[quote=@Iluvatar]
Fortunately, our government can also influence yours, to some extent. I believe your government decided not to bombard Syria because of the British Parliament's decision not to assist (or perhaps it was just one of the reasons, I dunno).
[/quote]

Eh, I think the biggest reason (though I am sure there are many) is that the Bush years have left the United States with an aversion to intervention in the middle east, so politicians are less comfortable getting themselves associated with pro-war sentiments. Any time there was a similar situation, like Libya or Mali, people talked about them with the assumption that they would just be another Iraq. Maybe there is some other way we can get fooled into supporting an unnecessary war in the future, but Syria was just way too similar to Iraq for it to sell. Most of the the politicians involved are looking out for their careers.

...and there was Russia. I would suspect public opinion and Russia played the largest roles, with British unwillingness being a tertiary deterrent that helped add up to the decision. 

[quote=@Jig]
<Snipped quote by Dead Girl>

No, from the Bullingdon Club.

It's a subject of much controversy, for those of you who don't know, in the UK that George Osborne, Boris Johnson, David Cameron, three of our biggest names in contemporary politics, all attended the same male-exclusive club at (I think-) Oxford University, having all attended the same public* schools.

* by public schools, we British don't mean public schools at all: they're what we call our ultra-fancy, typically boarding schools that you have to pay ultra-big bucks to attend.
[/quote]

Heh, that sounds a lot like the controversy that came up in 2004 about both Bush and Kerry belonging to the Skull and Bones society when there were at Yale. Though, that they produced both Bush and Kerry seems to suggest that they are not particularly impressive despite their name...