British air strikes on Isis in Syria: In violent times, we need heroes who pursue peace

Vengeance is swift in the movies, and our instinct on Syria is the same - but real life is not so simple

Francois Hollande and David Cameron have been quick to state that bombing campaigns will be initiated against Isis in Syria (Getty)

‘What do we do?” The question is put to Captain America in the trailer for the next Marvel movie Civil War. The reply from the superhero with the star-spangled costume and shield is inevitable: “We fight.” Cue bombs, bangs, bullets and flying fists as he and his allies go up against their enemies, meeting fire with fire. Again.

“We fight.” In Spectre, the James Bond film that divides British spies into geeks and meatheads, the answer is always the same: if somebody’s in your way, kill them. Quickly. Bond has always been about guns, but this version of him doesn’t have anything else to offer.

“Is this really what you want?” he is asked after countless people have died, including nameless foot soldiers and passers-by caught up in the carnage. His reply is truthful: “I never stop to think about it.”

We need new heroes, because our current ones tell us that if we are threatened, if we are hurt, if we are wronged, then we should strike back without mercy. Don’t worry about the consequences, just fire. Bomb. Strafe. Wound. Kill.

Our leaders strike the same poses after every atrocity, as President Hollande did after Paris, pledging to track down the attackers and sounding – as David Cameron and others have done before him – like Liam Neeson growling at his daughter’s kidnappers in Taken: “I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you.”

That spirit is in the air again this weekend as politicians try to decide what to do about Isis, who help the hawks by dressing in black with masks and sinister flags, giving themselves the look of Hollywood bad guys. (Specifically, the ones in the new Star Wars film The Force Awakens. If only they were in another galaxy, far, far away ….)

Bomb Syria, that is the answer many politicians are instinctively going for. Bomb the servants of Isis anywhere they are, drive them off the face of the earth. Never mind what happens after. Never mind the lack of a plan to rebuild the country. Never mind the total lack of an international coalition with Arab troops that might – just – have a chance of making such action worthwhile and giving it legitimacy.

Never mind the thought that Isis is merely the current manifestation of a new force for evil that will not disappear even if a ground war is won, but will resurface in our railway stations, at our shopping centres, in our pop concerts, with suicide belts and AK47s. Just bomb the b******, it’s the right thing to do; that is what is being said.

It’s understandable. We do need to do something. “In response to a horrific outrage like the one in Paris, or the one in Beirut, we shouldn’t have a hot-headed knee-jerk response,” said Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats. “But neither should you have the kind of hot-headed knee-jerk response that Jeremy Corbyn and Alex Salmond have kind of exemplified, which is, ‘You mustn’t do anything, ever.’”

So we need new heroes, and we also need a new way of waging war. RAF jets are already bombing Isis in Iraq, but David Cameron wants to “strike at the head of the snake” by joining with efforts by the United States, France and others to attack the group’s headquarters in Raqqa. That would be a gesture of solidarity, but what else would it achieve?

The defence experts at the Royal United Services Institute say Isis can only be defeated by “credible Arab ground forces prepared to fight block by block”. Where are they? The global coalition against Isis includes 63 countries, but it is not ready to put in ground troops. Mr Cameron says there are 70,000 armed moderates in the country ready to fight Isis, but they are scattered all over the place, working with different factions, far from ready to form a cohesive unit.

Some are fighting troops loyal to President Assad, but they are apparently supposed to forget that and unite against Isis. So are the Kurds, who are being bombed by the Turkish, who are also supposed to step up and join the fight. Although that’s awkward, as they have just shot down a jet belonging to the Russians, who are meant to be their new allies in this, but who are actually bombing in support of Assad as much as against Isis. As the veteran Labour MP Dennis Skinner said: “What a crazy war. Enemies to the right of us, enemies to the left of it. Keep out!”

But where is the diplomatic solution? Talks have gone on for three years. The new International Syria Support Group of countries has only just begun its work, but David Cameron says we cannot afford to wait. We must bomb now.

If we agree with that, how do we rebuild Syria afterwards? There are both hope and good intentions in the dossier he released on 26 November but no clear plan, just as there was not one before we invaded Iraq in 2003. It’s déjà vu all over again.

Without a post-war plan, without Arab troops, sending Tornados to join the bombing runs over Raqqa would be like sending James Bond to shoot into Blofeld’s desert lair and run away again.

Where does it come from, this urge to strike without care of the consequences? It is the morality of the frontier, the ethos of the United States, a land founded by men and women who went out into the wild, seized the land and fought off anyone who tried to stop them. This is shown in all its gory glory in The Revenant, the new film that is apparently about to land Leonardo DiCaprio his long-awaited first Oscar. He plays a man whose friends rob him and leave him for dead in the wilderness, before murdering his son, who is half Native American.

DiCaprio’s character rises, survives the hostility of nature and sets about tracking down those who betrayed him before murdering them, one by one. The Hollywood Reporter says people have been leaving before the end, in disgust. But DiCaprio will probably get his Oscar, because this is a story at the heart of America’s culture – and by extension, increasingly, our own.

We may not have the right to bear arms in this country but we are being taught that frontier justice is what is right and what works. It’s not just a male thing either, look at Furiosa and the howitzer-wielding Vuvulani in Mad Max: Fury Road or the arrows of Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games series. The trouble is, it’s just not true. Hate breeds hate. Violence breeds violence.

Donald Trump could not have been more wrong when he said that the attacks in Paris would never have happened if the people in the cafés, in the streets and in the Bataclan watching Eagles of Death Metal had been carrying guns. A bloody shootout, a martyr’s farewell – that is what the attackers wanted.

They belong to a death cult embedded in Islam and they are sucking us into their murderous cause, because we are in thrall to killing, too.

Half the weekly box-office charts in this country so far this year have been topped by films that portray guns and violence as the answer. Four out of the top five grossing titles in the UK in 2015 do the same.

Even good old British Doctor Who has become infested with guns.

We need to do better than this, for our own sakes. So where else should we look for our heroes? How about just across the river from the Houses of Parliament, where a huge statue of the nurse Mary Seacole will soon be erected. George Osborne quietly gave the money to make it happen as part of his Autumn Statement on 25 November.

Born in Jamaica to a Creole mother and a Scottish soldier father, “Mother Seacole” cared for cholera victims there and in Panama before going to the war in Crimea at her own expense – against government advice – to set up a hospital built from driftwood, packing cases and anything else she could salvage.

The war correspondent Sir William Howard Russell wrote in 1857: “I trust that England will not forget one who nursed the sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them, and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead.” She was mentioned in dispatches, but England did forget for a century.

Then in 2004, after a campaign, an online poll declared her the greatest black Briton of all time. The then Education Secretary, Michael Gove, tried to leave her out of the newly revised national curriculum, because some historians said she was being hyped above Florence Nightingale for ideological reasons. But she was reinstated, and now the Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust has provided a site for the statue by Martin Jennings, best known for his equally imposing bronze of Sir John Betjeman wrestling with the wind at St Pancras station.

Some of the £240,000 made available by Mr Osborne will also be spent on a memorial garden “for health workers, both civilian and military, who have put themselves in harm’s way” in war zones or at times of crisis such as the Ebola outbreak in west Africa.

So what would Mary Seacole say, if her statue was standing there now and able to speak across the river to the Commons? “Bomb if you must,” perhaps, “but have a care for those who get hurt.”

After the debacle of Iraq we know that military intervention must be carried out with the greatest care, with detailed preparation and a plan to bring peace and repair the damage done.

David Cameron points out that Britain has provided 20 million food rations in Syria, and brought clean water to 2.5 million people affected by the conflict so far. That’s something to be proud of, but there has to be a willingness and a commitment to do more, immediately and over very many years, if this isn’t going to be another hamfisted macho punch-up of the kind that both Captain America and IS adore.

This time around, it is not enough just to strike for the sake of striking. We’re not playing a game. We’re not in a movie. We need a new kind of heroism. If we must cause even more hurt, then we must also be sure we know how to heal.