The British Parliament on Friday backed a resolution calling for the country to render military assistance in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq. While 524 MPs voted in favour of the resolution, there were 43 ‘no’ votes.
Britain may send its fighter planes to join the U.S.-led alliance of forces in the region within 24 hours of the resolution being passed.
Earlier, opening the debate in the House of Commons, Prime Minister David Cameron warned that it could take years to defeat the “psychopathic forces” that the IS represent. Although the motion states that British air strikes would be confined to Iraq and would not include Syria, and further that the U.K. would not send in ground troops to assist the Iraqi forces, Mr. Cameron hinted that these priorities could change depending on the situation.
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He also said that the resolution had left Syria out because of the Labour Party’s concerns, but that he himself was clear that “ISIL needs to be destroyed in Syria as well as Iraq.” The shadow of Britain’s misadventure of 2003, when the Tony Blair government joined the war against Iraq and emerged badly singed, hung over the debate with several members drawing attention to its lessons.
Mr. Cameron argued that unlike in 2003, in this case intervention is “legal,” citing as proof the specific request from the Iraq government for armed intervention.Labour leader Ed Miliband wholeheartedly supported the motion, arguing that military intervention in this case fulfilled the criteria of being legal, just, proportional, and a “last resort” option. George Galloway, the plain speaking Respect Party member from Bradford, who opposed the motion, accused the members of Parliament of “moving around fictional armies in the region.” The Free Syrian army, he argued, was a “fiction” as the millions of dollars they received in arms and equipment was taken from them by the al-Qaeda, which had now mutated into IS.