britexpat76

That's why we fought in Vietnam and Korea?? Wise up

OleJanx

Umm, Brits fought in Korea, and quite well, too. Probably the reason we didn't get involved in Vietnam was that it wasn't entirely a United Nations operation,, but time is a great healer, and Tony Blair didn't seem overly concerned with the opinion of the United Nations.....

(Out of interest, see the Leage of Nations, for prototype incompetency - and Switzerland, those irritating goody-goody -two shoes, with their Geneva human rights wobblers, didn't actually get round to joining the United Nations until 2002 -bang up to date, then....)

britexpat76

Korea we didn't take the lead, as we have had to do in most offensives we followed the yanks into. Shame they are not as indebted as we were after WW2......

Boomhauer

West will likely take a more overt offensive role in toppling Assad.

Look for round 2 of ethnic cleasing of Christians when Assad sooner rather than later falls. Iraq was round 1.
Alawites will receive the brunt of the revenge killings, rape and ethnic cleansing.

scot47

Remember Iraq and WMD ? The ones that did not exist ?

britexpat76

I give it a week and the bombs will be dropping.......................

OleJanx

It should be remembered that "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." (Ambrose Bierce)

Meow

I've corrected that for you

It's a horrible, nasty mess now with so sign of an ending.

Beaverstate

So did a couple million Hippies.

Norm_uk

Well, since we lost the will to hold on to the Empire and actually swing into action in our favour we have to expect Uncle Sam to take over as a sort of bigger but poorer quality empire that won't even admit it's an Empire. The world would be better off with a British Empire than an American.

If we want 100% control over our foreign policy we'll need to get back that Empire...that's something few Britons will entertain, think about let alone plan.

As it stands we can't even sink Argentinian ships after they annex our lands without thousands of our own protesting so I can't see us doing anything else except following Uncle Sam right now. We simply don't have the will as a nation to do anything else any more.

Some people expect us to be strong and independent but not crap on others...it simply doesn't work that way for an Island nation that is dependant on trade. Right now we play a diplomatic balancing act that's all.

N.

Norm_uk

The Americans could have won in Vietnam if they really wanted to. Wars are won with will as much as anything else. The US generally won every important engagement with the V/C. US/Western military might stopped and defeated the Nazis and held Soviet expansion in check in Europe and many other places.

Then the Soviets came up with something new - they gave more money to psy-ops and anti-war movements in the West than they did to the Viet Cong...and it worked very well indeed. The legacy of that still remains. Most anti-war groups even now are left leaning and often anti-capitalist, falsly asserting Capitalism and war need each other. In reality free trade would create such an interconnected world that few states could afford to wage war without being economically isolated and starved.

Anyway that's what a number of Soviet defectors like Stanislav Lunev,
Oleg Kalugin, and Tretyakayov have said on record...perhaps these KGB generals and spies just had a bone to pick with Uncle Ivan over their failed pension schemes.

N.

Millhouse

Come on man, they were at it for almost 20 years. I don't think 'they could have won if they wanted to'.

Beakersful

I don't believe a conventional army can beat a guerilla army.

shiva

they can, take the malayan emergency for one.

Beakersful

The country gained independence legally. Can it be said to have won or lost therefore?