Just War and Syria
Moral Maze
BBC
4.4 • 623 Ratings
🗓️ 26 November 2015
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Prime Minister, David Cameron, will make his case for bombing ISIL in Syria this week. Some commentators are predicting that, if parliament votes in favour, the raids could start as early as next week. This will mean our going into a coalition not only with France and America but also with Russia - a country that has been a long-standing ally of the Syrian leader President Assad, the man whom we wanted to bomb only two years ago. The adage "my enemy's enemy is my friend" dates back at least to the 4th century BC. It might be harsh to say that we're basing our foreign policy on an ancient proverb from a Sanskrit treatise on statecraft, but it's hard to avoid the parallels. Is it, though, a moral justification for going to war? On the Moral Maze this week we discuss what is meant by the phrase "just war" and the morality of pacifism. Has the pacifist case been heard enough? Chaired by Michael Buerk with Claire Fox, Giles Fraser, Michael Portillo and Melanie Phillips. Witnesses are Dr Alexander Moseley, Richard Norman, Helen Drewery and Richard Streatfield.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a programme from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:03.5 | Good evening. David Cameron will set out the case in Parliament tomorrow for Britain to attack Syria. |
| 0:09.9 | If MPs agree and the betting seems to be enough of them probably will, |
| 0:13.2 | then the RAF could be bombing ISIL targets there theoretically by the end of the week, |
| 0:18.0 | certainly before Christmas. |
| 0:19.5 | There are a few circles to be squared before then, of course. |
| 0:22.2 | For a start, the last time the government sought parliamentary approval to attack Syria, |
| 0:26.2 | it was to help bring down President Assad. |
| 0:28.8 | Now we'd be attacking Assad's enemies, |
| 0:31.1 | in concert with, amongst others, the Russians, |
| 0:33.6 | whose clear objective is to keep Assad in power. |
| 0:36.6 | The 2,000-year-old doctrine that my enemy's enemy must by definition be my friend is in vogue, |
| 0:42.6 | as in Winston Churchill, who when chided for cozing up to Stalin in a real world war, |
| 0:48.4 | famously replied that if Hitler had invaded hell, |
| 0:51.4 | he would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons. |
| 0:56.2 | Mr Cameron will also have to overcome scepticism about the effectiveness of air strikes, or air strikes alone. |
| 1:01.8 | Not to mention the record of our past interventions in the region. |
| 1:05.2 | Only this morning his former Foreign Secretary William Haig said the war in Iraq had gone seriously wrong and had been a mistake. |
| 1:12.7 | But the Paris killings, coming on top of other ISIL atrocities, |
| 1:15.9 | seems to have changed both the political discourse and the public mood here and elsewhere. |
| 1:21.2 | Would bombing Syria be a just war, and what would make it so? |
| 1:25.8 | And looked at another way, if the enemy consists of insane religious fanatics, |
... |
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