Shamima Begum, IS teen wants to come back to the UK

Buster15 said:
You maintain that the RAF has killed countless civilians in Syria.
For this to have any relevance you need to be more specific on what you mean by countless.

I have checked the MoD website and up to the end of 2018 the RAF had carried out less than 1200 actual strikes; all of which were using targetted smart bombing.

It is not possible to find out any precise numbers for obvious reasons (who is a civilian).
However, you can guarantee that had the RAF killed, to use your words countless civilians we would have heard about it in any of the anti UK news outlets.
I have carried out a search with zero results.

On that basis I would confidentiality say that you are incorrect unless you can substantiate your claim.
Click to expand...

I'm sure the MoD would be an unbiased source there, too. Western militaries have worked hard to solidify the perception that smart munitions are ridiculously accurate and don't harm non-combatants. They are still prone to error, whether that results from bad intelligence, mistakes in ground targeting or atmospheric conditions. The destruction they cause is also indiscriminate and never confined to the land the target occupies. People choose to ignore these realities, though.

There are quite a few articles and reports on the subject. Here are two from the first page of Google search:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...sponsible-civilian-death-toll-not-seen-since/

https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde24/8367/2018/en/

The Amnesty report doesn't exactly throw out numbers but it paints a sorry picture of the civilian experience in Raqqa.
 
Mozza said:
Non of the other nations who had an Arab spring ended up with ISIS, so the idea that an insurgency against the Baathist would have still created the same in an alternate history is shite
Click to expand...

Syria, Libya, Egypt and Yemen all did. Other places which have previously ended up with ISIS-type movements include north-east Nigeria, Somalia and Afghanistan. The common theme here is not Western intervention, it is the collapse of the state and subsequent chaos which the jihadis filled. That is one of the necessary conditions for an ISIS to emerge, and it could easily have played out that way in the event that a Ba’thist Iraq collapsed in the Arab Spring. All the more so since we know now that ISIS was largely led by ex-Ba’thist officers inspired in part by Saddam’s Salafi Faith Campaign of the 90s. But of course it’s impossible to know for sure.
 
2cents said:
* (The policies and agendas, both short and long-term, of certain Western actors played a huge role in creating the conditions which produced ISIS. As did other factors including but not limited to the failure of the dictatorships and their brutalization of the societies they ruled over; regional interstate power politics which helped fuel Sunni-Shi’i sectarian hostility; the Islamicization of Arab society and politics since the 60s; the long tradition of Islamic reformist activism in the region; climate change; demographic explosion...and so on.)
Click to expand...

Top man.
 
Dwazza Gunnar Solskjær said:
I'm sure the MoD would be an unbiased source there, too. Western militaries have worked hard to solidify the perception that smart munitions are ridiculously accurate and don't harm non-combatants. They are still prone to error, whether that results from bad intelligence, mistakes in ground targeting or atmospheric conditions. The destruction they cause is also indiscriminate and never confined to the land the target occupies. People choose to ignore these realities, though.

There are quite a few articles and reports on the subject. Here are two from the first page of Google search:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...sponsible-civilian-death-toll-not-seen-since/

https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde24/8367/2018/en/

The Amnesty report doesn't exactly throw out numbers but it paints a sorry picture of the civilian experience in Raqqa.
Click to expand...

This input is relevant and informative but the Amnesty report talks of hundreds by the US lead coalition.

Bearing in mind that we are talking about the RAF element and knowing what I know I am still of the opposition that they (UK) have not been responsible for countless civilian deaths, whatever countless actually means.
 
Red Defence said:
The one who’s father was imprisoned in the US for life on terror charges and who himself went to fight in Syria?
He fought with terrorists against the legitimate regime.
Click to expand...
The problem is there are multiple factions, some of which were armed by Western forces. It was multiple rebellions. It would be a bit hypocritical to now say all rebels are bad, when we needed them to fight Isis as well as Assad. Assad is not the friend of the West.
 
Buster15 said:
This input is relevant and informative but the Amnesty report talks of hundreds by the US lead coalition.

Bearing in mind that we are talking about the RAF element and knowing what I know I am still of the opposition that they (UK) have not been responsible for countless civilian deaths, whatever countless actually means.
Click to expand...

The RAF is part of that coalition, though. A lack of clarity in the tabulation of civilian casualties doesn't absolve a coalition partner from responsibility.

This isn't to say that pilots are individually culpable. The responsibility lies with the leadership and governments involved that choose to use heavy munitions in dense urban areas. It seems that overkill in Syria has led to avoidable civillian casualties, as it certainly did in Iraq and Afghanistan, too. These conflicts and our military actions in them are going to reverberate negatively in our societies for decades to come. The root causes of our involvement are dubious at best, hence some people's opposing views here.
 
Dwazza Gunnar Solskjær said:
The RAF is part of that coalition, though. A lack of clarity in the tabulation of civilian casualties doesn't absolve a coalition partner from responsibility.

This isn't to say that pilots are individually culpable. The responsibility lies with the leadership and governments involved that choose to use heavy munitions in dense urban areas. It seems that overkill in Syria has led to avoidable civillian casualties, as it certainly did in Iraq and Afghanistan, too. These conflicts and our military actions in them are going to reverberate negatively in our societies for decades to come. The root causes of our involvement are dubious at best, hence some people's opposing views here.
Click to expand...

Yes. I did know that the RAF was part of the coalition.
However, for the majority of the time they had eight Tornado GR4 jets. These are precison bombers with two man crew and only operate with smart weapons - Brimstone and Paveway with the occasional Stormshadow. They also uniquely operate with the RapTor reconnaissance pod which is a world leading capability allowing real time high quality images for both in flight and ground based analysis.
These are all extremely expensive but also extremely accurate ordinance.
Being extremely expensive means they are used for a reason. To minimise civilian casualties.

Whether one agree or not, it is clearly evident that UK caused civilian deaths cannot be classified as 'countless'.
 
Buster15 said:
Yes. I did know that the RAF was part of the coalition.
However, for the majority of the time they had eight Tornado GR4 jets. These are precison bombers with two man crew and only operate with smart weapons - Brimstone and Paveway with the occasional Stormshadow. They also uniquely operate with the RapTor reconnaissance pod which is a world leading capability allowing real time high quality images for both in flight and ground based analysis.
These are all extremely expensive but also extremely accurate ordinance.
Being extremely expensive means they are used for a reason. To minimise civilian casualties.

Whether one agree or not, it is clearly evident that UK caused civilian deaths cannot be classified as 'countless'.
Click to expand...

To be fair, countless is a good adjective here because we don't know. There could be thousands of dead civilians under all that rubble. There could be a few hundred, or only dozens. So for now, they are countless. People might mistake countless for millions but that's illogical and seems a bit on the defensive side.

That Paveway bomb seems like a lot of overkill for the dense urban areas in Syria. They'll have a large blast radius that negates the accuracy of their guided systems. Even 100m in an urban setting is going to severely injure and kill people who weren't targeted.
 
Dwazza Gunnar Solskjær said:
To be fair, countless is a good adjective here because we don't know. There could be thousands of dead civilians under all that rubble. There could be a few hundred, or only dozens. So for now, they are countless. People might mistake countless for millions but that's illogical and seems a bit on the defensive side.

That Paveway bomb seems like a lot of overkill for the dense urban areas in Syria. They'll have a large blast radius that negates the accuracy of their guided systems. Even 100m in an urban setting is going to severely injure and kill people who weren't targeted.
Click to expand...

I do understand your points.
However, the context that the word countless was used infered a large number.

Regarding the use of Paveway, in the instances you identify, Brimstone would be used.
Again, this weapon is unique to RAF Tornado and now RAF Typhoon jets.

Anyway. No point continuing this discussion as we will continue to disagree but it was beneficial to have made our thoughts known.
 
Buster15 said:
Yes. I did know that the RAF was part of the coalition.
However, for the majority of the time they had eight Tornado GR4 jets. These are precison bombers with two man crew and only operate with smart weapons - Brimstone and Paveway with the occasional Stormshadow. They also uniquely operate with the RapTor reconnaissance pod which is a world leading capability allowing real time high quality images for both in flight and ground based analysis.
These are all extremely expensive but also extremely accurate ordinance.
Being extremely expensive means they are used for a reason. To minimise civilian casualties.

Whether one agree or not, it is clearly evident that UK caused civilian deaths cannot be classified as 'countless'.
Click to expand...

Someone reads their Janes defence Weekley and gets a stiffy.

Accuracy is meanigngless when rules of engagement can be written to excuse civilian deaths. But I'm sure the survivors are comforted by the knowledge their love ones died precisely.
 
2cents said:
Syria, Libya, Egypt and Yemen all did. Other places which have previously ended up with ISIS-type movements include north-east Nigeria, Somalia and Afghanistan. The common theme here is not Western intervention, it is the collapse of the state and subsequent chaos which the jihadis filled. That is one of the necessary conditions for an ISIS to emerge, and it could easily have played out that way in the event that a Ba’thist Iraq collapsed in the Arab Spring. All the more so since we know now that ISIS was largely led by ex-Ba’thist officers inspired in part by Saddam’s Salafi Faith Campaign of the 90s. But of course it’s impossible to know for sure.
Click to expand...

Small groups who took the ISIS name when they were a good recruiting tool. Never grew large and never in charge. Non emerged during their nations uprising but only after
 
Buster15 said:
I do understand your points.
However, the context that the word countless was used infered a large number.

Regarding the use of Paveway, in the instances you identify, Brimstone would be used.
Again, this weapon is unique to RAF Tornado and now RAF Typhoon jets.

Anyway. No point continuing this discussion as we will continue to disagree but it was beneficial to have made our thoughts known.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. "Countless" is typically hyperbolic in its general use.

I'll have take your word for it on the operational uses of each ordinance. I based my inference on the half a billion dollar order for Paveway munitions the RAF made recently, which seemed to imply they'd used a lot of them.

Still, I think @Mozza is taking an unfair amount of heat for questioning the West's underlying motive when it comes to conflict in the middle East and the origins of ISIS. I agree with him that our governments have a lot to answer for. War, after all, is simply the continuation of politics by other means and the true motives for our engagement there remain obscured.
 
Mozza said:
ISIS were not 'solely bent on death and destruction'. They were not good people, but they were building a state
Click to expand...
They were building a state by means of death and destruction. Eliminate anyone who you feel may stand in your way, terrorise the powerless to break their spirit, enslave and abuse people, declare some people less than human based on their religion - it doesn't get much worse. They are exactly like the SS in the concentration camps, in my view. They murdered indiscriminately and in the cruellest possible ways, all for a crazy vision of some future world where they'd be calling all the shots.

Despite all that, I'd like to see Shamima be allowed back to Britain and treated fairly under the rule of law, because we're better than ISIS.
 
VeevaVee said:
You're comparing regular old murder and criminals with genocidal terrorists that have been hellbent on taking over as much land as they can in as despicable a way as possible though, and arranging/influencing many other attacks on innocent people. I feel like some people aren't appreciating what ISIS are and do now, as if they've barely existed. This isn't normal crime. What they've done as a collective is as bad as it can possibly get for humans on earth. It doesn't get worse, other than on an even bigger scale in the past.
She's part of all this, even if she hasn't committed an orthodox crime. She and others who have done the same have helped them get stronger.
I know that doesn't leave much law to bring down on her, but that's not my point or my job. I'm just looking at it as a real thing that's happened and judging accordingly. This can't really be compared with 'normal' criminals.

On the second paragraph, of course people will talk about what's presented to them. Of course it's done by the media on purpose to get people disagreeing as much as possible. Their views and clicks will be through the roof because of it, not to mention it's made everyone stop talking about Brexit. We're hearing about it because of this and because we'd heard about them when they left. The baby just added a great edge to the story for them, making the discussion more complicated and emotive. But here we are.

Just as a footnote in case anyone reading it gets the wrong end of the stick, I'm a liberal. I believe on the grand scale the world is everyone's and when people need help we should help them, but my line is drawn before ISIS.
Click to expand...

No I'm comparing them with a woman who was brainwashed and went over to be the bridge/cleaner who went over to support them. You're the one comparing them incorrectly. You have to call the spade the spade, even if it makes you uncomfortable because you want to hold her responsible via guilt by association for larger things she wasn't responsible for. Even if she did support them.

That isn't saying what she did is okay, or that she did nothing wrong. She is a part of it for sure, and she deserves to be prosecuted for what she did do - but that's it, the legal system should be holding her accountable to what she actually did.

But this should be dealt with via the legal system, and not via the hotheaded nature of the British public quick to anger for anything foreign in the Brexit climate. She's our citizen, who commited a crime and should be dealt with accordingly. Washing our hands of it in an illegal manner because we don't want to open the inevitable can of worms that's coming for others who are also going to be returning home from Syria is lazy at best.
 
NinjaFletch said:
Why format your posts
in such an odd way as if
they are a haiku?
Click to expand...

Must confess that I had never previously heard of haiku.
Not a fan of Japanese poetry.
I simply try to make posts easier to read in line with the forum formatting recommendations.
 
Mozza said:
Someone reads their Janes defence Weekley and gets a stiffy.

Accuracy is meanigngless when rules of engagement can be written to excuse civilian deaths. But I'm sure the survivors are comforted by the knowledge their love ones died precisely.
Click to expand...

Let's agree to disagree.
By the way, I do not read Janes and while I have an interest in Military aviation I am far too old to get a stiffy.
 
Is this the story that's supposed to distract us from the whole shooting ourselves in the face thing?
 
I've come full circle on this. Everyone deserves a second chance. Speak to her, see what she says and monitor her however we see fit. She's probably no more dangerous to Britain than JRM and the rest of the ERG.
 
Dwazza Gunnar Solskjær said:
Still, I think @Mozza is taking an unfair amount of heat for questioning the West's underlying motive when it comes to conflict in the middle East and the origins of ISIS. I agree with him that our governments have a lot to answer for
Click to expand...

Has anyone here actually suggested otherwise? That’s really not what he’s been taking heat for.
 
I think he's taking heat for offering nothing whatsoever to the discussion other than random statements without any factual basis, smugly replying things like 'so it's a no then' and then posting things himself where that would actually be an accurate response back to him with a sprinkling of random conjecture and hyperbole.
 
Being the second most active poster in this thread while offering feck all, but apologising for isis does indeed put some heat on him. I fail to see why that is weird.
 
Fair enough, he's said some dumb shit but others have chimed in with statements like we're attacking ISIS because they've killed innocents, blatanly ignoring how many innocents the west have killed in the Middle East since 2001 with our ends justifies the means approach, or the fact that the only reason we're there is oil and feck their swarthy, worthless brown lives.
 
Carolina Red said:
Yeah... that won’t fly either. You’re moving the goalposts. They’ve got ISIS and Libya and Egypt have them in the thousands.
Click to expand...

After their Arab Springs, inspired by the growth of ISIS in Iraq, not as a result of their revolutions.

Another failure by Carolina Red
 
Zarlak said:
No I'm comparing them with a woman who was brainwashed and went over to be the bridge/cleaner who went over to support them. You're the one comparing them incorrectly. You have to call the spade the spade, even if it makes you uncomfortable because you want to hold her responsible via guilt by association for larger things she wasn't responsible for. Even if she did support them.

That isn't saying what she did is okay, or that she did nothing wrong. She is a part of it for sure, and she deserves to be prosecuted for what she did do - but that's it, the legal system should be holding her accountable to what she actually did.

But this should be dealt with via the legal system, and not via the hotheaded nature of the British public quick to anger for anything foreign in the Brexit climate. She's our citizen, who commited a crime and should be dealt with accordingly. Washing our hands of it in an illegal manner because we don't want to open the inevitable can of worms that's coming for others who are also going to be returning home from Syria is lazy at best.
Click to expand...

It's not that I don't think it should be dealt with by our legal system. It's that I don't have faith in it in this regard. It's not set up for this by the looks of it. It's not just guilt by association when it comes to a genocidal terrorist organisation. I'm not saying that we shouldn't go that route. I'm saying she's done more than just knock about with someone dodgy.

I hope the last part wasn't aimed at me. I fully support helping refugees. I know that's why some people feel the way they do though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.