House of Commons says no to military intervention in Syria

[loganberrybunny]

Public

I think most people expected that the government would squeak through on this vote. Instead, they lost 285-272 -- a result that means it is probably now politically impossible for Britain to play any sort of military role in any US-led strike on the Assad regime. I'm a little bit surprised by the result, but there's no doubt in my mind that

Comments

[jordan179]

I think that the British were tired of being snubbed by Obama while being asked to help him every time he decided to fight. Obama's policies of praising America's enemies while scorning America's allies is yielding exactly the fruits one expect: our enemies despise us and our allies are tired of us. Hope and Change!

[silent_o]

It also gives the public an excuse to criticize us without getting their hands dirty. Something I normally associate with France.

[jordan179]

Normally, I despise American allies who leave us in the lurch like this, but look at it from Britain's point of view. They went with us into Afghanistan and Iraq, cooperated in the Libya attacks, and they've been treated like poor cousins by the Obama Administration for the past half-decade. If I were them I'd be getting pretty sick of this. We should regard the British as brothers: they're not only our Mother Country but also have been our most loyal ally for more than seven decades now. Eventually, Britain's patience was bound to run out.

I just hope that the next President can repair the Special Relationship. Allies like Britain don't come along every decade, or even century.

[riath]

We're still pissed off over the Iraq debacle. The US told us they had evidence of WMDs then and it turned out they didn't exist. Something which the UN inspectors kept saying all along. Now the US is saying they have evidence of Assad using chemical weapons but the UN inspectors haven't finished doing their jobs out there. Obama is champing at the bit to get in Syria militarily, even without UN backing. Last time the US did, it got us all in very deep trouble.

Not to mention, this current government is trying to strangle us all with austerity cuts across the board, but somehow there's money for getting involved in yet another war? Naturally the British public is going to be really hacked off about that and won't support it.

[jordan179]

Um ... you do know that in 2003 there were reports of Iraqi truck convoys moving west into Syria, right? And that one of the things they were rumored to have been carrying was Saddam's chemical weapons arsenal? In other words, the nerve gas Assad's been using on the Syrian rebels may well have been some of the WMD's that Saddam Hussein kept claiming to possess.

[xolo]

There's just absoolutely no American or British interests at stake here.

[jordan179]

Bringing down the Assad regime would be in our interests -- but not if it merely puts in an Al Qaeda front.

[mcgillianaire]

The right decision and a victory for parliamentary democracy. The recall was actually worth the expense (even if I don't quite agree with the amount each MP is allocated for it). A terrible defeat for Cameron but obviously nobody is going to resign over this. Fifty years ago, either the PM or the Foreign Secretary would've gone. Miliband may gain domestically, but the Americans will not forget and will make him pay for it, if he becomes PM. There's no doubt the special relationship, which was already diminishing under Obama, will sink even further. That said, Britain remains America's most important military ally, particularly in terms of intelligence cooperation. In the grand scheme, this is a minor blip in a long-standing partnership