This will be our reply to violence...

I think the Serbia Croatia intervention was by the UN and it did serve our purpose because it was when the Eastern Bloc was disintegrating and we wanted to make sure we brought them onside.

We don't do anything for purely altruistic reasons.

The ''killers' in Paris were most likely French nationals. So how does bombing Syria help. They could have been radicalised in France.

We cannot intervene everywhere. I seem to remember, not that long ago, that we intervened to save Muslims from murderous Christian Serbs.There Was nothing in it for us, but we did it anyway ( how about that?!)

VQ, we are threatened already by these ghastly people, as are many other countries, it is in our interests to get rid of them, and the sooner the better.

If we put our troops on the ground we will simply inflame the situation.

I wonder if we'd be so interested in the 'welfare' of the people if they didn't sit on a chunk of the world's oil.

2013 Burma committed ethnic cleansing against thousands of Rohingya Muslims; 28 children hacked to death and mass graves uncovered.

Did we intervene?

2014 Disability groups go to UN over Australia’s forced sterilisation practice

Did we intervene?

Human rights abuses in India, Pakistan, China, many countries in Africa....in fact in various places all over the world. Do we intervene?

The only means to do this is by a lot of countries all banding together, the West working alongside Russia and all Muslims who want to defeat ISIS.
It has to be done.

(I just posted this reply on another thread, so apologies if you read it there.)

Ordinary Muslims have been the biggest victims of IS, so I support the suggestion that the forces which stop IS must be made up of forces from Arab countries. That means both Sunni and Shia Muslims fighting for the common cause. The end result might be a Middle East that looks different to the one we have now, but that will be the price of defeating IS.

This can be backed by UN forces, but different countries with vested interests in the area need to stop leading the fighting.

Then iran must sort their country out Much better The Arab world sort it out. They won't look on it as the West meddling. They are more than capable. We are not the police of the World. The Alrewas arboretum has a large curved marble wall with a large empty space awaiting the names of our service men and women killed in action.

Iran is involved. Villages in Iran have been occupied by ISIS and people there, including children I repeat, beheaded. But let's ignore this shall we because we're OK and we don't want to provoke these people.

Who are going to retaliate against?
Its a bit like hanging everyone in the vain hope that in amongst them is the guilty one. They will use the innocent as human shields whilst they are all under ground in caves. At the moment we have a few hundred killed in the west which is a few hundred too many. But do we want it to escalate to thousands if the likes of Iran gets involved?

Cherrytree, Are you suggesting we do nothing and then they'll stop provoking us?

Do you seriously think that will happen?

Exactly Cherrytree ,

A knee jerk reaction is what they want. They want to provoke the west and then they will get their holy war with the Muslim countries who are at present against Isis banding together agaist the West. Before you know it WW3.

By what means, roses?

We contained it before, we can do it again, if we all act together.

It's a lose lose situation; if we retaliate we're playing into their hands and if we do nothing they will carry on killing innocent people. But it still all goes back to us meddling in the politics of countries; not using that as an excuse but wondering how there is any way forward from it all . War and conflict leads to more war and conflict. Pacifism relies on there being good in the world but there is an evil amongst us that we can't seem to contain.

I said in a previous post that I don't have an answer. I'm not in the security services business. I just don't see the point of repeating actions that have been tried many times and have never been successful.

They have to come up with something new.

As for violence begetting more violence....What does sticking your head in the sand beget?

So we don't do anything then?

I'd be only too happy to take the same stance as Anniebach and vq but could they please come up with an alternative to doing nothing?

During the WW2 when we knew we would be under attack from the air we evacuated our children to (hopefully) safer areas. Their welfare was a huge concern.

ISIS are too busy killing their own kind to be worried about what happens to the children so why is the guilt trip always ours?

So what's the alternative, vampirequeen?

So killing innocents is wrong if the terrorists do it deliberately but OK if we do it by accident.

Deliberately or accidently they're still dead.

Haven't we learned by now that violence only begets more violence.

ISIS has recently beheaded a group which included women and children. Imagine the kind of people who would behead a child?

There is no way to avoid collateral damage in war VQ ...the alternatives are even worse, doing nothingnothing and allowing evil men and women to flourish.

The west had no problem attacking the MSF hospital

The west always does its utmost to avoid collateral damage. It is never done deliberately. That is the difference.

There is no any easy answer to this.

So when the drones, air strikes and technology accidently kill innocent men, women and children do we just write them off as collateral damage.

We quite rightly condemn the terrorists for killing indiscriminately then plan to do exactly the same thing to other innocent people.