I nearly agreed for a moment...

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There is little that Owen Smith has said during the Labour leadership debate thus far that I find it easy to agree with.  Until yesterday, when I found myself agreeing with what I thought was a bold and realistic statement … and then he issued a qualification so sweeping as to come close to negating what he’d said in the first place.

He is surely only stating the obvious when he says that, eventually, there will need to be negotiations with ISIS, or whatever they want to call themselves at the time.  I might have been inclined to add “or its successors”, on the basis that even if there were to be a military ‘victory’ at some point, the ideas and ideology will not simply go away.  Accommodation and agreement will be necessary at some point, as they have been in other situations around the world in order to bring an end to conflict.

And I thought he was also spot-on in arguing that the leaders of ISIS are clearly not interested in negotiating at present; bringing them formally round the conference table today is clearly a non-starter.  But it’s usually a mistake to assume that all members of any organisation are entirely homogeneous in their beliefs and aims; whilst the idea that ISIS has some sort of ‘moderate’ wing may seem highly unlikely, it is not certain that, at all times and in all circumstances there is no possibility of dialogue with anyone.

I thought Smith was only stating the obvious up to this point.  And given the way in which all other politicians are keen to demonstrate only their absolute resolve in giving no quarter and accepting no compromises, it was also a very brave thing to say.  The condemnation by others which followed was as predictable as it was wrong-headed.

The sad part is that, having actually made a brave stand for the first time that I can remember, his reaction to the criticism and condemnation was to backtrack to such an extent that it made his initial statement almost meaningless.  Arguing that there can be no negotiation “… until they renounce violence, cease all acts of terror and commit themselves to a peaceful settlement” is imposing a level of pre-condition on negotiation which was not imposed, for instance, on the IRA or on numerous other violent groups around the world.  Those criticising Smith know all this as well as he does.

Sadly, the way in which he backtracked so rapidly and completely tells us more about him than his initial bold statement.

What's in a word

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To listen to UK Ministers, one would believe that only Russians kill civilians in Syria, ‘we’ only kill ‘terrorists’.  It’s not credible; there can never be any guarantee that anyone dropping a bomb from the air will only kill those it deems combatants.  But there was another thing that struck me about what Michael Fallon said yesterday as well.  He said that whilst the UK, US etc. are bombing ‘terrorists’, Russia is bombing ‘legitimate opposition forces’.  I’m sure that’s a distinction which will be of great comfort to those being killed by both groups.

It brought to mind the way in which words regularly change their meaning.  It’s a natural attribute of any language, but changing meanings and different interpretations don’t always help rational debate, particularly when those involved in the debate stretch words to mean whatever they want them to mean.  ‘Terrorism’ is a case in point.

As I understand it, the word originated in France as terrorisme to describe the reign of terror during the French revolution.  It referred specifically to actions being taken by the state against its citizens – almost completely the reverse of the way in which it is generally used today.  In the mouths of politicians, it has become a catch-all for anyone using violence in pursuit of political objectives, excluding, of course, those who are seen as friends, and those who use violence as a means of promoting ‘acceptable’ objectives.  As a result, some people can be ‘terrorists’ today, ‘resistance fighters’ tomorrow, and ‘friendly allied governments’ the day after, whilst continuing to do the same things in the same way.  Or all three of those things, depending on who’s describing them.

It’s not only singularly unhelpful as a word when used like that, it’s also a cop-out to avoid debating, or even considering, the underlying causes and issues. But they have to be considered sometime; responding to violence with violence kills individuals but doesn’t kill grievances or beliefs.  On the contrary, it often reinforces them.

The UK has managed to get itself involved in yet another war in the Middle East, and looks likely to be dragged further in; and as is their wont, the politicians have described it as being part of the ‘war on terror’.  IS, or whatever they’re calling themselves today, are a pretty nasty and unpleasant bunch of people.  And the way they administer the territory that the have captured is closer to the original use of the word terrorisme than most of what we’ve seen from many groups to which the term has been applied. 

But I’m simply not convinced that bombing them is a path likely to meet with success in the long term.  We’re sending aircraft to bomb them largely because we have to be seen to be doing something, and this is something that we can do.  But being ‘something that we can do’ is not the same as being ‘something which will make a difference for the long term’.

Throughout human history, one of the hardest forces to tackle has been force based on an absolute religious belief.  The perspective that God demands that we submit to his will, and if anyone refuses, then they must either be forced to submit or be killed is a strange one to most of us today, even if it really isn’t that much different from the perspective of some Christian armies in the past, or that of the Inquisition.  To us, it looks dated and medieval, of course; but that’s a matter of context, not of nature.

The key point is that it isn’t a perspective which can simply be defeated by force.  It's an absolutist idea which needs to be tackled and subdued, but history indicates that we’re more likely to be successful in doing that through trade, education and negotiation.  It’s not often that I find myself half wishing that I was wrong; that a bombing campaign which kills a few thousand now will achieve its aim and avoid the deaths of many, many more later.  Such a belief would be easier in some ways than standing back and saying ‘truthfully, we can’t sort this quickly’ which I guess is why so many have adopted it.  But I can see no successful precedent for such a belief.  And nor could I bring myself to weigh human lives against each other in such a callous fashion - although that's something which seems to come very easily to governments.

Wars can certainly be ‘won’ in the short term.  But time and again history teaches us – even if we rarely learn from it – that the ‘solution’ to one conflict is often part of the cause of the next.  Fundamentalist beliefs cannot be killed by killing those who hold them – even if they could be identified, and even if the thousands of innocents killed in the process were deemed a price worth paying.  Ideas can only be defeated by other, better ideas.  Ignoring that simple reality has already cost the world far too many lives; failure to act on it is costing more on a daily basis.

Control of territory doesn't defeat an idea

Tweet Last week, the First Minister treated us to his views on the question of bombing Syria.  The first point he made – that there is no possibility of negotiation with ISIS - was entirely sound.  At the heart of their worldview is the certainty that they know what God’s will is, and that God wants them to impose his will on others.  It’s hard to see how there can be any scope for negotiating with divine will.

Carwyn Jones also called for a ‘plan’ for dealing with ISIS as a context for deciding on what if any military action should be taken.  Again, I entirely agree with that view.  A major part of the problems which the world faces in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan is that military intervention took place without any sort of a plan for the longer term. 

He didn’t tell us, though, what such a plan might look like.  In fairness, I can’t really blame him.  Although I’m equally certain that we need a plan, I don’t know what it might look like either.  But those of us who want a plan but won’t have much idea of what such a plan might be are far from being alone in the world.  The bigger problem is not that no-one really has a plan or knows where to start; it is that some people pretend they have a plan without being able to articulate it, whilst yet others, faced with the frustration of not knowing what to do simply fall back on military action as the ‘solution’.

For what it’s worth, I don’t actually doubt the sincerity of those arguing for a bombing campaign to attack ISIS in Syria as well as in Libya.  What I do doubt is the efficacy of that as an approach.  It seems to conflate military ‘victory’ with winning a war against an ideology.  There is no question in my mind that bombing ISIS can and will degrade their military capability on the ground; there is evidence already that the bombing campaign has helped the non-ISIS groups engaged in the war on the ground to regain territory.  But the battle isn’t really about territory at all.

A former director of the CIA was quoted in the Sunday Times as saying that “Their claim is that they are acting out the will of God … and nothing cuts against that narrative more than defeating them.”  I’m not sure that that actually displays very much understanding of the mindset behind ISIS, and without understanding their perspective rather better than that, progress is likely to be limited.  From their perspective, it isn’t a “claim”; they have an absolutely certain knowledge that they are implementing God’s will.  And from that perspective, military losses and setbacks are more likely to be interpreted as God testing their resolve than as a sign that they might be in any way misinterpreting God's will.

Yesterday, Cameron referred to ISIS as a ‘death cult’; others have talked about an ‘ideology of hate’ and used various other similar phrases.  It might be good for sound bites, but none of this shows any understanding of just how different a worldview we are dealing with.  Name-calling may help to justify sending in the bombers, but it doesn’t do much as a way of countering the ideology.

Over the last week, far too many politicians trying to appear responsible have said that they will “listen to” what Cameron has to say before deciding whether they will support a bombing campaign or not.  To an extent, that serves to legitimise the principle; the decision on whether to bomb or not becomes merely a matter of considering the detail.  No matter how careful or precise any campaign of bombing is, there will inevitably be civilian casualties.  And although the ideology which is the target will end up controlling less territory, it will probably emerge with a strengthened resolve and a more diffuse and even harder-to-tackle structure.  Not for the first time, we will end up failing to learn the lesson that the use of military might against an idea never really resolves anything in the long term.

Fighting fire with fire rarely works

Tweet The gulf between recognising that there is a problem and finding the ‘solution’, can often be immense, and it’s unrealistic to believe that every problem even has a solution.  In the world of politics, though, politicians feel a requirement upon them to claim that there is a solution, that they know what it is, and that they must express such claims with as much sincerity as they can muster.

It’s in that light that I attempt to interpret what Cameron said yesterday about the danger which ISIS represents, and the ‘solutions’ which he proposed.

He talked about the need to ‘enforce’ British values.  I’m far from convinced that I know what these ‘British values’ are, let alone what makes them uniquely British.  But insofar as I have any concept of what those values might be, I’m pretty sure that ‘enforcing’ a set of beliefs and values on others isn’t amongst them.  Indeed, I would have thought that that was more the speciality of ISIS and similar groups.

He also justified his desire to bomb targets in Syria on the basis that ISIS don’t respect borders.  But most borders are where they are – in often arbitrary places – as a result of past wars and/or settlements of past disputes.  ISIS, in that sense are ‘merely’ tearing up past settlements and creating a new state by use of force.  That’s exactly what other military campaigns have done over the centuries – and the UK traditionally has a lengthy, and not exactly honourable, record of doing just that.

Cameron continually talks about ‘the true meaning of Islam’, claiming that those who don’t share a more mainstream interpretation are somehow not true to the religion.  This one simply doesn’t seem to stand up to any scrutiny.  Within any religion, there are always different interpretations of the ‘true’ meaning, and the adherents of each will always believe that their interpretation is the only really ‘true’ one.  And the problem with this sort of ‘truth’ is that it cannot be determined by majority vote.  For those who hold a particular viewpoint, their ‘truth’ is absolute.

The ‘truth’ which drives ISIS and similar groups seems to me to be simply this – “we know what god’s laws are, it is god’s will that we all obey those laws, and we are imposing god’s will”.  It’s so far away from modern Christian interpretations (although not so far away from those of the relatively recent past), let alone the secular viewpoint of an increasing number of us, as to be almost incomprehensible in a western context, but for those who hold that view it’s so obvious as to need no further explanation.

And that brings me to my biggest issue with what Cameron is saying and doing.  However strange and alien some ideas may seem, bombs and bullets cannot change them, let alone kill them.  They can kill some of the people who hold those ideas, certainly.  But they are unlikely to kill them all, even if that were to be the aim.  There is a real danger that they actually have the opposite effect, and simply encourage more people to hold those ideas.  And one of the few certainties is that they will kill many innocents along the way.

I fully accept what Cameron and others are saying, in that armed groups of fundamentalists ranging across the world using extreme and often barbaric violence to impose their world view is a danger which needs to be countered somehow.  And I won’t pretend for a moment that I know with any certainty how to counter that threat.  But I just don’t believe that more bombing and destruction carried out in the name of all of us, simply because our leaders don’t know what else to do, is much of an answer to anything.