The case for intervention: the Labour Party needs to find its feet in the post-Iraq era

In the decade since the invasion of Iraq many liberal societies have struggled with its legacy and how to move forward with foreign policy. The international community faces it’s next significant challenge; Isis, Kurdistan and Iraq. However, I cannot agree with Maya Goodfellow’s piece from earlier this week.

To say that the foreign policy position of previous Labour governments has ‘put far too many peoples’ party membership cards at serious risk’ is not a good enough reason to allow hundreds of innocent people to be massacred and allow genocide to take place. This is not a matter of right vs left within the Labour movement. Whether you say that Britain should be standing up to its international obligations and leading on the world stage, or you argue that we should stand in solidarity as an outward looking internationalist movement for working people; the Labour Party needs to find its feet in the post-Iraq era.

Helping those who are most vulnerable and disadvantaged in society should not stop at the border of one nation.

Opponents of intervention must accept that doing nothing still carries a weight of responsibility. If we do nothing in Kurdistan to challenge Isis hundreds of people are still going to be killed. If Isis will kill, as it already has, 500 Yazidi people and is happy to bury victims alive, consider the scale of the slaughter that will take place if it is left unchallenged. Rwanda, Darfur and Syria are all cases where there international community did little, if anything, and the escalating conflicts that ensued are a testament to the failure to act at all.

Not all cases of humanitarian intervention will achieve one hundred percent of their aims and objectives. But is it not better to try and save as many lives as you can, rather than to stand back and do nothing for fear of falling short of your desired outcome? This is, of course, not to say that Britain should intervene in every global conflict – but where there is ethnic cleansing taking place and we are able to intervene then we must. To say that we should not in case we fall short of our goals is to condemn a people and state.

In Iraq, there can be no ‘discussion, understanding and true diplomacy’ with Isis. They don’t hate us for what we do, but for who we are; a plural, democratic and liberal society. As James Bloodworth highlights, it is the West’s existence, as opposed to the subtleties of our behaviour, culture or religion that is intolerable to Isis, hence current attempts to exterminate “un-Islamic” religious minorities in Iraq. The systematic ethnic cleansing that Isis is carrying out will only carry on, if not increase, while a dialogue is sought and attempts to bring them into the political mainstream take place; just as happened with Milosovic in Bosnia and Assad in Syria. Isis must be stopped to allow ‘a unified government in the long term’. These are the lessons that we can learn from history. People are dying now, it is time for the international community to take a stand.

The prime minister has, so far, refused to recall parliament and said that Britain will only “play a role” in international efforts. These are the words of a government doing as little as it can get away with rather than showing an international lead. Meanwhile, the opposition front bench is largely silent.

This issue has nothing to do with being ‘colonialist’ or crowding around a table drawing lines on a map. An argument is not being made for “boots on the ground” and troops being put back into Iraq. What is being called for, from many sides and cross-party, is humanitarian intervention from the air and by arming the Kurds in order to aid those who are unable to protect themselves from a brutal and fascistic mob. While humanitarian aid is the right thing to do and should be given, this will only put a plaster on a wound that is, like it or not, going to be a long term problem.