Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL

Paul Flynn Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

This motion is the thin end of a bloody and ugly wedge that will grow and expand and mission-creep into a prolonged war with unforeseeable consequences. In the middle east, we are falling into a vortex of hatreds that are ancient and deep. Once we start this process, it will be almost impossible to extricate ourselves from it in future.

We speak under various delusions, one of which is a feeling of omnipotence in thinking that our presence is absolutely essential, although we do have a contribution to make. During the 2003 war in the Gulf, we were told that we had to go in because otherwise Saddam Hussein would continue, but that was not the case because the Americans were already there. The Americans, to our great gratitude, are there now. That country has sacrificed more of its sons and daughters in seeking democracy for the people of other countries than any other land in the world. We should look to having our own policies. Why cannot we become independent in our foreign policy? We have not done that since the time of Vietnam, but that means there is a terrible prospect for us, and we are facing it now.

The result of the war in Iraq was to deepen the sense of suspicion and alienation between the western Christian communities and the eastern Muslim communities. When we went in into Iraq in 2003, only a minority were involved in al-Qaeda, and they hardly figured at all. Now we find, to our horror, that young children who were born here, brought up here and absorbed our values through education are suddenly, in their adolescent years, having their idealism twisted and marching off to behave like mediaeval barbarians. How on earth has this happened? It has not happened because of the mosques or the imams, who were not much in touch with them, but because of the internet and the propaganda that comes from it. That is the source of this evil.

Once people become radicalised in this way and lose all their standards of common humanity, as they are doing in ISIL now, there is no question but that they will come back here. We are living in a world of a war in which on one side there are marvellous, sophisticated, clever weapons, but those are not needed to fight terrorist activity. It did not need a nuclear weapon to bring down the twin towers or a smart bomb to murder a soldier on the streets of Britain. In this asymmetric warfare, there is no military solution. That solution will bring its own consequences in more terror. We must look to having an independent foreign policy free from the United States.