Watching David Cameron trying to whip up support for the possibility of bombing Syria gives me a strong and uncomfortable sense of deja vu. During the Afghan and Iraq conflicts I was the BBC's Defence Producer, a role which gave me a ringside seat to the political storm and military intervention and aftermath of the two conflicts. Cameron's early recall of Parliament and impassioned speeches, detailing President Assad's many and varied abuses of the Syrian people had more than an echo of Blair 10 years ago, confidently denouncing Saddam and his infamous (and as it so miserably turned out, completely invisible) weapons of mass destruction.
The MPs' rebellion left Cameron defeated and politically impotent, but it made me wonder if our PM wasn't playing a rather clever, longer game. It was kind of obvious, even to the casual observer, that the UK was not going to be heading into military action in the middle east, to use that phrase so beloved of news correspondents "any time soon". After the 12 gory years fighting in Afghanistan and the shorter, but no less blood-stained invasion of Iraq, the public is war-weary. As a nation we simply don't have the stomach for yet another C-17 discharging its cargo of flag-draped coffins at RAF Brize Norton and more recently, RAF Lyneham.
Surely Cameron must have foreseen this? The fact that he appeared to be working to Obama's timetable would have been doubly off-putting for MPs. We like America and the cachet that comes from being a friend, we just don't want to be THE friend anymore. Remember those Blair/Bush love-ins? The back slapping, the lingering looks, the shared belief that God was guiding them personally - pure car-crash TV; nauseating but compulsive viewing.
Whatever your opinions on Cameron, he is not a stupid man. He does not lack judgement, he knows how to read people and situations. So why did he rush the whole vote? I rather wonder whether he actively wanted a way out. By going to the Commons with some intelligence material but not all of it (funny how US Secretary of State John Kerry provided a whole lot more just 2 days later) and lots of tactics but no clear strategy, he was almost inviting a rejection of his motion. Perhaps he wanted to be seen to be doing and saying all the right things to keep Obama onside, while actually maintaining a stance of non-intervention by proxy.
Obama's premise is that military intervention would comprise a few quick surgical strikes to serve as a "shot across the bows" and show Assad that the use of chemical weapons will not be tolerated. Great, but then what? The trouble is with launching any kind of strike is that it doesn't end there and there is no such thing as limited military intervention. That's a bit like saying someone is a 'little bit pregnant'. War, like pregnancy demands to have a beginning, middle and an end. And there will always, always be a lasting legacy to be taken care of.
Rather hilariously it's now the French who are rushing forward to be America's BFF. Anyone remember those 'cheese eating surrender monkeys' jibes from 2003? Or the 'freedom fries' that took the place of French fries in US eateries? How quickly we forget. I don't get the impression that Cameron is feeling remotely threatened by the French and American presidents' sudden closeness, or by Russia's alleged assertion that Britain is a small island that no-one pays any attention to. I reckon that he's (probably rightly) predicting that Syria will go belly up and the further away he is from it, the better to enter the pre-election period of 2014/15.
It's all a gamble. Would military action force the Syrian government to negotiate? Or would it effectively topple Assad thus creating a vacuum and lighting the fuse to the bone-dry tinderbox that is the Sunni, Shi ite, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, jihadist cocktail just waiting for the opportunity to control Syria's future? Obama's hope that any attack would form part of a broader strategy to "support rebel forces" and ultimately "allow Syria to free itself", does sound somewhat naïve.
Syria has no credible opposition, there simply isn't an organised, democratic faction ready to step in and take control if Assad goes. That is both the harsh truth and the main stumbling block to any kind of intervention in the murderous, miserable hell-hole that is now Syria.
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