Jonny_Johnson - Banned for sending threatening messages to users.

Just in my opinion, the above post is the most intelligent and accurate that I have ever read on HOL, bar none. I worked in and for Middle Eastern companies for c 30 years, and Bilbo's comments on Saddam and Gaddafi are pretty much spot on. And can be extended to Mubarak in Egypt.

I usually confine my comments to "wally alert" or similar. Not from arrogance, just where I smell a wally. So you don't need to post it here...

But here I feel very strongly about not starting wars that cannot be finished. The IS caliphate is a product of Bush, Blair and similar parties' ill advised military action - but IS now needs to be obliterated. If that means supporting Assad for the time being, that is a price that we should be prepared to pay. It really is a generational struggle. I do not want my children (all 9 of them!) and grandchildren to live in an Islamic Republic/Caliphate of Europe. Some of the Corbynistas and HOL lefties may not see it this way - but anyone with cojones hopefully will.

Ye gods. How about an organised terrorist group who are committed to becoming a government that rules in the traditional Islamist sense and will do anything to achieve their goal? These people are threatening the values of free speech, freedom of thought, peace and democracy. Do none of these matter to you? Do you not think they are worth defending?

Your pacifist views are baffling and scary. We'll have all the usual lefties coming out the woodwork saying we "shouldn't jump to conclusions" and "wait for the dust to settle".

f*** that. Hit them with everything we have.

From those on the left with pie in the sky ideas about allowing extremist clerics to speak and therefore warp minds in our country, to others on the right who supported equally naive failed attempts to democratise the middle east, we've never really had a sensible way of dealing with this issue.

We don't 'get' that these cultures aren't like our own. Overthrowing Saddam and Gadaffi, and weakening Assad's regime through various channels has been a complete f***ing disaster. They aren't countries that can be controlled by rosy cheeked pleasant PMs. These dictators aren't the deranged figures they are painted to be, they behave this way as its the only way to rule there. With them in place at least these struggles were sometimes contained to regions and we also had a 'go to' to bargain with or put sanctions on when needs be. Now there is no such go to.

Where there are power vacuums, you are rewarded for being the most vicious c***s going and thats what we see now, then others begin to adopt this mindset through fear or a lust for power. This isn't a "aren't we terrible to invade this or that country" comment, that's already happened so the morality one way or the other is an irrelevance to this matter. It's an observation that we have acted against our own interests and safety in terms of foreign policy.

Where we are now our best bet would be to, alongside other countries, ramp things up in Syria against ISIS to extinguish the threat as much as humanly possible but not insist that Assad goes. He's the only show in town. I don't care who's in power as long as they can try to keep a lid on these b******s. We won't benefit by making the same mistake again.

At home, while we definitely need to ensure that we don't adopt a 'all muslims are the enemy' mindset or go overboard in placing restrictions on the entire population, we would be very wise to keep refugee restrictions in place and it's understandable if France and others do the same. It's just too risky to do otherwise and is placing idealism over the safety of the population.