Given that the more the west goes to war in the middle east, the larger the terror threat becomes, perhaps the west should stop fucking going to war in the middle east?
Abbott is ramping up terrorism fears and committing ground soldiers to IRAQ in order to direct attention away from domestic issues.
Australia isn't a terrorist target currently, but I'm sure if we follow the US back into Iraq all guns blazing we may well become one.
ISIS is a stain on humanity, but it's not our problem - and even if it was, it's not a problem we are capable of fixing. Rather this is just an attempt to drum up sentiment, distract attention and also probably keep the US military-industrial complex ticking over.
Straight out of the George W. Bush playbook and I hope Australia dosn't fall for it.
Sorry Bowside, but we absolutely are a target, and have been since the day we first put a foot into places like Rwanda and Somalia.
Then we really got their attention once we hitched our ponies to the US and ploughed through the sandpit of the Middle East.
Plenty of good men and women are keeping ISIS, and organisations like them, out of our schools and shopping centres. We don't see them doing it, but they are doing it none-the-less.
Keating sent troops overseas, as did Howard, as did Rudd, Gillard and now Abbott.
Seems like a pretty equal spread of political parties to me, but you want to blame one of them?
Some things are beyond politics, my friend.
Building the hype over terrorism is just the coalition ramping up the inner fears of the electorate as a base to create their old time friend in wedge politics.
The diplomatic sphere is where our national security lies. I don't think we have seen competent performance on this front since the Keating government.
Is he trying to hide his budget woes behind this?
Another "Look over there" moment.
Concerns about several attempts over a long period doesn't really justify the wasted money and loss of Australian life that would result from our intervention in this conflict.
And the blokes who are thwarting terrorism in this day and age are sitting behind computers in data centres building watchlists etc. They are not combat soldiers.
All of this is beside the point:
We have a budget deficit - going to war is a shit way to fix that. Every dollar that is spent on military kit in Iraq is a dollar that isn't spent on our schools, roads and hospitals. What do you think is going to grow gpd more considering we are buying the equipment from foreign nations.
Can Western economies afford a peace dividend? Countless Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Civil Servants associated with the Military suddenly unemployed. The multiplier effect as the Military spending reduction ripples through the economies. Unpalatable to many Politicians.
Let me see if I have this straight.
We have to go over there because of the terrorist threat. but the only reason there is a terrorist threat is because we keep going over there.
Is that about right?
So if religious loons (well different ones) were in charge of the middle east, they wouldn't want to sell their oil?
I only see a few companies being put out on their arse, but the oil would still flow
A STRATEGIC SHIFT
In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
.........
Of course they would want to sell, and the West needs to buy like a drug addict needs their next hit. The religious zealots may be nutters about some things, but once they have power, they will take all the trappings (and money) that go with that, and if that means that some principles may have to be reinterpreted, then they will be reinterpreted.
Never underestimate the power of self interest, and the quest for power. 6 Billion people on the planet and there is/was only one Mother Therese.
The West wants to buy oil on their own terms, like going to Maccas for a Big Mac Meal Deal. The West do not want to end up in a drug addict/pusher relationship where the pusher has all the power, and the addict no choice. That is why they intervene. All the rhetoric about freedom of determination and oppression is precisely that. The interventions are for purely geostrategic economic reasons.
Use coal and convert it to oil as Hitler and the South Africans did. Then there is no need to be in the Middle East at all.