Acknowledging the flag in your signature, could you explain this in more detail?

As far as I'm concerned Hamas and the Israeli government are both a set of utter scum bags, killing innocent children for a political point, but I'm happy to await your view

I was waiting for you to raise the six-pointed star.

FYI, I have no axe to grind against people of Jewish faith, apart from the fact that religion is total bollox. Neither do I have anything against Israelis in general.

I do have a beef with zionists who insist that they have a god-given right to areas that have been deemed by numerous treaties to berlong to peoples of another race. This is compounded by state representatives who claim that bombing and shelling women and children is justified because those women and children have remained in their homes (in their own territory), even after the illegally invading state has tolod them to leave.

This bombing, shelling and ultimate murder of innocent women and children cannot be justified by any sane or reasonable person. Similarly, if British citizens are legally prevented by law from engaging in warfare, except on behalf of the British state, that sanction should be applied equally.

I think most people would agree with this if I wasn't for the fact that,

1. A large number of those fighting, or potentially going to fight in the future, are living amongst us all right now.

2. One of those sides fighting (and seemingly winning) has already stated its intention of marching on towards the western world and exterminating all those who do not fall into line with their religious 'views'.

Combine those 2 facts and you have enough reason why we shouldn't just sit back and 'leave them to it'.

I wonder if all those who supported attacking IRAQ
Overthrowing Gadaffi
Opposing Assad

are aware of their own hypocrisy and the fact that they are as responsible for creating Jihadi John as are the mad mullahs he follows.
?????

That's as stupid as saying Britain & France are responsible for creating the Nazi Party. There may be a link between the 2 as to why they happened but that doesn't mean they're responsible.

Overthrowing dictators and trying to bring in democracy is not a bad thing. This is just the next stage that needs to be overcome.

The main problem being that there was never much thought given to who would fill the inevitable power vacuum afterwards.

Blair still claims he was right to authorise the Iraq invasion, although he does concede that the post-war effort could've been better managed (so that's him off the fooking hook then?).

In many ways, Britain, France & the USA were responsible for the rise of the Nazi party. WW1 reparation conditions, trading conditions, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires can all lead us to modern conflicts, from the Balkans to the Middle East. Remember in 1918, we still had an empire, as did France. No doubt the US would have loved to have one and seems to have been hell-bent on acquiring one.

Learning from history is the best way of avoiding future mistakes. Unfortunately we don't seem to have learned an awful lot in the last 100 years

You can add as many noughts to that 100 as you like, the Human race is it's own worst enemy, once some idiot invented religion we were screwed.

Religion preys upon the weak willed and stupid ,of which there are many, the clever ones realise this and build their power bases from it

Why people feel the need to live their lives according to a fairy story is beyond me?

On that, we can agree, weak people seek direction from outside, strong people make their own journey and do what is "right" because it pretty damn obvious.

My fridge came with a book, I never used it to guide my life. Religion is for the weak.

Agree entirely. That doesn't mean Britain & France were wrong to oppose Germany in WW1.

In the same way as it isn't wrong to oppose and confront dictators and regimes.

As you say, the wrong part of it is in not dealing with and planning for the aftermath of the removal of the dictators and regimes.

The US wanted a nice quick and easy war in Iraq. Get rid of Saddam in a few months, another couple of years of setting up a parliament and support and they'd be gone. Whereas they should've planned for 20 years of military and civilian support after the "war" had ended.

Groups like IS and others in Libya etc are always going to appear after a dictatorship is removed. It appears IS is much more extreme than most, which is why it's important to defeat them. But they're the next step that has to be overcome to reach a relatively stable, relatively democratic way of life for these countries. And we should be there to support them.

and what if they don't want democracy??

Western imposition of standards, LEAVE THEM TO IT.

Okay, so you keep shouting 'leave them to it' - When do you suggest we actually get involved (if ever?).

When ISIS have steam-rollered Syria??....Or claimed Iraq fully as their own??.... Wiped Turkey away??....Increased the number of terrorist incidents in the UK?

I fully agree that if this was a simple Civil War between two historic enemies, fighting to gain control of an established patch of land, then we leave them to it - However, we have one side who have stated an intention of a long term strategy of establishing an Islamic Empire, which would take in areas with zero desire to become 'Islamic' (including ourselves).

Simple strategy for the West is to support Assad - Yes, it would be ironic and a tad embarrassing, considering we initially opposed him, but he is a Stalin figure, in that he is the lesser of the two evils - Wipe ISIS out, then attempt somehow to work with Assad. It might seem unlikely, but I never ever thought I'd ever see Adams and McGuiness playing polite politics in Northern Ireland, so we have to be positive that somewhere in the future some sort of calm can be restored to the World.... I just can't envisage ISIS ever being part of such a settlement, as its obvious we are dealing with something far beyond human with these particular extremists.

We should never get involved, not our issue, not our concern. We live on a island, unless they start taking sailing lessons. ignore them. ISIS are a wasp, leave them alone and they'll sting someone else.

So we should have waited for Hitler to have come sailing up the Thames before we started fighting back??

had we not gotten involved, Hitler would have left the UK alone. We wasted millions of lives fighting an ideal.