Cameron, Benn And Supporters Are Little More Than The Useful Idiots Of ISIS

Mick Hall pours scorn on some "useful idiots" in the British parliament. Mick Hall is a Marxist blogger @ Organized Rage.

In any other walk of life if an employee had made a decision which had catastrophic consequences, they would not only be sacked, they might well end up in jail.

Politicians, [along with bankers] have become the exceptions to this rule. Whereas in the past senior MP's were expected to act honorably and resign when they help perpetrate a policy which proves disastrous, these days they continue in office as if their misdemeanor were a minor issue or did not happen at all.

One would have to be blind to all reason not to believe the 2003 majority decision of British MPs to attack and occupy Iraq was a monstrous mistake and in all probability an illegal act. Which has turned out to have disastrous consequence for the middle east, and much of the rest of the western world.

It's regarded by most rational people as the biggest foreign policy mistake of any British government since Suez in 1956. After the Suez debacle the Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned, after Iraq Tony Blair went on to prosper both politically, he won a third term in office, and financially as he travels the world in 'retirement' scooping up his ill gotten gains for past services rendered. As too did many of those MP's of all parties who trooped into the lobby behind him and voted for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. One, David Cameron went on to lead the Tory Party.

In last Wednesday's debate on whether the UK should start bombing Syria, David Cameron and Hilary Benn led the yes campaign. They both spoke in unison of having a moral and military duty to attack Isis in Syria. How these two can talk of morals when they voted for the Iraq war, and instead of doing their duty and resigning they continued to slither up the greasy pole. Leaving them to repeat their mistake of 2003 on two further occasions.

In 2012 they both voted to intervene in the Libyan civil war, which left that nation a failed state with ISIS having a major presence's just 300 miles from the European shore. Then last week our two armchair warriors did much the same on Wednesday night when they colluded to get a majority in parliament for airstrikes on Syria.

Their track record on international affairs is one of abject failure, although you wouldn't know it from the mainstream media nor those MPs who voted for airstrikes, who whooped and hollered at both Cameron's sorry justification and Hilary Benn's threadbare sorry excuse for war.

It's worth noting while Cameron was pontificating from his high horse in the Common's, his former foreign secretary William Hague was letting the cat out of the bag next door in the House of Lords when he said: "Iraq and Syria need to be broken up."

One wonders what Cameron's allies in the Free Syrian Army think about this, when the only other parties involved in the Syrian civil war who have this as their aim are ISIS and smaller Islamic militias like al Nusra. Even Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the Turkish president balks at this, as it would allow the Kurdish people their State.

What we have been witnesses since 9/11 is a war of aggression on the part of the US and its allies against any and every state in the middle east which does not bow to the writ of western power and neoliberal economics. Bombing Syria is the latest example of this.

After the invasions of Iraq and the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime in Libya, the US and its allies failed to install lasting stability, let alone democracy in the aftermath. What has subsequently occurred only makes sense if it was never their main aim.

Never forget in today's world, war and chaos are big earners for some. Every generation has men like Basil Zaharoff who are willing to use chaos as a mean to enrich themselves, especially the UK which is never been short of merchants of death. Could it be Cameron and Benn would rather have the pickings from that, than a stable state led by independent minded governments in the middle east?

The Brimstone missiles which were're told the RAF will use in Syria, are conservatively estimated to cost £100,000 each; the heavier Paveway IV bombs are estimated to cost £30,000 each, and Hellfire missiles £71,300 each. Just the cost of those three armaments give us a fair idea of the profits to be made from war.

A spokesman for CND said:

“In Libya the bombing operation was quickly extended to military personnel being sent in to support rebels fighting Qaddafi on the ground. The bombing didn’t produce the results the government hoped for, so mission creep ensued. We know that operations in Libya cost up to £1.5 billion.

The Royal Service Institute said a seven month campaign against ISIS without putting British boots on the ground would cost around £390 million. However Cameron and his wing Hilary Benn both said the war on ISIS will be a long campaign. So the overall cost will be in the low billions.

The US, it's allies France and the gulf State satraps have been allegedly bombing ISIS for months now with very little in return as Simon Jenkins wrote in last Thursday's Guardian:

The role of airstrikes in modern war has barely advanced since the days of Bomber Harris. Bombs destroy buildings and equipment and kill people. They cannot take or hold territory. They cannot secure victory, let alone peace and prosperity. Air power can be effective in battlefield support for determined ground troops.

It may have helped contain Isis from straying into non-Sunni territory round Baghdad. But in general it is pointless if not followed up on the ground. Whatever is “degraded” can always be regraded, as Britain showed after the Blitz.

Cameron has no ground troops in Syria of his own or anyone else’s come to that. His so called seventy thousand troops on the ground were demolished in Wednesday's debate as a hollow shell, a desert mirage thought up by the secret intelligent service, having been homed to the prime minister's wishes, a la Tony Blair. [Why wouldn't the spooks dance to the prime ministers every whim when they witnessed close up how those senior spooks who helped draw up Blair's dirty Iraq war dossier have been promoted and prospered.]

As I wrote in my open letter to Labour MP's, the only ground troops worthy of the name who are willing to take back Raqqa and drive ISIS from Syria are the armed forces of the Syrian State who fight under Assad's banner, and those like the Shia Hezbollah who do Iran's bidding. Only an inclusive agreement which involves all parties to the civil war, including the Assad regime and Iran's proxies will bring an end to the Syrian civil war.

But none of this mattered to the Tory, LibDem and Blairite politicians who wilfully ignored the reality on the ground in Syria, and the long history of bad judgement of the two men leading them into the yes lobby.

Far from Jeremy Corbyn and his loyal Labour MP's being terrorist sympathisers, it's David Cameron and Hilary Benn who are the useful idiots of ISIS.

List of MP's who voted for Iraq War in 2003

The 66 Labour MPs who voted for airstrikes, many of the names are one and the same as those who voted for the 2003 Iraq war.