Pat Regan

All over by Xmas lads - not on your Nelly mate!

Before it kills the mantis likes to pray - sound familiar?

Here we go again! So the 'experts' we trust to keep us safe have largely decided to wage a new war on Syria.

MPs have controversially backed UK air strikes against so-called Islamic State in Syria, by 397 votes to 223, after a drawn out 10-hour Commons debate.

So that 's 223 area's political reps in the UK that did NOT want to drop bombs on a far off land!

I'm not too sure just what the handful of planes from the UK will achieve when sent into Syria on airstrikes. I do know however that history loves to repeat itself...

As with the praying mantis and our politicians - It's all about spotting the similarities along the way.

Good military tactics, will we be safer in our beds tonight or...?

Have the UK government really considered this particular point or is the latest war news based on a terminally dangerous knee jerk reaction to the tragic events of the Paris bombings?

Tim Eaton, head of the Syria and Its Neighbours Policy Initiative at the Chatham House think tank, said Mr Cameron’s proposals for action were not based on “natural analysis” of the conflict in Syria.

The debate about air strikes was instead based on recent terror atrocities, he said.

Attacking infrastructure such as oil plants would do more harm to civilians than Islamic extremists, Mr Eaton added.

"The reason we are talking about air strikes again is because of the events in Paris and when we last talked about air strikes it followed the attack on the Tunisian beach,” he said. “That indicates one of the problems in Syria policy, that it's not from a natural analysis of the conflict."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/syria-air-strikes-debate-bombing-isis-is-a-knee-jerk-reaction-to-paris-attacks-and-would-hit-a6750246.html

More or less danger to the UK, now the war is on?

History does teach us the blasting the daylights out of some forces built on religious fanaticism frequently ensures that they come back even STRONGER with additional propaganda to greatly swell their ranks and become immovable as highly mobile and pro-active guerrilla forces. Bombing such fanatics is like trying to remove sea shells from the sea shore . There will always be plenty more.

Airstrikes - just the start?

Furthermore, former special forces soldier Phil Campion recently said only a 'boots on the ground' campaign can weed the jihadis out of their strongholds in Syria and Iraq. The experienced soldier also said that no amount of airstrikes can ever fully obliterate the Islamist fanatics. So, if this experienced guy is correct we can sooner or later see a worrying escalation of ground troops into the war zone, yes?

How many folk trusted Tony Blair to do the right thing with the expert knowledge at his disposal?

Several years ago Blair bamboozled the country into the Iraq conflict on a very similar platform to this one today. Have we forgotten this latter fiasco so soon?

Just look at how manipulative Blair was when he started his war drum banging and how it has turned out for him. The guys he was bombing then are back now and posing a new threat to us all.