You can’t demand democracy in Syria but ignore it at home

After David Cameron’s decision to seek parliamentary approval for air strikes against Syria, two lobbies came charging in, banners aloft. Now their attention has moved to Barack Obama’s decision to seek approval from the US Congress. Though on opposite sides of the argument, these two groups have something in common, and it depresses me.

Both see democracy as capable of securing a right decision. Neither sees democracy as capable of making a decision right.

Let me explain. The anti-interventionists are of course delighted (as was I) that our Prime Minister sought a Commons mandate for military action. They’re even more delighted now that Parliament has said no. They may not care much for Mr Cameron himself, nor did they like the way Tory whips tried (unsuccessfully) to dragoon their MPs into acquiescence. But they all agree that Cameron was right to ask Parliament.

What happened at Westminster last week is therefore a source of pride and satisfaction to those we may call the doves on Syria: ‘the people,’ they coo, ‘have spoken’ (or spoken through the medium of their parliamentary representatives). Hooray for democracy.

‘Two cheers for democracy,’ say the pro-interventionists (let us call them the hawks): ‘but this time it hasn’t worked properly’. Hawks cannot of course regard an unwanted outcome as a reason for losing faith in democracy itself; neoconservatives are supposed to be passionate about government by the people, and what Cameron did at Westminster and what Obama plans do to with Congress is what liberal interventionism is all about: respecting the people, an example of the very values neoconservatives seek to spread. So the hawks have been careful not to criticise the fact of consultation.

But the actual result has displeased them mightily. Unable to complain about the democratic principle, they have fallen instead to complaining about the process.