Think you're on the moral high ground by opposing air strikes in Syria? Sorry but you couldn't be more wrong

Who is learning the lessons of Rwanda, or Srebrenica?

RAF Tornado jets have carried out the first British bombing runs over Syria (PA)

“This is not 2003. We must not use past mistakes as an excuse for indifference or inaction.” Yesterday, David Cameron called on Parliament to step out of the shadow of the Iraq War and onto the battlefield against Isis. After more than ten hours of debate and Hilary Benn’s moving case for intervention, MPs stood with the Prime Minister and approved the British strikes against Isis in Syria.

Beyond Westminster, however, it was quite another story. Public support for air strikes fell sharply from 59 per cent last week to a sorry 48 per cent, whereas opposition to military action grew by 11 per cent. This is in spite of the recent attacks in Paris, Beirut and the Sinai.

The public debate has been unedifying, the latest episode of which included de-selection threats to Labour MPs who contemplated voting for airstrikes. It appears that, for some, inaction is the only moral cause. It is a truism that has haunted Britain ever since the Iraq War of 2003, since cries of “War Criminal” were first chanted at Tony Blair.

In this “new politics”, anyone who does not agree with the Labour leader’s socialism is characterised as “Blairite”. Those who vote for air strikes are now “war criminals”, in spite of their legality (plus a UN resolution, which Corbyn insisted on). The Government is accused of planning “murder”, even if the missiles are pointed at Isis. Labour MPs who dare vote with the government loathe Corbyn more than Isis, claimed one an award-winning journalist.

Nothing better captures the calamity of it all than clash between Jeremy Corbyn and his shadow Foreign Secretary, Hilary Benn. Even before the Benn’s extraordinary speech outclassed Corbyn’s (and Cameron’s) and won the applause of MPs from all sides, Corbyn and his allies had already warned Labour MPs that should they vote for air strikes in Syria, they will bring about deaths. To which Benn’s spokesman simply replied, ‘inaction has a cost in lives too.’

Somehow, we have allowed the doctrine of inaction to claim monopoly on morals. While the last Iraq War was declared and fought on a false premise, a perpetual dispute on whether Blair lied in 2003 is meaningless in today’s terms. For two wrongs do not make a right. If we become a pacifist nation now, we will not resurrect the lives lost in Iraq, yet may well cost lives that could otherwise have been saved from Isis.

“Ah, but we must learn the lessons of history,” opponents of air strikes would say. But what lessons are we learning exactly? Who is learning from the history of 1990s, when up to 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda as the world watched on? Who is learning the lessons of the Srebrenica Massacre, where more than 8,000 Muslims were massacred, again amid the apathy of the world? Above all, who will listen to the Syrian activist who lived under Assad who could not afford to choose between two evils?

While Parliament voted for military action last night, the public debate has indicated that the monopoly on morals is now a disease running in our collective memory. 12 years on, it is high time we learn the right lessons of Iraq, for our moral compass has been pointing in the wrong direction for far too long.