ON Monday evening in the House of Commons Labour MP Jo Cox came to the rescue of Cameron and the Tories when she led an adjournment debate in which she proposed that Syria should be bombarded by British ships from the Mediterranean.
She declared: ‘We have been tested by the second world war, the genocide in Rwanda and the slaughter in Bosnia, and I believe that Syria is our generation’s test. Will we step up to play our part in stopping the abject horror of the Syrian civil war and the spread of the modern-day fascism of ISIS, or will we step to one side, say that it is too complicated, and leave Iran, Russia, Assad and ISIS to turn the country into a graveyard?’ The imperialist powers are heroes, the rest of the world are gravediggers!
Trying to deal with the mass opposition to bombing Syria she remarked: ‘I understand, of course, where our reticence comes from. It comes from perhaps the darkest chapter in Labour’s history, when we led this country to war in Iraq . . . but let us all be clear about the fact that Syria is not Iraq. I opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning because I believed that the risk to civilian lives was too high, and their protection was never the central objective. I knew, as we all knew, that President George Bush was motivated not by the need to protect civilians, but by supposed weapons of mass destruction and a misguided view of the United States’ strategic interest.’
In fact, she is for repeating the ‘mistakes’ of the Iraq war which she admits was known by Labour MPs at the time to have nothing to do with wmds, but was viewed as a slaughter that was made necessary by the strategic interests of US capitalism. The destruction of Iraq led to the rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq and then ISIS.
The fall of Assad would leave every Christian, Alawite and Kurd in the country facing death and destruction, and being forced to flee – to a Europe which now has UN permission to open fire on refugee boats. Cox admitted that the attack on Iraq was a criminal enterprise but now, as her exchange with Tory MP Bob Stewart reveals, she has embraced the criminal enterprise against Syria.
After her plan was revealed to bombard Syria from the sea, to avoid Syrian anti-aircraft missiles, Stewart said: ‘I totally endorse what my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mitchell) said about the hon. Lady making a brave speech. My worry is that she can do nothing without a Security Council resolution, which gives political top cover and the legal right to go into a sovereign country.’
Cox responded: ‘I thank the hon. Gentleman for the intervention. I agree that we should try to secure a UN Security Council resolution, but I do not think we should limit ourselves to not acting without one. I believe a no-bombing zone is feasible if it is enforced from maritime assets in the Mediterranean, so as to avoid engaging Syrian air defences. This would save lives, uphold international humanitarian law and breathe life into the political process. A well-designed deterrence operation would impose a cost on the Syrian regime for any indiscriminate bombing of civilians—for example, by targeting the military airbases where barrel bombs are stored and flown from. Any attempt by the regime to escalate would trigger additional punitive strikes, rendering aerial bombardment counterproductive. In those circumstances, it is far more likely that Assad and Russia will be forced to the negotiating table.’
Cox has gone from living and let-living in the same party with the co-authors of the criminal enterprise of 2003, to helping to organise the criminal enterprise in 2015, by defying the Security Council and engaging in an illegal war to destroy Syria. The destruction of Syria will lead to millions more refugees but the strategic aims of UK imperialism cannot be held back by this consideration. Cox is acting as an agent of British imperialism inside the Labour Party.
She is politically in the same camp as Blair and Co who acted as the recruiting sergeants for Al Qaeda and then ISIS in Iraq! Saddam held down Al Qaeda, Gadaffi held down the Islamists in Libya, and Assad leads a secular state in Syria.
Imperialism has acted as the recruiting arm for ISIS in its attempts to smash the Arab secular nationalist regimes, confident that if it could live and let-live with the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, it could do the same with Isis.
Labour MPs must refuse to vote with the Tories to bomb Syria. They must vote ‘NO’ to bring the Tories down, and to create the conditions to bring in a workers government and socialism, that will help bring peace to Syria and to establish the state of Palestine.
This is the way forward!
