My position is straight forward.

Syria is not Australia. Syria's problems are not Australian concerns.

Loss of lives, religious fanaticism or social upheaval are not sufficient reason to make this war an Australian concern.

We should stay well out of it. This includes not standing on the sidelines and cheering one side or another.

Humanitarian aid? Certainly. Compassion? Certainly. But there it should stop.

BTW, the ASIO Director-General's concern that Australian citizens are becoming involved is entirely appropriate - as is all advice offered to Australians travelling abroad to respect local laws and behave themselves.

JB,

From 1939 what Chamberlain could have said:

My position is straight forward.

Poland is not England. Poland's problems are not British concerns.

Loss of lives, religious fanaticism or social upheaval are not sufficient reason to make this war a British concern.

We should stay well out of it. This includes not standing on the sidelines and cheering one side or another.

Humanitarian aid? Certainly. Compassion? Certainly. But there it should stop.

Where would we be now?

For evil to succeed, it is sufficient for good to do nothing.

This would have to rate as one of the worst items published by OLO on foreign affairs. The author clearly knows little about what is actually going on in Syria. He appears to know even less about just who the so-called "rebels" are and who their main financial and arms supporters are. He is profoundly ignorant about the role the US is playing, the template for which can be found in Seymour Hersh's article in The New Yorker several years ago. He blithely advocates a no-fly zone without obviously the least amount of knowledge of international law. He is similarly blind to the recent acts of war committed by the State of Israel, about which there is a stunning silence from our government and opposition. And to cap it all he seems unaware of the recent UN report that attributed the use of sarin gas to the "rebel" forces.

A good start would be for the Gulf states and their American and British and Turkish allies to stop financing and arming the "rebels" most of whom are foreign sourced jihadis fresh from acting on behalf of the Americans in Libya, Chechnya and elsewhere.

The UN report in fact states the evidence it has gathered provides it with "concrete suspicions" but not "Incontrovertible evidence" that sarin gas was used by rebel forces. It has no evidence of gas being used by the Assad regime. This development is obviously behind President Obama's decision not to declare "the line has been crossed" over the regime's use of gas.

James O'Neill,

Are the facts getting in the way of your prejudice?

Looking at BH's credentials and contacts one is forced to conclude that he probably knows a hell of a lot more about what is going on in Syria than you do.

This echos the concerns of many.

Refer to the thread I started recently.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=5757

SM: You are the last person on this forum to accuse me of prejudice. Your grasp of history is so tenuous you equate Poland 1939 with the Middle East 2013.

It is possible that BP knows more about Syria than I do, but I doubt it. My point however was that such knowledge as you think he might have was not evident in the article he wrote. Every point I made was based on facts readily ascertainable.

Point me to a single factual error I made in my first post. No, didn't think you could. Hence your customary fallback of accusing those you don't agree with as (in this case) prejudiced.

To prevent a jihadist victory in Syria, stop arming them. This will probably mean backing the current administration in Damascus, but so what? Not so long ago we all quite liked this Bashar al-Assad fellow, back when he was using his jails to hide and torture our rendered ones.
Syria has been significantly weakened after two years of a bloody civil war. Ease up, Bibi Obama. Enough already!
Or is the prize really that Russian port in Tartus? And the different options for getting gas into Europe?

JON,

It is a pity that your comprehension skills are so feeble that you could not grasp that the comparison I made was not between the war in Syria and Poland, but between the action of Chamberlain who reluctantly chose to defend an otherwise defenseless people against a tyrant, and JB whose attitude is "not my problem mate!"

I will endeavor to use small words so you can understand.

Your prejudice is blatant. Your post consists of a factually devoid rant against the author. There is no UN report that the rebels used Sarin, only claims from some civilians. Considering that Assad has stockpiles of Sarin and the rebels don't, your claim is tenuous at best. You also choose to ignore that 70 000+ people have died in the last 12 months or so, mostly at the hands of the Syrian government, and unless the conflict is stopped the casualties are likely to continue rising.

Israel's attack on Syrian arms supply to Hezbollah is barely relevant to the conflict, and considering that the last attacks happened withing 48hrs, the likelihood is that they were yet to occur at the time of writing this article, as they go through an approval process first.

The intervention in Libya was a stunning success and saved the country from the carnage that is now happening in Syria.

SM: I really doubt the utility of debating with you as you are impervious to facts. The report of sarin gas use by the "rebels" was from Carla del Ponte of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria. Even Reuters reported it.

There is no evidence Assad actually has sarin gas. The earlier stockpiles are probably past their use by date, but the evidence is unclear and in the absence of evidence one must be cautious. There is evidence that the "rebels" are being supplied with chemical weapons by Turkey and the GCC.

I did not ignore the 70,000 killed in the war thus far. What you refuse to acknowledge is that the fighting is fuelled by foreign intervention. There is no reliable attribution to who caused how many deaths. Any number is too many and at least one way to reduce the carnage is to stop arming jihadists groups that are intent on overthrowing a sovereign government and replacing it with a version of Sunni militant fundamentalism, as may be seen in the areas the "rebels" already hold.

Israel's attack is an act of war contrary to the UN Charter (although Israel is never bothered by that as they do it regularly). There has been plenty of time for Labor and the Coalition to condemn this latest outrage but they haven't done so.

You say that the "intervention in Libya was a stunning success." If you really believe that then there is nothing I or others might say to put you in touch with reality.

I agree with James.
The rebels or jihadists (AKA U.S mercenaries) are suspected of deploying some sort of Sarin weapon in Syria, not the Assad forces.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22424188

There was an incident in Iraq in 2004 in which someone rigged an old Sarin shell with an explosive charge and used it as an IED against the Americans, I'd expect to see that sort of thing in Syria.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/4997808/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/bomb-said-holddeadly-sarin-gas-explodes-iraq/#.UYdiToKp2E4
Nerve gas is extremely tricky to use in effectively in battle, that's why the most common chemical weapons used were choking and blister agents like chlorine or mustard gas or hydrogen cyanide and even those are extremely dangerous to the user as well as the target.

Where would we be now?
shadow Minister,
I'd re-phrase that to where could we be now ?

This is very similar to Julie Bishop's articles on foreign policy.

They take a straight-by-the-book stance that assumes every Western media release and Washington-consensus statement is gospel truth. This stance also assumes that all the disastrous military actions taken in the past against countries whose leaders we don't like, if repeated often enough, will eventually bring us the exact perfect military outcome we want this time around.

They are also dependent on the intractable Western belief system that we are the good guys and that any and all catastrophic destruction we bring down on the populations of countries whose leaders we don't like is for the purpose of protecting them from the leaders we don't like.

And if we still fail to be convinced, bring up the good ol' Chamberlain defence.

JON,

You said there was a UN report, there is not. There is an interview with a single UN official, that is contradicted by the UN body in charge of the investigation. As my kids would say EPIC FAIL.

The fighting is now fueled by foreign support, but the Assad regime had a full year of shooting up to 20 000 unarmed civilians before this happened. Subsequently the government forces have used their heavy weapons to shell urban areas which causes widespread and indiscriminate casualties. The rebels are not saints either, but their lack of heavy weaponry makes any attempts at balancing the blame futile.

The attacks by Israel can be considered an act of war, just as the supplying of tens of thousands of rockets to a terrorist organisation intending to fire them into Israel. No sane politician is going to lose a wink of sleep if Hezbollah loses its rockets.

In Libya a despotic tyrant that intended to inflict the same carnage that Assad is presently doing, was deposed with a fraction of the bloodshed we are seeing in Syria. The saving of tens of thousands of lives is seen as a stunning success by most of the world. There are a delusional few that think that sovereign governments should have the right to butcher their citizens.

It now appears that the UN 'report' on the use of sarin gas, was in fact the opinion of one of the four members of the UN Commission appointed to enquire into its use. Carla del Ponti made the statement not in an official report, but during an interview on Swiss television. The Commission as a whole has since issued a statement saying that its inquiry is continuing and that it has no 'evidence' that rebels used the gas. Ms del Ponti herself said she had only 'concrete suspicions'. I met Ms del Ponti some years ago. She is one of the UN's most able senior officials. She did excellent work in Rwanda especially. However, she does have a weakness for the limelight and in this case she certainly achieved it.

You seem to all be willfully blind to the elephant in the room. The greatest danger to all of us this century is certain to be the coming worldwide conflict between the West, and the forces of Islam.

If we have a friend in the current Syrian conflict, it has to be the Assad regime, rather than the rebels, who would quickly turn the Islamic Spring into a Koranic Winter, distinctly dangerous to any remaining remnants of Christianity, Judaism, Secularism, or anyone not totally committed to Global Jihad.

Our only true friend in the entire region is Israel, and we should endeavor to do nothing to endanger her. Let's just keep out of the conflict, apart from re-assuring Israel that we'll stand by her.

@Beaucoupbob. I think you will find, on examination of the evidence, that attacks on western interests by Islamic radicals are almost invariably in response to the west's interference in the affairs of their countries. If you bomb, invade and exploit others you mustn't be surprised when they retaliate. The miracle is that there is not a whole lot more retaliation given our behaviour over the years. Read William Blum's Rogue State; Peter Dale Scott's American War Machine; or Jeremy Scahill's recently released Dirty Wars for some insight into what is really going on as to the mindless pap published daily in the mainstream propaganda organs.

May I suggest that the real elephant in the room is that State of Israel. The west tolerates/condones endless acts of terrorism by Israel. It is the object of more adverse UN General Assembly resolutions than all the Muslim states combined. When it conducts a blatant act of war as in the latest bombing of Syria (whose land it illegally annexed) there was a stunning silence from the newly elected Security Council member that purports to act in our name. Unless and until we sanction Israel for the continuing egregious conduct it engages in there will never be peace in the Middle East.