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Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

The options in Syria have never been easy or risk free, and today all options are bad ones. The reality is that in the past two and a half years, the international community has betrayed those secular, enthusiastic people who tried to get democratic change in their country. Because of our hang-ups about our past, because President Obama was not interested, and because of Russian and Chinese vetoes in the Security Council, we have not given support, and that has led to the brutality, radicalisation and extremism that we confront today.

This debate has not made me proud. I am sad and I believe it tells me something about our country today when I hear people saying, “It’s none of our business” and “We shouldn’t get involved” when 100,000 people are dead and 4 million displaced from their homes. Today, increasing numbers of Kurds are fleeing Syria to go to the Kurdish region of Iraq where Saddam Hussein

used chemical weapons to kill the Kurds in the Anfal campaign in 1988, yet nobody seems to realise the significance of that.

I have reservations about both the Government motion and the Opposition amendment because I believe they are inadequate. They both talk about deterring the future use of chemical weapons, but I do not think one can deter the use of chemical weapons simply by firing missiles symbolically—a “shot across the bow”, or whatever phrase President Obama used. I think the strategy the United States is about to launch is doomed to fail in its objectives.