Joseph Power

I used to mock non-interventionists like Corbyn, but events have proved them right

I hate to say it, but Jeremy Corbyn is right where I have been wrong. Corbyn’s protest that the Syrian intervention displays a ‘lack of a strategy worth the name, the absence of credible ground troops, the missing diplomatic plan for a Syrian settlement…’ was spot on. I am embarrassed to say that last year, I penned a rather conceited piece – for Spectator Australia, no less – in which I mocked proponents of non-intervention against the millennial, genocidal fascists of Isis. Having watched events since publication, I feel little but embarrassment.

True, it makes little sense to restrict our campaign to Iraq: as James Forsyth rightly noted, Isis don’t recognise international borders, operating in Iraq, Syria, and other territorialities simultaneously through recognised ’emirates’. But the West’s campaign against Isis has a fundamental weakness: there is no political will for the sort of enormous effort, both military and diplomatic, that it would take to truly defeat them. The West has become akin to a drunk desperately flinging his expensive watch down on the table for another hand of Texas hold’em: gambling on new success where all previous attempts have failed.

Take the situation in Iraq, where the split between Shia and Sunni predates Isis and – as David Petraeus warned almost a decade ago – is becoming increasingly violent. Iraqi Sunnis view Isis as imperfect masters, but preferable to the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad, whose security forces wrought havoc against Iraqi Sunnis, and whose policies have disenfranchised them. (The chilling reports of Sunnis being murdered by Iraq’s security apparatus was masterfully captured in Fred Kaplan’s superb The Insurgents.) In return, Sunnis actively took up arms against the Iraqi Security Forces when Isis began their annexation of Iraqi territory last year. For us to obliterate Isis-driven Toyotas in Syria does nothing to alleviate this fundamental schism in Iraq’s domestic politics.

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