Syria

Thursday

3 Dec 2015

Letters | 3 December 2015

Bombers without borders Sir: To define this week’s debate as being about ‘bombing Syria’ (‘The great fake war’, 28 November) is ludicrous. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about fighting Isis. Whatever you call them, and wherever they are. The current deal, under which we bomb Isis in Iraq but not in Syria, is as if we are content to fight them in Yorkshire but not in Lancashire. If people do not think we should be engaging Isis at all, that’s a different argument. But I would ask, ‘Where do they need to get to before you would engage them?’ Two years ago, we had a similar situation to today. The

The Spectator

It is time to join the fight against IS in Syria

The Islamic State is as monstrous an enemy as we have seen in recent history. It crucifies and decapitates its victims, holds teenage girls in slavery and burns captives alive. It is wrong to call it a medieval force, because such institutionalised barbarity was seldom seen in medieval times. As far as five centuries of records from the Ottoman Empire can establish, stoning was authorised only once. Isis now regularly stones suspected adulterers to death. It is not seeking inspiration from the Middle Ages. We are witnessing a modern form of evil — and it is spreading fast. Labour MPs, now accustomed to receiving threats from hard-left activists, were told

Sebastian Payne

Jeremy Corbyn’s New Politics has ushered in an era of appalling online bullying

It was meant to be about open debate and discussion, consensus through dialogue. But so far, Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party and the arrival of the so-called New Politics has resulted in division and a lot of abuse and bad feeling. In light of last night’s vote on Syria airstrikes, Twitter and Facebook have been exploding with extraordinary levels of comments and abuse that no one, MPs or otherwise, should be subjected to. For example, hard-left groups such as Lefty Unity, have been using Twitter to stir up agitation against the MPs they disagree with: Again here is the list of the 66 Labour MPs who voted to

Michael O'Connell-Davidson

Forget Syria: a weak Greece endangers us all

There is nothing waiting for people who leave school in Greece today. It does not matter how much young Greeks might be able to give to their nation, because their nation has little to give them in return. Over the weekend, The Times reported that young Greek women are selling sex for as low as €2. Some are even exchanging sessions for cheese pasties, because they cannot afford to eat. It’s not just young Greeks who are suffering. Pensioners are being squeezed by Greece’s creditors, and drugs thrive amongst the homeless in Athens. Election after election has only served to make the country’s political crisis worse, with the second general strike in

Ruth Sherlock

The more we bomb Isis, the stronger they become

Isis can’t be seen as a single entity; as one cohesive army. The reality is that probably only a small percentage of the group are the types that pose a real threat to the West. Only a tiny minority of its members in the Middle East, at this stage, are hardline ideologues with any serious intent to carry out attacks in America or Europe. Most members of Isis have joined more out of pragmatism than fervour. Raqqa was always known in Syria as a more secular city (while it was still in the hands of the Syrian regime, other Syrian rebel groups would scoff to me that Raqqa’s population were blasphemous

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: the real victims of climate change and the oddballs in youth politics

Are the elderly and poor the real victims of climate change? In this week’s View from 22 podcast, presented by Isabel Hardman, Matt Ridley and Michael Jacobs debate the Paris climate change conference and whether politicians are too concerned about protecting ‘our grandchildren’. What is the point of this conference and will anything be achieved? Are attitudes towards the environment changing? James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson also discuss the Labour party’s civil war over the Syria airstrikes and whether this will help Dan Jarvis’ leadership chances. How much has the party damaged its reputation over national security? Is Jeremy Corbyn still safe as Labour leadership or will moderates in the party try

Freddy Gray

Yesterday’s vote wasn’t about Syria’s war. It was about Labour’s

Parliament is always in a way a comedy of vanity. Yesterday it was a narcissistic farce. Our elected representatives spent ten hours making the same unconvincing points over and over again. The standard of speaking was poor because nobody had much worth saying. The pro-bombers kept arguing that we had to stand with our allies, and that Isis was horrid. The anti-bombers urged us not to make another tragic mistake in the Middle East. And everybody had to say how they felt personally — as if personal feelings are more important than right or wrong. Yet all the MPs knew deep down that Britain’s intervention in the Syrian conflict would be so small-scale as

Brendan O’Neill

Hilary Benn’s speech was just a shallow historical re-enactment

What’s with the orgy of fawning over Hilary Benn’s Syria speech? It was eloquent, yes, but content-wise it reminded me of those historical re-enactment shebangs where sad men in their fifties try to inject meaning into their lives by pretending to be a Viking in a field for a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon. Only instead of donning archaic armour and a horned helmet, Benn and his overnight Bennites – those currently clogging up Twitter with wild claims that his speech was the best oration since the Gettysburg Address – are wrapping themselves in the moral garb of the mid-20th century warriors against Nazi Germany. Benn’s speech, and

Richard Galustian

What’s the plan in Syria? Yesterday’s debate gave us few answers

David Cameron may now have his bombing mandate, but he still has no strategy. The PM’s ‘hope for the best’ rhetoric yesterday was distinctly un-Churchillian: ‘I know that will take a long time and that it will be complex,’ he said, ‘but that is the strategy, and we need to start with the first step, which is going after these terrorists today.’ It is not much of a plan, and those in the know know it: from defence chiefs – some of them friends of mine – giving anonymous briefings, to Parliament’s own foreign affairs committee, and even the voters, whom polls show swinging ever further away from air strikes.

Steerpike

Breaking: Stan Collymore joins the SNP

This morning the 66 Labour MPs who voted in favour of airstrikes on Syria — ignoring the pleas of their leader Jeremy Corbyn — have woken up to deselection threats from the hard-left as they stand accused of being warmongers. On top of this, there is another burden they must bear: they have driven Stan Collymore out of the Labour party. In what will no doubt be a devastating loss to the Labour party, the former footballer — who issued a public apology in 1998 after he attacked his then-girlfriend Ulrika Jonsson — has cut up his membership card after discovering that a number of Labour MPs voted in favour of airstrikes: https://twitter.com/StanCollymore/status/672189903308984320 In need of a

Sebastian Payne

Can Leave.EU control its members? This video suggests not

A bizarre video has been released on the YouTube channel of Leave.EU, one of the campaigns vying for the official Brexit nomination. It was entitled ‘We Are At War Again’ and tweeted through its official account – before it was swiftly taken offline. Coffee House has received a copy of the video. You can watch it above. In the video, Ireland is labelled ‘The Balkans’ and countries in the Middle East are labelled a ‘bunch of foreigners’ and ‘f*ck knows’. The Leave.EU campaign say this is not an official video and it was uploaded to its website by one of its 350,000 ‘users’. A Leave.EU spokesman says: ‘It was a video produced in February this

James Forsyth

After Labour’s Syria shambles, step forward Major Dan

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thegreendelusion/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson discuss Labour’s civil war over Syria airstrikes” startat=700] Listen [/audioplayer]It makes no sense for Britain to bomb Islamic State in Iraq but not Syria. Attacking a group that does not respect international borders on only one side of a border makes no strategic or military sense. From the Prime Minister down, government ministers are acutely aware of this absurdity. That is why they have been so keen to gain the Commons’ permission to extend the strikes to Syria. Yet this week Westminster has been gripped, not by the strategic case for taking the fight to Islamic State in Syria, but by the effect

Mark Hollingsworth

Silent strongman Sergey Shoigu is the real force behind Russia’s military aggression

‘Crimea is ours,’ President Putin boasted last May. He was speaking on a documentary viewed by millions of Russians, and it was the culminating moment in the militarisation of Russia. Moscow had attracted criticism for spending unprecedented sums on its armed forces under Putin, despite a weak economy over-dependent on oil. The successful annexation of Crimea seemed a perfect vindication. Yet the huge expansion of Russia’s armed forces budget was instigated not by Putin but by the defence minister, the mysterious Sergey Shoigu. The ascendancy of the military has propelled Shoigu up the ranks of the power elite to the extent that he is now regarded as the favourite to

Wednesday

2 Dec 2015

Sebastian Payne

Podcast special: Syria airstrikes and Hilary Benn’s extraordinary speech

The House of Commons has voted to carry out airstrikes in Syria this evening by a majority of 174, but today’s debate has been overshadowed by an incredible speech from Hilary Benn. In this View from 22 podcast special, Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss the implications of the Commons vote and what the shadow foreign secretary’s address means for the Labour party. Has Benn challenged Corbyn’s authority with his barnstorming speech that has won praise from all parties? How long will the glow last? Did Benn inspire the large number of Labour rebels? You can subscribe to the View from 22 through iTunes and have it delivered to your computer every week,

James Forsyth

Commons votes to bomb Islamic State in Syria

British airstrikes against Islamic State will be extended to Syria after the House of Commons voted strongly in favour of the government ‘s motion tonight. The government had a majority of 174, enabling David Cameron to claim that he has the consensus backing for bombing IS in Syria that he has long craved. 67 Labour MPs voted in favour of strikes, which was higher than expected this morning. But Hilary Benn’s remarkable impassioned speech, the finest I’ve heard in the Commons, swayed at least one wavering Labour MP—Stella Creasy voting for, having previously been undecided and facing huge constituency pressure against action. Thought, it was worth noting that the government

Rod Liddle

Anybody who uses the phrase ‘Daesh’ is terminally deluded

This is a relentlessly busy world, with so many people expressing so many different points of view. We become overwhelmed by it all, at times. So it is useful to have a few short-cuts at hand, when sieving the wheat from the chaff. Much as it is the case that we might ignore any commentator who uses the world ‘vulnerable’, so too we can assure ourselves that anyone who uses the term ‘Daesh’ in respect of those head-chopping Muslim lunatics out in Syria, is terminally deluded and we can ignore them too. The term is now used exclusively by those who wish to kid themselves that the Islamic State is

Lloyd Evans

Airstrike debate sketch: terrorist sympathisers, anti-Semitism and a basket of old ribbons

Bomb Syria. That was Cameron’s priority today as PMQs was sidelined in favour of the debate on airstrikes. His opponents’ strategy was ‘Bomb Cameron.’ They demanded a withdrawal of his remark that any opponent of bombing must be a ‘terrorist sympathiser’. The snarliest words came from Alex Salmond whose grey jowls jiggled with rage as he shouted, ‘apologise for these deeply insulting remarks.’ Cameron offered a correction but no contrition: ‘There’s honour in voting for; honour in voting against.’ He didn’t hold back when describing Isil. ‘Women-raping, Muslim-murdering medieval monsters,’ he said. And he set out the case for extending the bombing from Iraq into Syria. Right now our jets have

Kate Maltby

‘National security’ has become our main justification for war

I’ve been in touch with Anisa for just over a year, ever since I met her in a dingy refugee compound on the outskirts of Amman. She’s a super-educated young woman from Damascus (most of the early wave of refugees were) and she’s never had much time for self-styled IS (‘none of them are actually Syrian, they’re invaders,’ she insists). Today Anisa is more depressed than ever. If Britain joins the coalition of airstrikes against IS territory in Syria, it will largely be symbolic, as The Spectator’s leader explains. The US has already been bombing Raqqa for nearly a year and a half. As the analyst Shashank Joshi suggests, we have a limited airforce, and

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn gives his half of the Labour response to Syria

By the time Jeremy Corbyn got to his feet in today’s debate on action in Syria, the House of Commons was in a fractious mood, with interventions from MPs focusing as much on the Labour party as the issue up for debate. The Labour leader did not find much support from his own side, either, with a number of pro-intervention MPs frowning and muttering as he ploughed on with his speech. Hilary Benn appeared to be grinding his teeth during much of the response. It opened, inevitably, with a man who could quite reasonably be described as a ‘terrorist sympathiser’, given his dealings with the IRA and his ‘friends’ in

Sam Leith

While ‘Daesh’ prepare to fight, MPs debate how to hurt their feelings

Today in the Commons the Tory backbencher Rehman Chishti asked: “Will the Prime Minister join me in urging the BBC to review their bizarre policy; when they wrote to me to say that they can’t use the word Daesh because it would breach their impartiality rules? We are at war with terrorists, Prime Minister. We have to defeat their ideology, their appeal. We have to be united in that. Will he join me now in urging the BBC to review their bizarre policy?” https://soundcloud.com/spectator1828/cameron-on-what-to-call-isis David Cameron positively purred: “I agree with my honourable friend. I’ve already corresponded with the BBC about their use of IS—Islamic State—which I think is even