Kind of hard
To negotiate a multi track peace process when you've just had your head put in your own lap.
With apologies to 'kinda hard to win their hearts and minds when you're floating face down in the Gulf on Tonkin'
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The Ann Coulter Fan Club Babylon is burning at, Sun 23 Nov 2014, 16:25,
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I'm not really suggesting this idea of peace building, diplomacy, and conflict management. Its what states such as the US and UK are already doing. Its similar to what they tried to do in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s.
Military force, of which they're engaged, is part of this conflict management - the goal of destroying ISIS is another part of it.
The discourse in the media and amongst the public is what I object to. Its the idea that you only have to kill people in order to solve a problem. Its a discourse that imagines that the people who constitute ISIS were born as Jihadists, and so are indistinguishable from us and very much like Klingons (a race or a virus that only needs to be wiped out in order for everything to be peaceful).
(, Sun 23 Nov 2014, 17:28, Share, Reply)
Its clear that the UK government is making diplomatic, humanitarian, as well as military actions in the area
www.gov.uk/government/news/isil-uk-government-response
Diplomacy and humanitarian efforts during wars and conflicts is something states always do. In WW2, the UK didn't just go out and shoot nazis. The UK worked with the US, USSR, French resistance, German defectors, etc etc. They dropped propaganda from the sky, organised humanitarian aid, destroyed Nazi monuments after the war, worked alongside the US in order to pump economic aid into Germany and the rest of Western Europe, etc etc.
The management of conflict in Europe did not begin and end with just killing Nazis. Clausewitz pointed out that war is not primarily about killing, but about politics.
(, Sun 23 Nov 2014, 17:48, Share, Reply)