Why all the fuss about Hilary Benn's Syria speech?
Call me a terrorist sympathiser, but I think Hilary Benn’s supposedly “spectacular” speech in the Commons debate yesterday about whether to bomb Syria was mediocre, and the rapturous reaction to it demonstrates the catastrophic intellectual decline of the political leadership and the media of Britain.
For a start, everyone ought to know that good speeches are
short. Benn’s was far too long, to the extent that, were it not for my strength
of feeling on the matter, I should never have bothered to listen to the whole
thing.
His colleagues proudly told
the Spectator’s Isabel Hardman that he wrote much of it in the Commons,
during the debate. That explains why he wasn’t able to consult a history book.
At one point, he compared air strikes in Syria to the International Brigades in
the Spanish Civil War, despite the fact that the two situations are utterly incomparable.
If ISIS is the equivalent of Franco’s Falangists, then who
represents the Italians and Germans? Back then of course, the Russians were on
the side of the International Brigades, whereas now they are with Bashar al-Assad
and Iran. Who was playing the part of Iran in the Spanish Civil War? And aren’t
the volunteers flocking to fight in Syria the bad guys?
Also, while the volunteers from 53 nations that made up the
International Brigades were supporting the left wing Spanish Republicans,
basically a load of socialists and communists, where is the secular left in
Syria? The closest match is the Kurdish Peshmerga, sort of, but outside of their
territory in northern Syria, the part will have to be played by some Islamists
who are slightly more moderate than Daesh.
The speech started off boringly, as so many of the speeches
in that 10 hour marathon must have, with the restatement of some tedious
obviousnesses, none of which addressed any of the arguments put forward by
opponents of the motion he was defending.
Benn refers early on to a UN Security Council resolution which
“calls on member states to take all necessary measures to redouble and
coordinate their efforts to prevent and suppress terrorist acts committed specifically
by ISIL and to eradicate the safe haven they have established over significant
parts of Iraq and Syria.”
According to Benn, that translates as an order to do
something “now”. To which my immediate response is: “Well, what have you been
waiting for? Why not yesterday, or last week?” But then it occurs to me that the
UN probably would not begrudge its member states the time it takes to come up
with a decent plan before stampeding towards Raqqa.
Furthermore, opponents of the air strike bill argued that the
proposed action is either unnecessary or falls far short of what is necessary
to achieve the stated aim of the UN resolution. Benn eventually gets around to
tackling this by airing the tired comparison of the situation to that in Iraq, where
some progress against ISIS appears to have been made.
This is despite him knowing full well that the situation in
Iraq is (a bit like the situation in 1930s Spain) completely different. As has
been pointed out many times, air strikes in Iraq are supported by ground troops
supplied by the Iraqi government, a coalition member, while no such ground support
can be counted on in Syria.
The Iraqi government asked the UK to intervene in Iraq (as
Benn himself points out). In contrast, Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria,
is of the opinion that coalition air strikes make Daesh stronger.
Benn sort of acknowledges this when he says air strikes
alone will not defeat Daesh, “But they make a difference,” he said. An expert on
the conflict speaking on Radio 4 on Tuesday reckons they will make barely any
difference. But whether that’s true or not, it’s a far cry from just minutes
earlier, when Benn was raving about “all necessary measures.”
He adds that the government needs to better explain the mythical
70,000 allied troops on the ground we hear so much about, but presumably not
before we’ve sent a few jets over to make random craters. Benn posed many, many
rhetorical questions during that long speech, but not this one: “Why wait until
we know what we’re doing?” UK warplanes took off for Syria shortly after the vote.
Benn also points to a coalition of over 60 countries standing
together “shoulder to shoulder”, but according to another expert on Radio 4 on
Tuesday (this is from memory as I need to go to bed and don’t have time to do
the research), the only member of that coalition that has launched air strikes
on Syria in recent months besides the United States is France, which had carried
out about four. Benn was not including Russia, which is part of a somewhat different
coalition.
The ‘high point’ of the speech, from what I gather from the
Facebook posts of my Labour Party friends, came at around the 12 minute mark,
when Benn directly addressed Labour MPs, appealing to their internationalism. There
was an unintentional (I think) moment of comedy when he turned back round to
face the Tory-occupied government benches at precisely the moment he roared: “We
are here faced by fascists.”
He then launched into a tirade of things we’ve already heard
about Daesh, perhaps taking his cue from the more original but equally
unedifying Andrew
Neil rant of a few weeks ago, before making his Spanish Civil War reference
(see above) and throwing in Hitler and Mussolini for good measure.
As has already been pointed out elsewhere, he would automatically have lost the debate at that point if it had taken place in an online discussion forum, according to some interpretations of Godwin’s law.
Cries of “outstanding” and “brilliant” could be heard above
the din of applause which erupted in the Commons at the end of the speech. Parliamentarians
were moved to tears, and already inane ‘analysis’ pieces are hailing Benn as
the next leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister. The Spectator, which I
normally look to for journalistic and intellectual rigour, despite its right wing bias, has already
published a blog post calling it “passionate, spellbinding – and historic.”
Can someone please tell me, am I missing something?
Hilary Benn Photo: Her Britannic Majesty's Government |
I couldn't believe the way the media have been fawning over this speech. I was starting to think 'have I missed something?' So I googled 'Hilary Benn speech was mediocre' and this blog came up. Good to see I'm not the only one!
ReplyDeleteI am heartily sick of every single conflict these days being framed as a re-run of World War Two. It seems that Nazis vs Allies is the only frame of reference that any politician or pundit possesses. ISIS are really nothing like Fascists. Fascism was a political philosophy derived from a European political tradition which drew on elements of anarchism, socialism, etc. It was non-religious, seeked to work within the framework of existing nations such as Italy and Spain. It was self-consciously modern to the extent of fostering modern art movements like the Futurists in Italy. In short, it was nothing whatsoever like the Islamic and Middle-Eastern ISIS, with its desire to establish a religious Caliphate in the place of existing Nation States.
As Orwell once noted, 'Nazi' and 'Fascist' now have no meaning beyond 'nasty'.
As predicted by several people, there was a brief flurry of British air strikes in Syria immediately after the intense and self-aggrandising debate and vote in parliament, then nothing.
ReplyDelete"On the same night that parliament gave its approval RAF Tornados launched their first air strikes on the Omar oil fields.
Newly despatched Typhoon jets joined in the attacks two nights later, followed by a third set of strikes on the same oil fields on 6 December.
And then? It appears hardly anything. There has only been one other British air strike in Syria - an unmanned Reaper drone firing a Hellfire missile at an IS checkpoint near Raqqa on Christmas Day." -BBC
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35166971