SOMETHING must be done. This is something. Therefore we must do it.
It’s a form of unreason which has characterised many governments over many years, but which most of us can also see in ourselves as individuals if we’re honest. Sometimes, feeling under threat and faced with great uncertainty about our own actions, we leap for the most obvious choice.
That is what the UK Government and the majority of MPs have done this week. Few people would look at the situation in Syria, whether in relation to Daesh, Assad or the wider chaos of disparate forces, and disagree that something must be done. But is the action now under way the right thing? Will any good come of it? This paper and others have been full of analysis on that question, from the strategic relevance of UK military assets, to the lack of a coherent gameplan for what comes next; from the threat of increasing the terrorist actions against us, to the inevitable loss of civilian lives which will take place in Syria itself.
Certainly the eloquent rhetoric about just cause and the moral case for coming to the aid of a neighbour begin to ring hollow when we consider just how hostile the UK Government has been to meeting the needs of Syrian refugees caught in Europe’s biggest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War. Every one of us knows that when it comes to offering a welcome to those people displaced as a result of its own military actions, the UK will suddenly find that the moral case must come a poor second to courting the favour of xenophobic right-wing newspaper editors.
However I would like to take a moment, accepting that “something must be done”, to consider some alternatives. Actions we’re not taking, and which seem to me prerequisites for even contemplating the use of military force.
The occupation of the territory held by Daesh, the defence of that territory and the use of it as a base for planning terrorist operations represent a huge logistical undertaking. It is not happening without a supply chain of immense proportions. While little attention was paid to this by MPs debating the pros and cons of air strikes this week, some determined journalists have exposed what is happening. Countries such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia and even Nato ally Turkey stand accused of permitting and protecting the convoys supplying the Daesh regime in both Syria and Iraq.
In seeking to sort the “moderates” from the rest, in the midst of the multi-dimensional civil and sectarian war playing out in the region, the US has certainly taken the risk of supplying military assets to fair-weather allies, only to see them fall into the hands of those it is fighting against. All of which is sadly in keeping with the whole history of western intervention in the Middle East.
The current actions of the US and its allies, which now include the UK, are failing to starve the brutal Daesh regime of arms and risk doing precisely the opposite.
As for the finances, here again we see a longstanding failure to take actions which could make a fundamental difference in undermining the regime and its ability to operate. A complex web of oil deals, shell companies and tax havens is implicated in financing Daesh, allowing it to bring in the funds it needs for its military expenditure. Indeed some estimates suggest that it spends nearly three quarters of its financial resources on its military and security operations. This leaves so little for other basic functions in the territory it controls that even a moderately successful attempt to disrupt its finances would render it not only incapable of functioning, but also immensely unpopular amongst the people who have been drawn to it and whose lives are already precarious. Surely this, an attempt to degrade its capabilities as well as degrading its attractiveness to potential recruits, should be the priority.
I have already argued in these pages against a response which allows this brutal organisation to peddle even more successfully its twisted ideology by claiming that ‘the West’ is waging war against Islam. That lie must not be legitimised, if we want to achieve a safer world for our own people at home, as well as for Syrians and the wider region. Even if the military intervention is successful in its own terms, which I doubt, it would leave behind corpses, demolished buildings and social chaos which would serve as fertile soil into which that same twisted ideology would root itself deeper still.
Of course we must deprive them of the ability to organise further atrocities, both here and in Syria. But let us do it in a way which also deprives them of their own support base, instead of shoring it up.
Tim Dalyell: Tony Benn would turn in grave at his son’s speech
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Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp: Westminster: Out of touch, out of date, out of time...
The National View: Bombs over Syria demonstrate UK’s willingness to act in ignorance yet again
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