Iraq

Lord Howe of Aberavon Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howe of Aberavon (Con)]

My Lords, one feature emerges throughout today’s debate: that nobody lightly entertains the prospect of going to war, especially in a potentially open-ended conflict of the sort that may now conceivably be before us. Nobody can be relaxed when the enemy is less a conventional state, whose dimensions and contours we know, than a complex, fast-moving and hydra-headed “network of death”. President Obama described ISIS in those words at the UN General Assembly last week—operating, as ISIS does, in the deserts of the Middle East, far away from these shores.

Many in this country—and no fewer in the White House and throughout the West—have grown tired of the foreign wars and engagements. In the United States, President Obama was elected in part to disengage America and shift it away from a “perpetual war footing”, as he put it. Now the White House has issued an unequivocal call to arms. How should we respond as a nation and as a still-united kingdom? How should we respond as a European nation, a Commonwealth nation, with our allies and partners on the continent?

Let us not, by the way, underestimate the importance of the referendum north of the border a few days ago, reaffirming decisively the United Kingdom for what it is: a reconciliation of the blue and white flag and the red and white flag, with the benevolence of the Welsh red dragon. The union jack represents the United Kingdom and has a wider representation around the world: it is to be found for example in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, British Columbia and Nova Scotia. I emphasise the importance of how we should respond as a nation—a still-united kingdom—but how should we respond as a European nation as well as a Commonwealth nation with our allies and partners on the continent?

Several of us on these Benches and in other parts of the House had serious reservations about the previous deployment of allied troops in Iraq to displace Saddam Hussein and about whether it made sense to intervene in Syria last year. Now, however, the President of the United States, after a long period of reflection, has concluded that the collective interests of the West lie in confronting ISIS decisively and early on, and in seeking to build a broadly based coalition to do so, including partners in the region itself. I therefore have no difficulty in supporting the position both of the United States Administration and of Her Majesty’s Government, while fully acknowledging the risk that this struggle will be neither easy nor short.

The extreme ambitions and actions of ISIS are clearly deeply hostile both to our interests and to the notions of democracy and the rule of law on which our systems are based. The ISIS philosophy also contradicts any reasonable understanding of Islam. It is designed to sharpen divisions and exacerbate conflicts, to eliminate moderation and to undermine all those working for mutual understanding between peoples and nations. The ISIS philosophy is an absolutist and expansionist creed that, unchallenged, breeds, first, tremendous regional instability, then regional chaos, and then leads possibly to regional domination. A much bigger confrontation might easily follow.

Perhaps I may refer back further for a moment. Rather like in the debates about appeasement in the 1930s, it is better to talk about the problem clearly and honestly now, and face up to some difficult questions and decisions while one can still do something about them, than to wait so long that the enemy concludes that we are weak, divided and unwilling to react. The President of the United States and our own Prime Minister have both countenanced the possibility of a generational struggle, one that will not only occupy this generation but shape the world of the next generation too. We should reflect on these words very carefully. It is therefore with very little joy but with strong conviction that I conclude that we should support the Government and their many allies in the difficult and important task that lies ahead.