After an horrendous week for Labour, Jeremy Corbyn has the opportunity today to rescue it, or finally hit the final nail in its coffin as a serious political party. David Cameron is coming to the House of Commons to allegedly making a case for Britain joining the bombing of Syria. The PM has already had his minor war, the toppling of Gaddafi and the subsequent ISIS-led basket case Libya has since become, but here’s his chance for a major one. Blair visited upon us the Iraq mess and Afghanistan, now we have Syria.
Iraq should surely play on the minds of every single person in this land who has a view on using military power in the middle east. God knows it plays on mine. I still recall, back in 2003, when the politicians of all parties and all the popular newspapers were cheerleading the overthrow of Saddam. Those of us who opposed the invasion – and it wasn’t just the ‘Stop The War” pacifists who stood against it – felt like we were standing in the way of a huge populist juggernaut. If you disagreed, the red tops regarded you as a traitor for not supporting “our boys”. I had no idea what might happen after the invasion, which made me so worried, and it turns out neither did the politicians. And once the war was over, the chaos spread across the whole country and the wider area.
David Cameron has a lot of explaining to do, especially for those of us who thought Sunni and Shia were a husband and wife pop duo from the 1960s. The idea of bombing barbaric psychopaths into a pulp appeals to the side of us that seeks revenge and retribution for the atrocities in Paris, not to mention Tunisia, Egypt and everywhere else the terrorists cause terror. But it surely has to be more than that. We are dealing with the hydra, here. Cut off their heads and they grow new heads. And it only takes one terrorist to be successful and we suffer. Indeed, Private Eye this week suggests, mischievously, that the strikes against ISIS will be over Belgium where so many of the terrorists have come.
I’m looking forward to Cameron’s plan and, if he has one, Corbyn’s alternative. How will the west cut off the financial supply lines to ISIS and indeed their oil? How will we avoid mass civilian casualties? Will it stop the mass exodus of desperate Syrians? What is the end game? Can the PM guarantee there will never be boots on the ground? (I don’t think he can.)
It will not be enough to hear Cameron saying “we must bomb”, only to have Corbyn saying “no”. I have absolutely no idea, although I am instinctively drawn to oppose bombings. But then again, I don’t see how you can negotiate with the comrades of Mohammed Emwazi. Is there are centre ground, a middle way, safe havens across Syria, protected by the UN, with military protection if possible? One way or another, we will soon find out and I suspect our lives will be even less safe if parliament once again leads us into war.
