The Lives of Innocents.

[Kate1933]

Where do the terrorists get the money to buy their weapons and who supplies the weapons?
During the war many civilians were killed both in the UK and Germany, including children. We accepted it at the time as part of the cost of winning the war.

I never did, even though I was a child during the war, the extermination of the Jews when I learned of the fact horrified me and tore me emotionally, my late lovely brother in law was Polish in a concentration camp as a child.. He never revealed the horrors too terrible for him to discuss however we saw photographs that was enough... evidently there is a ceasefire at the moment correct me if I am wrong....and no one has contributed to wars more than England suppliers of weapons etc, also right me if I am wrong regarding this fact.

[Workingman]

You are right Kate, there was a ceasefire a few weeks ago but it did not last, they hardly ever do. I also see from the news that there will be a 48 humanitarian pause next week, at least from the Russian/US Alliance sides. Unfortunately, these things are not solving the problem.

When it comes to arms trading the UK is the 4th largest net exporter. However, our stuff tends to be high-tech and high-end equipment and not the small arms or field weapons being used by the terrorists. Most of their big weapons are captured kit from the Iraqi and Syrian armies. A lot of their small arms are second-hand from other conflicts traded on the black market by rogue traders.

As for funds: They tend to come from 'donations' and criminal activities carried out worldwide. They also come from oil sales. Oh yes, some places buy the oil they steal from Iraqi and Syrian oilfields. One of their main markets is southern Turkey. Why and how this is allowed to happen is anybody's guess.

[AggersAgain]

During the war many civilians were killed both in the UK and Germany, including children.
We accepted it at the time as part of the cost of winning the war.

That is very true, Cruiser.
It certainly puts a new light on what is going on now.

[Kate1933]

During the war many civilians were killed both in the UK and Germany, including children.
We accepted it at the time as part of the cost of winning the war.

That is very true, Cruiser.
It certainly puts a new light on what is going on now.

The post I started for this thread is one of the most painful I have ever written,
every day the news is terrible and I cannot comprehend what at the end of these wars can be gained
Other than more suffering and more misery.

[Workingman]

I cannot comprehend what at the end of these wars can be gained
Other than more suffering and more misery.

You are not the only one, Kate, but it looks like war is in our human DNA.

[Kate1933]

I cannot comprehend what at the end of these wars can be gained
Other than more suffering and more misery.

You are not the only one, Kate, but it looks like war is in our human DNA.

Terrible. What a legacy for future and present generations Frank. My heart bleeds for them,

[AggersAgain]

It looks like war is in our human DNA.

I guess that's right, Frank. If one considers the whole of life-forms on the planet, it is clear
that they are practically all based on cannibalism. When ever I see a young lamb I feel guilty
because I know that that poor little, sweet little, creature is doomed to be slaughtered, to
put food on our dinner plates.

[Suff]

I think slightly differently here.

We now live in a two speed world. As a teenager I watched just about every WWII documentary I could find on TV and I read a lot of books about the war and the way it was fought. They called it "Total War" and they really meant it. Basically it was a war for survival of the culture. If we lost then we were consumed by a regime which would suppress our very identity and ruthlessly control us.

In Total War anything goes. Fire bombing the citizens of Dresden (a wooden city), Fire bombing the wood and paper cities of Japan, dropping Nuclear weapons.

In the end those involved in Total War learned a lesson which other nations (of which I include the US in this), didn't. That lesson was that we needed to bring war back to the professionals and away from the civilians. This is why there are so many UN rules about not making civilians combatants and about not waging war on anyone but soldiers.

Of course this is idiocy because when it becomes civil war the entire population is caught up in it and the war is fought inside the country amongst the civilians. It is very much like Total War because it is a fight for the very survival of the country in civil war.

So we have the countries who have lived and experienced the fear of losing culture and the fight to retain it. Something which created the UN and all those "Gentlemanly" rules as to how war should be fought.

Then we have all those countries who did not experience WWII the way we did. They still have to learn why the UN rules are what they are. There seems to be no way to explain to those people why the UN rules were put in place. It appears that Humanity has to experience this kind of struggle at least once before it finally accepts that our ability to destroy ourselves far outstrips our ability to survive that destruction.

The UN was a recognition that if we did not all come together and at least try to talk our problems through, then we would end up destroying humanity on the planet. After all we have the capability, if not the will to use it.

Notably nobody was running around WWII showing all the poor German children in tears or, worse, staring vacantly at the world that had descended around them into chaos. The German orphans we created, the millions of German civilians we killed. One of my Aunts was German and lived through the war, a neighbour was orphaned during the war.

We have the luxury of berating ourselves for the destruction of lives which his going on in Syria right now. The Syrian authorities do not. IS will be the result of a failure of the Syrian regime to end the civil war and take their country back. The Western nations determination to keep that civil war going and try to topple Assad is prolonging this war, allowing IS to flourish and creating the humanitarian crisis which is currently ongoing.

During WWII, the vast majority of the bleeding hearts were in the US. Why? Because they had the luxury of 3,000 miles of Atlantic buffer between war torn Europe and the US. Interestingly they treated the campaign in the Pacific and Japan the same way as we treated Germany and Europe. Why? Because they had been attacked and hurt by the Japanese and faced more of the same if they did not defeat them.

We have the luxury of wringing our hands and being upset about the children (always the children nowadays, never the adults who outnumber them 10:1), who are impacted by this war.

Instead of trying to bring them over or to create a cease fire which we know will just descend into war again, we should bite the bullet, get together with Assad and Russia and clean out both IS and the rebels. If we all got together we could do it in a month. Saving countless lives and misery at a cost of less civilian lives and endless suffering.

Notably we don't have the courage to do what needs to be done. We just bleat about what is happening and wring our hands. Hand wringing was never a UK trait, we were always a direct go ahead country who did what needed to be done and now we're a procrastinating nation who prefers endless self examination and second guessing to actual action and responsibility.