I'm here all week. Try the fish!

Good points. And I don't have any answers. Which is why I'm not confident in taking a strong position on this and it surprises me that so many people on both sides of the fence can be so certain. The real detail of international relations is outside of my day to day experience of the world. That being the case, my instinct is to leave well alone and not advocate for my military to go risk its ass in a theatre that I don't understand and for reasons that I can't be sure have been presented honestly.

In recent History, it's difficult to argue that Operation Deliberate Force was anything other than the right thing to do back in the 90's. That and the British in Sierra Leone certainly saved lives. But on the other hand they also engendered a gung-ho attitude to getting stuck into civil wars and oppressive governments that led to the almighty clusterfuck in Iraq.

Maybe I'm anti intervention only because I'm not sure enough to be definitively for it.

I was going to mod you up. But /. is lacking a +1 Righteous option.

Let's say I oppose the way in which the US criminal justice system puts people in gas chambers. Say I believe that both judicial and extra judicial killing are morally equivalent to murder and that states that execute prisoners are cruel and barbaric. In you view, would I be justified in calling for an invasion of those US states that carry out capital punishment?

This, Also, I feel like punching people in the throat whenever some chump starts bleating on about 'international law'. Just what the fuck does that mean, anyway?Last time I checked the freaking US wasn't participating in the ICC. Yet it's all 'for the good of mankind' bullshit whenever they head off on some poorly judged military adventure.

I honestly respect the interventionist position and I agree that there are honorable reasons to support a military intervention. Nevertheless, I disagree with it. First off, as the video you posted makes clear, it's not at all clear what;s going on. Without having a much better picture from the UN inspector guys then I'm not confident to form a firm opinion of my own. Do I think that the Syrian government might use chemical weapons? Sure. Can I say with reasonable certainty that they have? No.

The fog of war that surrounds this chemical weapons issue serves to highlight the high level of confusion on Syria at the moment. As other posters have commented, there are multiple competing factions and some of them are pretty unpleasant. It's difficult to imagine a suitably well defined mission for a limited intervention that would make things better and allow the UN / NATO / whoever to withdraw in good order in a timely fashion.

Added to this is the problem that Syria's air defenses, while not state of the art, pose a non trivial threat to western aircraft. Either we stand off and lob cruise missiles or we put in a lot of work suppressing these defenses. Neither of these options is appealing to me. I'm from the UK, and I appreciate the legitimately strong desire to avoid another WTC type attack. For all of that, I'm tired of having my friends sent off to sandy places to get shot at and blown up in military operations that have achieved little

People say that they want to stop any country becoming a base for terrorists. Fair enough. That's why we went to Afghanistan. The problem is that after a nasty and protracted struggle we're just going to hand the place back to the Taliban. I'm not exactly a pacifist but I'm sick of throwing troops onto complex and morally challenging battlefields where they can get killed for little gain. For all of their sacrifice can we honestly say that we've made the world a less shitty place?

I feel bad for people suffering under brutal regimes, but as a citizen of a democratic country I feel more responsibility for the guys who are supposedly executing the will of the people as expressed though ballot boxes in the west.

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I pretty much agree, On the other hand, working though the whole thing rationally gives me a headache. I've always would this little game quite entertaining. http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/god.php

This. Also, call me old fashioned, but I wouldn't have expected an 8 year old to be playing a game that can involve murdering prostitutes.

Didn't you hear? All this internet is like this these days.

I don't know. It sounds like an adult site is the only place you'd want to be seen doing a bamfuder.

I'd mod this up if I had points. Shavano, thou art righteous.

or has smartphone technology reached something of a plateau? I mean, I had a iPhone 3GS for years and I held off from upgrading until the 5 was released, thinking that there'd be a step change or paradigm shift of some sort. When the time came I left Apple because looking around it seemed that all of the top of the line handsets are basically the same. I don't exactly push the envelope with my phone useage, and despite what people say I don't know many that do. In terms of the core functionality and interface experience, I couldn't find much to choose between Apple, HTC, Nokia or Samsung.

The iPhone was fantastic back in the day. The touchscreen and build quality were a real step forward and set a new standard. But these day smartphones are just another part of the scenery. Any it's not as if they're really moving forwards. The handsets have gotten as small as they can practically be, and then bigger again. Most handsets use the same style screens. Sure, we get more processing power and what not, but seriously how many cores do you need to check e-mail and post to facebook?

I'm using a Lumia 900 right now. And I'n going to stick with it until the next device comes along that changes the game on the same scale as the iPhone 3G did.

No. You have it backwards. Most recent literature is crap. Then again, most of the stuff that's ever been written is also crap. The difference between the works in the canon and the stuff that's getting published today is that over time it tends to be only the worthwhile material that endures. Mainly for this reason, if you pick up a book that's still in print after a long time then it's likely to be a lot better than a random contemporary book.

The idea that nobody listens to music over twenty years old is about a dumb as it's possible to get in a syntactically valid sentence.

What I'm getting at is that we don't sing songs glorifying the violent overthrow of the state. I'm not making a value judgement about revolutions - it all seems to have worked out quite well for you. But to take an example, the UK national anthem is a dirge about God saving the Queen (it's pure bullshit and pretty embarrassing on the rare occasion we win an international sporting event). Nobody takes it very seriously and you'll be hard pressed to find an Englishman who knows much more than the first verse.

Anyway, while we're all beseeching the almighty to take care of the monarchy, you guys are singing about bombs, rockets and the havoc of war. So whenever I see our government giving corrupt tax breaks to corporations I don't expect anyone to do anything about it because, you know, sure democracy is broken, but whatta ya gonna do? Whereas in the states its all 'hoist the red flag of revolution and let all men be free' one minute and choosing between scented and unscented lube at the airport the next.

This whole NSA thing is a good example. I can't go twenty minutes without being watched on CCTV in the UK, so I've always assumed that any privacy that I think I've got is an illusion. Freedom in the Uk is whatever the government allows you to do. But we're a bunch of serfs, obsessed with social class and mostly disinterested in civil liberties. What's your excuse?

Meh, that was some considerable time ago - and we just ended up with a kind of mini monarchy for a few years before reverting to the status quo (albeit with a few more constitutional restraints on the crown). Being a regicide has never been much of a badge of honour.

More recently, we kept the monarchy in the 18th century while the French were murdering their aristocracy, we had a general strike that didn't become a communist revolution and we flat out ignored the blackshirts who were agitating in the late 30s / early 40s.