Cameron’s drive to bomb Syria is macho, foolish and must be stopped

Jeremy Corbyn’s challenge to David Cameron on the bombing of Syria is unanswerable, and every Labour MP knows it. So too is his explanation of his position in his letter to his party. A British prime minister’s statement on the eve of war should never be taken at face value. We have heard these bombastic calls to foreign aggression – festooned with jingoist opinion polls – too many times. In Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, windy rhetoric and strategic waffle have substituted for rational argument. Cameron’s statement yesterday, full of talk of values, ways of life and examined consciences was a classic of the genre.
Corbyn’s Labour enemies, consumed with hatred for his clique, were yesterday rerunning Suez. They were frantic, not about the bombing of Syria, but about being outflanked by a cynical Tory party on a matter of peace and war. Bombing Syria has nothing to do with terrorism, except possibly to increase the likelihood of it in Britain. It has nothing positive to contribute to Britain’s national security, which is not currently under threat. The idea that Isis might undermine British values is an insult to those values. That it might attain a caliphate in the Mile End Road is a fantasy of men shut up too long in a Cobra bunker.