Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL

Debate between Lord Hain and Meg Munn

Friday 26th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

Although I support the motion authorising military strikes on ISIL in Iraq, and although I fully support my party leader’s caution over extending it to Syria without UN backing, the blunt truth is that simply allowing ISIL to retreat across what if regards an invisible border that it controls into Syria to regroup is no answer.

First, why British military action against ISIL’s barbarity but not Assad’s butchery? Should not the haunting and ill-fated legacy of invading Iraq instruct us to stay well clear? In the Cabinet in 2003, I backed Tony Blair over Iraq because I honestly believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. I was wrong. He did not. We went to war on a lie, and the aftermath was disastrous. That has made me deeply allergic to anything similar in the region and certainly anything remotely hinting at cowboy western intervention.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my right hon. Friend also accept that the intervention in 2003 was welcomed by a lot of the people of Iraq, particularly by the Kurds?

[Mr Hain]

I agree absolutely.

Even Libya, supposedly a surgical operation consented to by this House in 2011, is hardly a good advertisement for us, with chaos now in the country.