Syria - is it built into markets?

lvader

atush wrote: »

how many of those are the west responsible for? they include those killed by saddam (inlc all the moderates who could have run the county had we not given up so quickly in the first war that he spent a decade killing after), the sunni death squads, Al Qaeda too.

No it's deaths from March 2003 to September 2007, but as long as it was for a good cause, who cares eh?

Meanwhile back in Syria, the talk is of the US launching several hundred Tomahawk missiles against Syria, I'm sure Syrian civilians will feel much safer. Whats a few extra deaths when it's for such a great cause.

Glen_Clark

Always the same. The ones doing the fighting are invariably very poor, and very hard, young men with nothing to lose. They are shocked to see how the wealthy people live when they liberate the palaces of the very rich. Is it reasonable at the end of the war to expect them to hand in their weapons, hand the palaces back to the idle rich, and go back to living in a hovel and subsistence farming, even worse off than they were before because the infrastructure like water and power has been destroyed. Or do they hang on to their weapons and take a bit of the wealth for themselves. They might well feel they have earned it. Before long the country is completely lawless with most people even worse off than they were under Assad/Hussein.

A_Flock_Of_Sheep

According to the daily noise on the HL site yesterday's and today's fall in the markets are due to shenanigans in Syria.

So as a synopsis. A guy drops a few bombs. Several countries decide that they (yet again) should stick their noses in. Meanwhile as a result shareholders decide to sell up because let's face it Glaxo and BT will stop making medicines and cut off the phones Unilever will stop making ice cream and detergent all because a man drops a few bombs.

doughnutmachine

A_Flock_Of_Sheep wrote: »

According to the daily noise on the HL site yesterday's and today's fall in the markets are due to shenanigans in Syria.

So as a synopsis. A guy drops a few bombs. Several countries decide that they (yet again) should stick their noses in. Meanwhile as a result shareholders decide to sell up because let's face it Glaxo and BT will stop making medicines and cut off the phones Unilever will stop making ice cream and detergent all because a man drops a few bombs.

or the conflict in one of the world's main oil producing regions pushes the price of oil up and derails the economic recovery?

if people have to spend more on petrol and gas bills etc there will be less spare money for other consumption.

helifox

veryintrigued wrote: »

Did anyone see the 'cartoon' in The Times over the week-end? A dead child with bullet wound and a tick - i.e. thats 'palatable'. Then next to it a dead child with a gas mask with a cross - i.e. thats 'unpalatable'.

In war the first causality is humour.

doughnutmachine

atush wrote: »

I don't knpw what is right to do here at this point, as we have allowed the russians to control things to their liking.

What I do know, is I am tired of allowing despots (be they our proxies or Russian ones or Chinese ones) run rampant killing civilians and opposition parties left right and center. And actually using chemical weapons takes the biscuit. WE invaded IRaq on the word of a now discredited defector, but we do know the Syrians do have them and are using them and here we are caught with our williams in our hands.

i'm personally uneasy about the US/ UK etc helping jihadis overthrow a secular government.

the Egyptian experiment with democracy has hardly been a success, Iraq is basically a low scale civil war.

maybe the unpalatable truth is that some regions are better with a dictator in charge as opposed to democracy...

Remind me how the American involvement with Afghanistan went in the 1980s? The Yanks gave the afghans weapons to fight the Russians. It didn't end too well.

OK assad may be a kn0b,but for a few decades he did hold Syria together with minimal bloodshed. If he goes there will be civil war, this war will spread to Lebanon. Look at the protests in Bahrain etc, the middle east needs stability. It doesn't need jihadis armed with advanced weaponry supplied by the US.

helifox

atush wrote: »

WE invaded IRaq on the word of a now discredited defector,

Good to see Tony Blair being outed as a discredited defecator... ( see my previous post) but really - isn't the intelligent way forward here for the US to buy that bridge you are selling cheap and to make up with Russia, who mostly want Assad because they lack other friends in the middle East. Unfortunately it is probably the Polar Bears ( and our environmental future) who would suffer most in that scenario, as what Russia are holding out for is concessions in the Arctic. But bombing chemical weapons stores sounds like an idea out of Kubrik... and further traumatising and militarising an already disturbed region is no cure. To quote Donald (Trump, Duck or Rumsfeld) there are too many "unknown unknowns" - not least the underlying Sunni v. Shi'a 'shituation' that Assad was supposed to defuse. What about the effect on Iran? Lots of economically distraught Shi'a boys there. The Turkish military have a lot of toys too... And then there's the southern border. Hezbollah is siding with Assad - why? In my view Mullah Nasrullah has few thoughts that don't include Israel in pain. We have to think outside the square ground here: unfortunately we have incompetent leaders who haveweaponsie our security and hooked western economies onto arms production...
As for who fired the weapons - perhaps ( going back to Kubrik) it was somebody within the Assad military who wants to escalate, and internationalise things, in order to reveal the true religious nature of the conflict.

Jes' sayin'

IronWolf

Why is the UK even talking about this. The United States is the only one with enough clout to make a difference over there, imo we should stay out of it and just back the US in everything apart from ground troops.

helifox

IronWolf wrote: »

Why is the UK even talking about this. The United States is the only one with enough clout to make a difference over there, imo we should stay out of it and just back the US in everything apart from ground troops.

Britain - via Europe, and via the Security council - may have a role to play if we decided to try and enlist Russia's help. Russia has many more options for subtlety here than the US - who only have missiles. For instance - Russia could perhaps ( if it chose) encourage a coup that would topple Assad - but replace him not with the rebels, but with more moderate non-Allawite, secular, or moderate Muslims who are presently within Assad's government...

Might is never right, it is always maybe...

lvader

The US won't send ground troups, they are just going to press a few buttons from a nice safe location and hope for the best. They will have calculated the likely loss of life to civilians and someone will argue how acceptable that is. If it causes a lot of indirect loss of life they will not be concerned, it might even help justify their actions.