PM Cameron made it perfectly clear in the House of Commons on Wednesday that he is determined to go to war in Syria to bring down the legitimate government of President Assad with or without the approval of Parliament.
Under the pretext of ‘solving’ the refugee crisis, Cameron insisted that the real enemy as far as US and British imperialism is concerned is the Assad government. Cameron was blunt, saying: ‘We have to be frank: the eastern Mediterranean crisis, in particular, is because Assad has butchered his own people and because ISIL has, in its own way, butchered others, and millions have fled Syria.
‘We can do all we can, as a moral, humanitarian nation, to take people, spend money on aid and help in refugee camps, but we have to be part of the international alliance that says, “We need an approach in Syria that will mean we have a government that can look after their people.” Assad has to go, ISIL has to go, and some of that will require not just spending money, not just aid, not just diplomacy – it will, on occasion, require hard military force.’
Hard military force means bombing the living daylights out of Syria as a prelude to sending in troops to smash Assad, an escalation that everyone knows will create millions more refugees. This doesn’t matter to Cameron. He is determined to line up with US imperialism and go to war to replace Assad and open Syria up to the forces of imperialism.
If this means tearing up the bourgeois democratic process and invading a country that Britain is not officially at war with, then so be it. Cameron’s contempt for parliamentary democracy has been evident since the revelation earlier this week of the assassination by drone of two British subjects on Cameron’s orders in defiance of the vote two years ago in Parliament against any military involvement in Syria.
In his statement to the House of Commons, Cameron also slapped down his own foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, who, in answer to a question about the Barack Obama plan for air strikes in Syria, had told a press conference in Berlin: ‘Let me be clear, Britain will not be taking part in any air strikes in Syria. We have already had that discussion in our parliament last year and we won’t be revisiting that position.’
All this talk about parliamentary decisions and the democratic process didn’t go down too well with Cameron who is engaged in dumping parliament in order to jump into bed with US imperialism. Cameron has already stated that Britain need not worry about the legality or the requirement to gain UN approval for bombing Syria because the Assad government was not ‘legally recognised’ due to its alleged involvement in war crimes.
While Cameron is declaring his contempt for parliamentary democracy, the right wing of the Labour Party is signalling that it is prepared to vote with the Tories on going to war even if Jeremy Corbyn, an avowed opponent of military action, is elected leader.
A BBC Newsnight investigation spoke to 14 Labour MPs who stated they would vote with Cameron.
With all the other opposition parties believed to be opposed and about 20 Tory MPs prepared to rebel against the leadership, Cameron could only survive a vote with the support of these right-wing Labour MPs.
At times of crisis for Cameron and the Tory Party leaders, they are relying on the treachery of the right-wing reformists to prop them up, just as they saved Cameron from defeat by abstaining on the Welfare Bill.
A whole section of the right wing are now preparing to split from the Labour Party to support Cameron’s drive to war, both against the Syrian people and the working class at home. The TUC Congress next week must be forced to take action to halt this war on two fronts by calling a general strike to kick out the Tories and bring in a workers’ government and socialism.
This is the only way to end the drive to imperialist war in Syria and the war against the working class at home.