Iraq

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Hurd, in a very perceptive speech, contrasted today’s debate with the one that we had in August last year, when both he and I, and almost every other Member of your Lordships’ House, voiced grave concern at the prospect of going into Syria without a clearly defined objective or outcome. Today is very different. It is a sobering thought, incidentally, that had we decided differently last year, we might have boosted these wretched ISIL people into a position of even greater power in Syria.

We are now setting our hands to an extraordinary task. In the words of that great prayer by Sir Walter Raleigh, we have to see this thing “until it be throughly finished”. This is not a case of sending just a few sorties; we are in for the long haul. Although I risk the rebuke of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, we will need boots on the ground, be they Arab boots or other military boots—

[Lord Ramsbotham]

Will the noble Lord give way?

[Lord Cormack]

No, I cannot give way in this short debate. We will need boots on the ground—military boots and, as the noble Lord rightly pointed out, other boots.

Briefly, if we are to win the hearts and minds of people in the Middle East, those who are suffering desperate privation and those who will be bereaved or maimed as a result of air strikes—that is bound to happen—we must have great emphasis on humanitarian aid. I point up a little contrast. Yesterday, I stood on the East Green of Lincoln Cathedral, where there was a dedication of a plot that, next year, is to bring forth a wonderful garden of bulbs to commemorate Operation Manna. At the end of the Second World War, the people of Holland were in desperate plight. They were starving. Queen Wilhelmina said, “We shall merely be liberating corpses if something is not done”. Although we had to negotiate with the Germans—the war was still on—so that the low-flying aircraft were not shot down, the relief supplies were delivered and the people survived. Yesterday, in a very moving ceremony, we had the Netherlands ambassador paying tribute to the Germans in the presence of their military attaché, saying, “Even though then we were at war, those with whom we had nothing in common and who had inflicted terrible disaster upon us, at that particular point, held back”.

I make that comment and give that illustration merely to point up a moral and to adorn a tale. I hold no brief for the Assad regime—I do not think that there can be any Member of your Lordships’ House who does —but, without repeating the Arab proverb cited by the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, all I would say is that we must have unrestrained conflict against these barbarians if we are to bring them to heel and we must ensure that, as the wasteland is liberated, we help those who seek to survive on it as much as we conceivably can.