Osama Bin Laden DEAD- Killed By U.S. Forces

[Limehouse]

Tell me someone - how big a demonstration does it take to overthrow Government? Especially in western democracies where Government's are voted into power - at what point do you think a protest should be big enough for a Government to resign immediately? What if the BNP got a rally together that had a million people - should the Government resign - or is it only LIBERAL protests we are discussing?

Secondly Bahrain's rulers may survive because you can only fight so many wars at once - Afghanistan and Libya are stretching the West/NATO and the USA is wary/hand's off.

Finally Gadaffi may survive because Russia and China will not grant the power to intervene, because they both fear the precedent that would be set by popular uprisings against essentially totalitarian regimes.

Phil

A very good question Phil

I think it depends on the integrity of the government in question and the reason for the peopl marching. When I protested back in March - I did not do so to overthrow the government as such - but to protest at cuts to services that would harm many innocent people.

If the BNP marched - I would be part of a counter-march (as I was when the English Defence League came to Peterborough in December and tried to spread their poison among our peaceful and very multi-cultural population). I guess that would result in a clash between ideologies rather than direct pressure on a government to resign.

[Phil H]

...I think we should not get involved in the situation.Its not our business-so hands off.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee....

No man is an island...

Wisdom over centuries would suggest that non-intervention is not always a good thing. Sometimes security, wider interests or even national self-interest can dictate that intervention is very sensible.

Had the western powers (France and britain) intervened earlier in Hitler's career - Rhineland, Czechoslovakia, the extent of the later war might have been averted.

Similarly - difficult though it would have been diplomatically - invading Iraq after freeing Kuwait in the early 90s might have been preferable to how things have turned out.

Phil

Phil

[Phil H]

With respect, I don't think either example you cite is really related to mass protest of the sort I had in mind - popular demonstrations etc of the sort we saw in Cairo and Tunis.

The "Profumo Affair" was largely Parliamentary and focused on whether the War Minister had misled (lied to) the House of Commons - always a resigning matter if proven.

MacMillan's government was the fag end of a 13 year Conservative spell in office, and the Government itself did NOT fall - MacMillan was succeeded by Alex Douglas Hume for a year or so. I agree that the Profumo affair damaged a weakend MacMillan but he actually resigned because he thought he had terminal cancer - he actually lived to be around 90!

As for Charles I, his execution was the "end" (it actually fizzled on for a while) of a Civil War that began some years earlier - more like Libya than Tunisia or Egypt in the context this point arose.

Phil

[Natalie Severn]

Tell me someone - how big a demonstration does it take to overthrow Government? Especially in western democracies where Government's are voted into power - at what point do you think a protest should be big enough for a Government to resign immediately? What if the BNP got a rally together that had a million people - should the Government resign - or is it only LIBERAL protests we are discussing?

Secondly Bahrain's rulers may survive because you can only fight so many wars at once - Afghanistan and Libya are stretching the West/NATO and the USA is wary/hand's off.

Finally Gadaffi may survive because Russia and China will not grant the power to intervene, because they both fear the precedent that would be set by popular uprisings against essentially totalitarian regimes.

Phil

It didn't exactly overthrow 'government' but when Profumo as Minister of War was discovered to have had an affair with Christine Keeler who also was having an affair with a Russian spy,a lot of heads rolled including the Prime Minister's.
Also when King Charles fell out with parliament his head rolled quite literally!

[Fleetwood Mac]

Great Britain made huge contributions to the war, and we would have been nowhere without their intelligence gathering forces. And we would have been nowhere without the money and the manufacturing of arms by the US. Of course, England never had a chance to arm itself properly, still being in a depression when war was declared. And the US learned everything it knows today from British intelligence services.

Of course, no force entered the war to prevent the genocide they knew was taking place, so points off for that. And in a contest of military forces, I wold choose the Diggers any day. Not for intelligence or might, but for consistently having the best intentioned force in the world. They show up for for all of the unglamorous work, the rescues, the disaster relief.

So in a contest between Great Britain and the US for contributions to WWII, all I can say (in the vernacular) is "Girls.. girls, you're both pretty"

Sun Tzu: the art of war is the love of peace and prosperity; wars should be fought only as a last resort or when victory is guaranteed; the spoils should be gained through cunning, diplomacy etc.

In my opinion of recent history, England and the United States have understood this concept more than any other beligerent nation out there.

Firepower alone will never be enough to win a war without huge costs for both victor and defeated. Access to finance and a strong intelligence service are important components of the bigger picture.

[Natalie Severn]

What would be your idea of not letting them get away with it Natalie?

Well sadly Jason I think we should not get involved in the situation.Its not our business-so hands off..

[Phil H]

Tell me someone - how big a demonstration does it take to overthrow Government? Especially in western democracies where Government's are voted into power - at what point do you think a protest should be big enough for a Government to resign immediately? What if the BNP got a rally together that had a million people - should the Government resign - or is it only LIBERAL protests we are discussing?

Secondly Bahrain's rulers may survive because you can only fight so many wars at once - Afghanistan and Libya are stretching the West/NATO and the USA is wary/hand's off.

Finally Gadaffi may survive because Russia and China will not grant the power to intervene, because they both fear the precedent that would be set by popular uprisings against essentially totalitarian regimes.

Phil

[Limehouse]

Just for jolly, what do people here think the reaction of governments in our wonderful Western democracies would be to similar mass protests?

Good question Stephen. I was on the march in London on 26 March. The main body of the march numbered about half a million - although the official figure was two hundred thousand. That is more people than turned out for the recent Royal Wedding.

We were received well by the police on the beat. As far as I know - no current members of the government turned out to oppose us. There was a break-away group of about one hundred people who threw ONE pot of paint at Top Shop and broke a few windows of a closed bank. They stole the show as far as news and publicity goes but compared with the energetic student protests a few weeks before - it was tame.

In years gone by - protests were dealt with more severely - for example the miners' strike - the Grundig affair and the printers' dispute.

[Stephen Thomas]

Just for jolly, what do people here think the reaction of governments in our wonderful Western democracies would be to similar mass protests?

[jason_c]

Thanks Bob and Phil.
I don't like the fact that a Saudi supported country such as Bahrain where they are also killing their own people and /or calling in the Saudi's to assist in brutal crackdowns are getting away with it by being largely ignored.Same issue-its about preveninhgt their kingdom becoming a democracy.Why,exactly, are they getting away with murdering their own people? Very selective this support for interpreting people's rights to overthrow brutal dictatorships as far as I can see.One rule for the dictatorship in Libya ,quite another for the one in Bahrain.
Norma

What would be your idea of not letting them get away with it Natalie?

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks Bob and Phil.
I don't like the fact that a Saudi supported country such as Bahrain where they are also killing their own people and /or calling in the Saudi's to assist in brutal crackdowns are getting away with it by being largely ignored.Same issue-its about preveninhgt their kingdom becoming a democracy.Why,exactly, are they getting away with murdering their own people? Very selective this support for interpreting people's rights to overthrow brutal dictatorships as far as I can see.One rule for the dictatorship in Libya ,quite another for the one in Bahrain.
Norma

[Phil H]

Sorry to butt in belatedly

I'm fascinated by some of the views expressed in this thread.

There were indeed two separate wars going on from 1941-45. They involved in part the same countries and overlapped to a degree. But if Hitler had not declared war on the USA after Pearl Harbor it has often been asserted that FDR would have had great difficulty in declaring war on Germany. Whatever his own convictions, US public opinion wanted revenge against Japan. (Hitler's decision has been depicted as one of his most irresponsible - there was no need for him to have gone to war with America.)

Churchill, Brooke and other high-ranking British decision makers recognised the American preference/reflex to give priority to the Pacific. Their first task and the initial allied confernces was to convince FDR, Marshall and others of the need to sort out the Europen war first - but it was no foregone conclusion.

I'm also amused to see wars in the past dismissed as simply symptomatic of an agressive mentality that we have no out-grown.

I think any student of history will recognise that few wars are actually based on nothing more than aggression. There are, of course examples - Caesar's conquest of Gaul was an example, done largely for his own aggrandisement.

But in later centuries, I think most wars can be defined as extending borders to natural limits (part of the process of forming sustainable nation-states); and/or solving a perceived problem.

Many of the wars that led to the creation of the British Empire in the C18th and C19th were to protect trade interests, get rid of aggressive neighbours, deal with problems like piracy (did not the US indeed intervene on the "Barbary Coast" of N Africa in the early C19tn for such a reason). One of the differences between then and now is that we lack the courage or will to carry through our actions by occupation and rule, which would have been the C19th response. Our forebears would have had little problem with "regime change" it seems to me and did it a lot. Quite right when, then and now, the only effective principle of international relations has to be national self interest.

The military action by NATO viz a viz Libya is interesting in that (at least as I saw it here in the UK) was the at the outset, after peaceful change in other Mahgreb countries, public opinion was all for overthrowing Gaddafi. Indeed public opinion seemed to be ahead of the politicians and there were questions about why the Un was not responding and acting fast enough. The Security Council resolution was received with delight. Then when it was not a quick wham bam - Gaddafi falls, reported opinion changed to why military action was being taken at all, etc etc. Now we have moves to increase the level and extent of engagement.

So much depends on reporatge and the whipping up of popular support for, or opposition to action by the media. Once action has been take, or not, the media then switch their coverage to the other side. So wars they fostered they then report in a negative way.

Phil

[Bob Hinton]

Accuracy

A lot of people, perhaps unfamiliar with the world of Intelligence gathering have this idea that spies go out to steal the plans and after many adventures make their way back to the arms of some gorgeous secretary at MI6.

It really doesn’t happen like that. If you have a definite target in mind such as the secrets of the V1, then of course you can set your sights on that.

The Polish underground very bravely managed to recover an almost intact V1 during the war and had it shipped to England. That together with the extraordinary courage of an amateur spy, Michael Hollard, gave the British the low down on the V1 and undoubtedly saved thousands of lives.

However in the main you don’t have that, you just have agents collecting bits and pieces of information – most of which is completely useless. Imagine if you will a ten thousand piece jigsaw, you have no illustration to tell you what the finished picture is, you don’t even know if all the pieces fit the same picture. Now suppose that some of the pieces were made of steel. What Enigma and Bletchley Park did was enable us to dangle a magnet over the pile of pieces at the end of a fishing rod and grab up a few. This was very, very useful, but it never gave us the whole picture, simply because both sender and intended recipients didn’t know the whole picture.

Intelligence gathering is a long, hard boring process that very rarely yields up treasure, and even when it does is often overlooked. The secret of a good intelligence operation is recognising when certain disparate pieces actually belong to the same puzzle.

One of the KGB instructors used to have a teaching aid which he called the ashtray. He used to break a glass ashtray in front of the class and distribute the pieces. Now looking at the pieces it was not possible to say where they came from. In fact only when you had all the pieces and reassembled them could you say with absolute certainty that they formed an ashtray.

However there was a ‘tipping point’. This was when, even if you didn’t have all the pieces, you could say with a degree of certainty what the object was. The most successful intelligence officers could make this assertion with the fewest number of pieces.

[Red Zeppelin]

Thanks Red Zeppelin.I was reading all the comments about what caused the killer blow and didn't see a reference to Stalingrad which was a crucial turning point.But yes,Kursk was of vital importance too.

Yes they both were of huge importance.

I like to believe we won the war ..... [and Vera Lynn]!.... but such a jingoistic perspective doesn't take into account others who made a vital contribution and perished fighting Hitler and his henchmen.

Yes exactly. Combined team effort. I just think the Bletchley Park role is way overstated. It had little impact on the eastern front and cripes they didn't exactly give everyone warning that the Germans were going to go on a massive counter offensive through the Ardennes in the Battle of The Bulge. Where was Bletchley Park there?

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks Red Zeppelin.I was reading all the comments about what caused the killer blow and didn't see a reference to Stalingrad which was a crucial turning point.But yes,Kursk was of vital importance too.
I like to believe we won the war ..... [and Vera Lynn]!.... but such a jingoistic perspective doesn't take into account others who made a vital contribution and perished fighting Hitler and his henchmen.