#NotInMyName

So while I should be putting myself to bed absolutely ecstatic that I've had one of the best days in a very long time, defending our title as Liverpool's best university women's rugby team and having a curry night with some of my best friends, I find myself writing this blog.

Tonight I go to bed more worried for the future of the world than I was when I woke up this morning. In the same week that we saw our government vote to cut the bursary for NHS funded courses, the politicians of our country have voted to kill innocent civilians, they have voted to destroy the homes of families and they have voted to encourage people towards radicalisation.

Well they didn't... But they might as well have.

I am just another small fish in a big pond with an opinion, which a lot of the time means nothing. But yes, I disagree with the air strikes. Now I'm not purposefully going all - "I do a degree in politics so I know what I'm talking about and you know nothing." Because it's not entirely true, but I believe that with my education in politics thus far and mere observation of previous international relations, I am somewhat qualified to have an educated opinion on this subject that isn't simply sharing a Bush/Gandhi/Martin Luther King Jr quote on facebook to illustrate the opinion.

So of course, many of you will disagree with me. But if you're sharing mirror articles, George Bush quotes and Britain First-esque posts, then this is what I say to you - sign up for the army. Air strikes will not be enough and in time they will need ground troops, some of them to torture innocent Syrian men, women and children as we have seen before in Abu Ghraib. So please, sign yourselves up.

Some of you may disagree with me with completely valid reasons and that's ok, that's your prerogative. We will each have different ideologies, different thoughts and different minds. We are inherently individual so anyone who has actually attempted to make an educated point on why we should bomb ISIS strongholds in Syria, which many argue is only logically following on from the current troubles in Iraq and Afghanistan (which I don't agree with either) - thank you for adding intelligence to this debate rather than mindless racism. I still don't agree with you and you won't agree with me - but like I said, we wont, that is what democracy is for.

In 2015 I voted for the Green Party, a party I knew from the outset would not advocate war and the destruction of our planet. However the UK voted in a Conservative party majority, currently led by a man who thinks that killing people will educate the people that kill people that killing people is wrong - find this confusing? I think so too.

But yes, as "democracy" will fail us time and time again, our unrepresentative, elitist, disproportionate House of Commons has voted for the air strikes. I'm not going to go into the deeply ingrained unfairness of our democracy because I can't be arsed - read a book.

A quote I saw from someone who reckons they're an academic in International Relations on Facebook - "We need to take our country back!" What is our country? We're an island. We are part of something much bigger that the United Kingdom, United Nations or the European Union - it's the world. Of which we have only one (get where I'm coming from? If not what I'm trying to say is this - let's not screw it up). The world is currently a place where I can't see myself ever wanting to bring a child into, I'd see myself as selfish for having to leave the Earth before a person that I had brought into the destruction, pain and suffering of the world has to endure it.

We can jump into bed with America, we can legitimise crusades in the name of democratic peace, we can bomb ISIS strongholds and we can get rid of terrorism by fighting fire with fire, right?

Wrong.

Muslims who believe their culture has been oppressed by the intrusive West will only feel more marginalised - fueling more movements to extremism. The exact thing we should be educating against.

And hello? A small percentage (of the already small percentage worldwide) are already in this country, so bombing Syria isn't already going to antagonise them? Of course it is. We can grab our giant red white and blue balls and bomb ISIS strongholds, but this is a global movement - bombing their strongholds will only awaken extremists around the world, we don't know who they are, where they are or where they can or will strike next. Paris being a prime example.

"CLOSE THE UK BORDER PETITION." Sweet. So we're going to force people out of their countries and leave them on the border?

Syrians who have fled from the exact people we are waging war against are seeing the superpowers of the world bombing their homes and in turn, the world doing next to nothing to give them a place of refuge. It's a vicious circle and it doesn't matter who is causing it, it matters that these are lives and the people are terrified. The only luck we have over these refugees is the country that we have been born into, it could just as easily be you.

But don't even get me pissing started on the arms trade or the situation regarding oil in the middle East - we are giving these people their weapons so that our country's economy doesn't suffer. I've given up on hope that the government may one day put people before profit in all aspects from job losses to providing people they intend to fight with, with weapons. And oil? If I start, I won't stop talking about it.

All we really need to do is look at what happened with Iraq, history is repeating itself. And remember this - the people who are at the most risk of  being killed by terrorists are living in these Eastern countries. In America, you are 187 times more likely to starve to death than be killed by terrorism, which only says to me that the world's priorities need seriously shifting. But again, following an attack on white people from the West (Paris) we are all prepared to go to war. Does this sound similar to the events following 9/11? No? Well I think so and look how that has 'ended'. Many of you who are making a case for these air strikes are the same people that want Tony Blair tried as a war criminal. Cross reference and make one opinion.

Now I don't have the answers on how to solve any of this, many of you will ask me "well, if not air strikes, then what?" My simple answer is - I have no idea. The more I learn about politics, the less I want to be involved with it. I don't understand violence because I can safely say that there is nothing on this Earth that I care about enough that would make me want to bomb for it. So no David Cameron, I am not a "terrorist sympathiser" for not wanting to kill another human being, but I'll tell you what I'm not - a monster. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter - so while we're bombing Syria and reciprocating to them what they have done to the West, what jargon do you think they're branding us with? Turning more of the East against the West. We are NOT divided, we are a human race, we are one. Killing is killing and now we're just as monstrous as the perpetrators.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-terrorism-statistics-every-american-needs-to-hear/5382818