The world must realise that national governments need to be supported when under attack from terrorists.
Syria.Once a peace loving country and the envy of the Middle East has been plagued by foreign powers wanting to gain a foothold.
Under the pretext of Islamisation,ISIL has been supported by most Muslim communities around the world, excepting the former Yugoslavia and until recent years,Turkey.
Extreme Islam is no longer just a few hotheads.It has become a confronting sign throughout the world. Muslim women need to dress
without even their ankles on display.For fear a man might rape them.
Men are encouraged to mention Allah while in casual conversation.
The Syrian Government wanted Syria to reflect what is best in Western Culture.
Freedom for women to look and feel good and to have a sense of pride. An opportunity to attend University for a better life.
Under Islamisation.We now have the Saudi Government sending troops to support the radical extremists and the western world apart from Russia and France seem to not want to interfere.
Australia needs to support the Al-Assad Government.

Australia needs to stay out of international problems altogether, we're a small European colony in the southern hemisphere, are Argentina and Uruguay sending troops to fight ISIS?

At the end of WW1, the west instituted a policy of 'cordon sanitaire' which isolated the Russian revolution from Europe. Later Stalin did likewise via the Iron Curtain.
Eventually, Reagan's strategy which caused the demise of communism was to allow it to wallow in its own inefficiency, isolate them from western advances and spend them into bankruptcy.

The same needs to be done with the lunacy that is the Arab world. Cut them off from all the benefits of western medicine, science and finance. Pull out of the area entirely while providing the full wherewithal for Israel to defend itself. Leave the Saudis to their own devices. Let the Syrians rip themselves apart. Refuse to take refugees from the majority groups but help minorities like Yazidi and Christians to get the hell outta there.

Let them wallow in their anti-science anti-progress religion and see how long before they are begging to be allowed back in. Don't let their elites get access to western medicine. Refuse to play their Islamophobia games any longer.

We are already in reach of no longer needing their oil. Accelerate moves toward fracking and help non-Arabic oil producers to increase supply. See how long Arabic regimes survive without being financed by the one thing they make that we want.

We don't need to support Assad. We need to let Arabic Islam wither and die thus condemning this scourge to the dustbin of history.

Females are half the . Represent MORE than half the intelligence and half the potential.

Any religion , creed , philosophy , culture or race who suppresses or does not treat as equal in ALL ways should be condemned and isolated totally. Woman are half of our future.

Men who dress women head to foot and rape ,beat or penalise any woman who does not comply to their RULE are week dregs of manhood who are afraid because of their inferiority complex. We don't want religions to change our society or values so I say and am prepared to say in public no mater what the law says NO MUSLIMS REFUGEES here in Australia. They havnt ever and won't accept our values or way of life.
Stand up and speak up.
JohnBigMac

It's gone too far for any reasonable solution, Merkel has set Europe back 500 years by admitting an army of over a million Muslim men into Europe, I read an article predicting that if Merkel is allowed to carry on with her plan in the under 30 demographic Muslims will outnumber native born Germans in four years.
We all know what's coming, it's going to be much worse than 1992-95 only this time I can't see Russia staying out of it.

Australia should never have been involved in the first place. No involvement, no 'refugees' to spread Islamic horror to the West. We do not help anyone. Each involvement, when it ends, sees the terrorists coming back. A total wast of money (added to by the 'refugees') and misuse of our DEFENCE forces.

Hi ttbn,

Are you referring to the invasion of Iraq ? Yes, I agree, up to a point: al Qa'ida did exist then, and following a very long succession of Islamist movements going back to at least the eighth century invasion of Spain by very devout and newly-converted Berbers, al Qa'ida was already by then, spreading to Algeria and Somalia. The removal of Saddam simply removed a nationalist, or a national-fascist, rival of Islamism and provided an opening for Islamism across the region.

Try this thought experiment: imagine that, after 9/11, Bush had had the sense to realise that Saddam, although a proto-fascist, was not at all an Islamist, i.e. he was by no means the main enemy: fascist nationalism and Islamism are usually deadly enemies in the Middle East.

So imagine if Bush had sucked up to Saddam, provided him with weaponry, flash uniforms, had done deals, given him and his cronies buckets of money, whatever: in other words, brought him on side [hindsight is such a great teacher, isn't it ?}, as one more dictator like Assad or Mubarak to use as a bulwark against Islamism: democracy could wait until Islamism had been eradicated (at least for a while) and then the US could turn on its allies.

On that logic, yes, the US and its allies now should temporarily support Assad against a worse enemy, ISIS. For everything, there is a season.

The Russians are going to keep bombing the daylights out of the in-between rebels, as long as they are anti-Assad. Could they be persuaded to either withdraw or do a deal with Assad, and both/all turn their efforts against ISIS ? Is that too difficult ?

On the scale of things, Islamism is a worse enemy than fascism or semi-fascism, it has to be dealt with first. God, I'm disgusted at myself for writing that. But you don't fight two powerful enemies at once, you ideally should choose the worst to eradicate, first. Just hold your nose.

Joe

why don't we send all the Greens, getup crowd and feminist to Syria holding up signs saying we know Islam is a religion of peace and that Mohammed was a great example to live by.

Hi runner,

Brilliant idea !! Perhaps, once in Raqqa, the Get-Up people could campaign for homosexual rights (as long as they stayed away from tall buildings), the feminists could demand the right to reclaim the streets (as long as they stayed inside), and the Greens, once they have occupied the best coffee shops and imported sufficient kale, could demand that ISIS reduce its carbon footprint, all that machine-gunning of Yazidis and child-suicide-bombing.

One problem might be that, if they ever found that it wasn't to their liking and tried to get back to bourgeois racist Australia, by that time their citizenship may have been revoked.

No worries; they could always migrate to Hamas-controlled Gaza and campaign for homosexual and women's rights and against Israel to their hearts' content.

Thanks, Runner, keep fighting :)

Joe

I am with Mhaze on his Middle East Wall. It will get to this
eventually as the realisation comes to the politicians that we are in
a war that has been reoccurring every hundred years or so for the last 1400 years.

Turkey is a problem as it is a NATO member but common sense, in view of
its recent religio/political stance, should perhaps no longer belong to NATO.
Austria, with a history of Islamic invasion by Turkey, has said it
will veto Turkey as an EU member.

Including Turkey inside the "wall" would simplify the isolation.
There will be complaint by business because of the reduction in trade.
Regarding oil, they will want to sell it and we can buy it out the end of a pipe.
Operation of the Suez canal could be a problem but we must accept
that there will be some disadvantages. However as the canal is a major
money tree for Egypt some arrangement regarding transit should be possible.

This all seems way out there does it not ?
These steps are really very mild when you think of what has been
enforced in any other war.
Realism is the only way forward and wishful thinking will lead to disaster.

I'm worried that WW3 may already be in play.

I don't know how true the reports are about 'Operation Northern Thunder' with Saudi Arabia and Turkey planning an invasion of Syria with 350,000 troops, 20,000 tanks 2,450 aircraft and 460 Helicopters, but all I can say is that anyone who wants to start a war with Russia is clearly not capable of rational thought.

We're lead by idiots, who support US foreign policy in the M/E who support Saudi Arabia, Wahabbism, and by default Al-Qaeda.
This is the sad truth.

Russia is the good country in all of this and I'm sick of them being made the scapegoats for failed covert US 'regime changes' and US interfering in other peoples countries.

The US keeps invading and destroying nations and I'm yet to hear one single valid moral reason for any of it.

You all need to wake up, these fools are going to take us to nuclear war. I don't want to sound all doom and gloom but this is what our leaders are doing and we all need to be prepared for whatever comes next.

It seems there is now precedent for New Zealand to supply weapons to the Australian Shorten Labor opposition to destroy the Turnbull coalition government.

I repeat what I have asked previously, what has Syria's Bashar al-Assad been convicted of?

I have long thought Putin was a better leader
than most of our leaders and most other leaders in the world.
In fact the best form of government it is said, is a benign dictator.
Putin fits that profile.

He has always been a man who charts his course
With much more commonsense. Than the hippie idealogists
In the West.
He can see that the fight in Syria is an ongoing centuries old
War between the Middle eastern Arabs and the more European
Syria. Moderate Muslims, rubbish.

A lot of the so called moderate Sunni Muslims attacking Assad and Damascus
Have 7children, they then belatedly realised they couldn't provide for
All those children so they decided to try to take the European prosperous
Society around Assad. The trouble with the middle Eastern Muslims,
they couldn't run three chickens on a chicken farm let alone
A decent country. Then they look over the fence at Israel, and European
Syria and decide they should have these prosperously run countries.
America hasn't got a clue when they talk about setting up a puppet
Government in Syria.

Hello? Isn't that what they did in Iraq and look at the dismal failure that was.

Yes Cherful, your description of the Middle East is so accurate.
So long as they keep marrying their cousins they will continue to
perform at such dismal levels.
It will take hundreds of years to repair their genome if they stop
that practise today.

There have been many many invasions of Europe, India and Africa since
the founding of Islam. We keep on hammering them but they have only
recently accepted that they cannot win by military means and have
adopted the immigration invasion method. They even have a word for it.

My suggestion to wall off the Middle East and let no one in or out
seems to be the only solution. Germany has belatedly started sending
back some of the recent arrivals but they will need a more active program.

The Arabs are again at the gates of Vienna and this time they are
already over the walls.