The decision to enter a war or to extend the remit of a conflict is never an easy one. For hundred of years philosophers and theologians have grappled with the ethical and moral difficulties of war. Saint Augustine argued that some wars are necessary to overcome evil. This perspective applies today to the current crisis in Syria. How best do we achieve peace and defeat evil, in a complicated war, without an end in sight?
This week parliament was not debating whether to enter a new conflict or whether the current conflict was just. Those question have already been answered. The debate on Wednesday was more practical: it was about whether Britain would meet the call of its allies and become a full member of the coalition by striking Daesh across its whole territory.
After a 10-hour debate in the House of Commons chamber, parliament voted in favour of extending airstrikes against Daesh in Syria. The motion was carried 397 to 232, and within hours the secretary of state for defence, Michael Fallon, confirmed RAF Tornado jets have been striking targets in Syria. The decision to extend the war would not have been taken lightly by our parliament; the robustness of the debate that preceded the vote proved that.
At the closing stages of the debate Hilary Benn’s statement was one of the best speeches I have ever heard given from the dispatch box. He outlined the military, humanitarian and moral case for extending strikes. The Labour party is an internationalist party and we have a moral duty to help the Syrian people, by intervening now we will speed up the defeat of the barbaric Daesh and alleviate further suffering. Benn captivated the house, drawing on the rhetorical spirit of his father, and highlighting that Britain could not stand on the sidelines. As Labour stood up against fascism before, we must fight against the new evil that is Daesh.
Within our own party, there are differing opinions over Syrian airstrikes. The decision has weighed heavily on Labour MPs. The shadow of Iraq is ever-present in the background. However, whichever way our MPs voted their decision must be respected. Our MPs are representatives not delegates, and they have the mandate to exercise their judgement on behalf of their constituents. The Labour party is a broad church, with a plurality of views.
The debate over Syria has exposed weaknesses and lack of leadership within the Labour party – we managed to turn a debate about the lives of the Syrian people into a drama about the internal workings of the Labour party.
Parliament has now spoken, and have extended airstrikes, with a new resolve to destroy the evil that is Daesh. Yes, there is a risk of unintended consequences; we are not sure how long we will be involved in Syria for, although we have made it clear that Britain will not turn its back on its duty to protect it citizens from evil. The Labour party must now make it clear to the people of Britain that, despite the events of the last few days, we will always hold the security and defence of the realm as our number one priority.
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Martin Edobor is chair of the Young Fabians. He tweets @martinedobor
May I recommend the following reading:
* Emergent Information Technologies and Enabling Policies for Counter-Terrorism
by Dr. Robert Pop, a former Deputy Director at DARPA
* The Counter Terrorism Puzzle
by Boaz Ganor, founder of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism
* Seeing the Invisible National Security Intelligence in an Uncertain Age
by Thomas Quiggin, a Senior Researcher at the Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies at Carleton University
The Hilary Benn speech was a triumph of style over substance! It omitted to address many of the issues that had arisen during the debate, or the major flaws that had been exposed (mainly by senior Conservative and SNP members) in the government and Labour supporters case. It has been compared to the false prospectus advanced by Tony Blair, in 2003, that was equally well received, at the time.
This was explored last night, on This Week with Andrew Neil, where Michael Portillo made the very same points: that rhetorical exposition on fascism, the 1930s and 1940s, international and european solidarity etc have a powerful emotional appeal but can be used to mask the inherent logical fallacies in the speech. Alan Johnson could not answer, or chose not to do so, because he perhaps realised that this was true?
Undoubtedly it was a powerful and stirring speech by Hilary Benn but the appeal was essentially emotional and shallow, rather than on an intellectual or logical basis. The fact that it worked and may have even swayed the odd waverer, is both fascinating and slightly worrying, for those parliamentarians who ever bother to consider such matters. Unfortunately, there are too many historic examples of well received speeches containing poor policy or strategy.
My complaints mainly concern: the lack of strategy, poor deployment of expensive resources, the militarily insignificant results predicted as a result of this intervention and particularly the confusion regarding the optimum means to achieve the desired end game. This is all too familiar from the New Labour days, with many of the dinosaurs and their acolytes apparently incapable of either learning from their past mistakes or evolving into a more advanced species of parliamentarian.
A brilliant speech which firmly reconfirmed many of us -depressed in recent months- that this is a party worth staying in and fighting for. A speech which stopped some of us leaving the party and reconnected with our internationalism , human decency and obligation to others in the face of brutal regimes -rather than the cruel indifference , SWP-like juvenile dogma and isolationism which has emerged over the last two or three years and has become associated with the emergent leftists around Miliband , Corbyn and Livingstone.
Well Martin, if people like you would accept the Corbyn as leader and stop making a drama out of internal workings then we could move forward as a united, pluralsic, broad church. We spent 2010 – 2015 with people seeking to undermine Ed and saying we had, or rather the unions had, elected the wrong Miliband. It seems some want to spend 2010 – 2015 arguing we chose the wrong person from the 5 presented to us instead of focusing on a Government marked by cynicism, inhumanity, lack of pity and moral self deception. We prefer civil war to fighting the real enemy.
I hope, too, you define ‘security’ broadly so that it includes our social security as well as our physical solidarity. We should have ‘guns and butter’ not just guns. We should also value our civil liberties and ensure our security does not undermine them. People are secure in prisons but do not have much personal liberty.
A final point, rhetorical statements about the need to ‘hold security and defence of the realm as our number one priority’ offer no guidance on what our ethical behaviour as a country should be. It is the type of statement every regime in the world makes – Saudi princes, Iranian imans, Burmese generals, the CC of the CPC, as well as liberal democracies.