We’ve heard a lot about the Commons debate on the expansion of UK air strikes into Syria. There were also some very good speeches on the subject in the House of Lords, during a discussion held at the same time as the Commons’ one, plus good peers’ input elsewhere.
You can browse the Peers’ debate here both in video and text form.
I just want to highlight two contributions from our peers.
The first comes from Meral Hussein Ece via a comment on one of LDV’s posts this week:
I along with many of my colleagues in the Lib Dem Group in House of Lords are opposed to the UK air strikes in Syria. I have spoken against this in numerous internal group meetings, but there are always so called ‘experts’ who brush aside our concerns. They cite how we must show ‘solidarity’ with our French allies, & ‘do our bit’ a few hundred more UK bombs on a ravaged Syria, will not in my view make any difference to ISIS, who don’t operate in a traditional method with static command centres. You can’t defeat an ideology with bombs. These so called 70k troops waiting to join forces with us is a fallacy, they’re disparate groups, fighting Assad, dispersed across Syria. Raqqa has thousands of civilians, which will almost certainly become victims or flee. Cameron is all too willing to attack Syria, creating more refugees, but not prepared to take a single Syrian refugee as a result. It’s clear this is more for symbolic reasons, to be seen to be ‘doing something’ In my view it’s a big mistake and will create more radicalisation, more terrorist s to their cause, & kill more civilians. Very little emphasis on cutting off funding, oil income, and arms to ISIS. I don’t believe the case has been made.
Secondly, even though I was and still am opposed to the expansion of air strikes in Syria, I was much impressed by Paddy’s speech in the Lords as follows:
I hope that today marks a watershed not just for the people of Syria but in our battle to remove the scourge and terror of ISIL and in the foreign policy of Her Majesty’s Government. In the last 10 years, since shock and awe, we have been obsessed by high explosives as our singular instrument of foreign policy. We have forgotten again and again and again the old dictum of Clausewitz that war is an extension of diplomacy by other means. So in Afghanistan we relied on high explosives: we did not build the relationships with the neighbours that we should have built, we did not build that diplomatic context, and we lost. In Iraq, we did the same. And we lost. In Libya, when it came to constructing the peace, we did the same. And we lost. And for the last three years we have been doing exactly the same. And we were losing. Maybe we will now give ourselves a chance to turn that around and make success.
The more alert Members of your Lordships’ House will recall that I have made the point over the last three years, in this place and in newspaper articles, that bombing alone would not succeed and that we ignored the diplomatic context—there was none. I remember saying, time and again, that to make the removal of Assad a cardinal principle of our policy when we did not have the means to make it happen was utter folly. If you will the ends, you must will the means, and we had none, since he was supported by Russia and Iran. I made the point, time and again, that this was not about the West but about the growing Sunni-Shia conflict, and we had to try and get in and unite those two groups; that we needed to create a proper coalition; that we needed to involve the Russians—I remember the rather derisory comments when I first made that proposition.
Now, we have that. At last, in Vienna, we have a proposition for a widening coalition between Sunni and Shia with the involvement of the Russians. To back that, we have a UN Security Council resolution, which, by the way, does not just legitimise action but lays a duty upon us to take action. That is what the words say. So all the ingredients that I sought to make some sense of military action are now either in place or in progress. How could I not back that?
However, I want to make two points very clear. The first is that British bombing alone will not defeat ISIL. It might add something—a rather small amount, I think—to the weight of bombs that are falling, but it is the coalition being constructed in Vienna today that will first of all defeat ISIL and then move on to create, I hope, some kind of stable peace in Syria. By the way, those who want to get rid of Assad need to recognise that it is only in the context of that coalition that Assad will now be removed. So of course one would want to support that. With a coalition that comes up with a military strategy first—as in Dayton, when we had to bomb the war to an end to beat the Serbs—and then a strategy to create some kind of stability in Syria, how could it be the case that Britain would not play a part in that? So, yes, I support the Government.
Secondly, and finally, if you launch war, you launch unpredictability. The best that we are deciding on today is that, on the balance of probabilities, this is the best opportunity that we will have. There are no certainties. If we are successful in removing ISIL and creating some context of stability in Syria, it will be messy, conflict-ridden and inelegant. The peace that we may be able to create will not look very nice. In fact, probably the only thing to be said for that peace is that it will be better than the war that it ended.
I remember so well when the citizens of Sarajevo had to suffer four years of conflict. The Dayton peace agreement left a mess, but there was not one of them who did not say that that mess was better than the war that preceded it.
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
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10 Comments
Nice to see some opposition to bombing. I see the Daily Mail of all people acknowledge that Corbyn is doing what an opposition should and with integrity. A terrible missed opportunity by Farron to stand should to shoulder.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3346949/PETER-OBORNE-one-winner-Syria-vote-wasn-t-Dave-Hilary-Benn.html
Meral Hussein Ece speaks for me.
@ Dave Orbison,
I have mentioned Peter Oborne’s article on another post, but I think it unfair to criticise Tim Farron for the reasons you give. In my opinion, he made the wrong decision, but for the right reasons. I don’t think that one can have any respect for someone who makes a decision of this magnitude for political gain. I have no doubt that he , like Jeremy Corbyn , made his decision based on what he believed was the right thing to do.
Following the bombing that has already taken place, prior to out engagement, ISIS slaughterers that have been killed, have already being replaced in greater numbers from an even greater number of countries. We already have terrorist cells in our country. Isis and its affiliates have already expanded into, amongst other countries, Libya and Afghanistan.
In my opinion, the definition of stupidity, is the habit of repeating mistakes rather than learning from them. and this is what I think we are doing.
Jayne Mansfield – If you asked me if Tim Farron had made his choice in good faith rather than to cynically exploit the issue for political reasons then I would agree. Where I differ is the ‘wrong decision for the right reasons’. As per Oborne’s comments on Corbyn and Benn. Corbyn set out logical reasoned concerns. The sad fact is that Tim Farron properly reasoned his concerns in his 5 point test. The issue for me is that he simply abandoned his own reasoning and without any adequate explanation at all ‘jumped ship’. I think that was the wrong decision and without reason.
A few months ago I was very sympathetic to what Paddy is saying, but I think the urgency to defeat IS has increased and this is hard to do with Assad still in place.
My major concern about all this has been entering a war on the side of al-Qaeda. But I am now satisfied that enough people recognise that this can’t happen and we have identified around 70,000 alternative fighters to support. It is not just Cameron quoting the 70,000 figure, people at Brookings agree with it too.
If the 70,000 could be confident that they would receive high quality support then I think people would flock to the region to support them.
Just ideas…
Eddie Sammon – 70000 against how many? What differences to they have in arms and training? How are they deployed vs their opponents? What are their supply lines like? Are they mercenaries as Putin claims and willing to switch sides for a higher $? This all sounds as plausible and as thin as the 45mins and WMD. Shouldnt’t we know all of this before diving in? It’s a realistic as playing a game of Risk. The difference being no innocent people are killed playing a board game based on simplistic numbers game and pure chance.
Hi Dave Orbison, yes I think some may be mercenaries too, or are swayed by money at least. I don’t want a big Iraq 2003 style invasion and overthrow, just some pressure on Assad.
I have wondered whether we could see what Saudi Arabia and Turkey are paying fighters and what they are telling them to see if we could compete and get them to focus on ISIS more.
The 70,000 includes Al Quaeda members.
Phyliis,
If you want to know details about these 70,000, have a read of this article by Charles Lister (you’ll need to log on with your email address to read it):
http://blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/2015/11/yes-there-are-70000-moderate-opposition-fighters-in-syria-heres-what-we-know-about-them/
Essentially, Lister estimates that there are 75,000 fighters who are opposed to Daesh, and who are not Al Quaeda. Unfortunately, many of them are in small groups, so it would be hard to get them to work together, and some of the larger and more effective groups are Islamists. However, though Islamists, they are vehemently opposed to Daesh, and comparatively moderate. (Though, of course, what you or I would call moderate is a very different thing in the context of Syria)
He concludes with:
“Had the West more definitively intervened in Syria early on, we would undoubtedly have more moderate, more cohesive and more natural ally-material opposition to work with. Unfortunately, things took a different path. Our subsequent obsession with the extremists and refusal to tackle Syria’s complexity has clouded our vision. A ‘moderate’ opposition in culturally attuned terms does exist in Syria, we need only open our eyes to it. Only these groups – and certainly not Assad – will ensure the real extremists such as ISIL and Al-Qaeda eventually lose their grip on power in Syria.”
If you can, have a read of it. My impression was of someone who knows what he’s talking about. But you may of course disagree.
My guess would be that it’ll be incredibly difficult to get these guys to work together, but we’re very short on options, unless we want to support the Assad regime, who the Syrian Network for Human Rights believe has killed far more civilians than Daesh.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/islamic-state-has-killed-many-syrians-but-assads-forces-have-killed-even-more/2015/09/05/b8150d0c-4d85-11e5-80c2-106ea7fb80d4_story.html
In my opinion, if our air strikes unleashed the regime on the Sunni civilian population, we genuinely would have blood on our hands.
@Eddie Sammon – military officials warned against using the 70,000 figure.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/dec/04/syria-row-no-10-admits-70000-fighters-figure-made-up-of-disparate-groups
@ Dave Orbison,
You are right. You should put the words in my mouth!
I am losing my sensory and intellectual powers. I am aware that sometimes can’t find words that were familiar, and struggle to order my thoughts and formulate sentences and arguments as I once could.
I am part of a fast growing minority group. I hope that the Labour and Liberal Democrat party will have sorted out what to do with the growing problem our physical and mental deterioration poses.