce the risk of domestic attacks substantially.

At the end of the day we'll never know how things would look if we had taken Corbyn's option - maybe things would have gone better or maybe they'd have been mind bogglingly worse.
 
OK, so collective morality is not foolproof in the way that your opening gambit suggested.

So daft, nothing is fool proof, there will always be exceptions. I mean, you were the one who originally tried to pick holes in the Edmund Burke quote.
 
So daft, nothing is fool proof, there will always be exceptions. I mean, you were the one who originally tried to pick holes in the Edmund Burke quote.
The Edmund Burke quote is recited by people who are convinced that they can identify the "good" course of action and would always take it. That's not always an easy thing to determine, and certainly not in the case of foreign policy and military interventions.
 
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