Matthew Paris - you can't demand democracy for Syria and ignore it at home
Matthew Parris has an excellent article in the Spectator here in which he welcomes the decisions by David Cameron and Barak Obama to put to parliament and congress respectively the decision whether to respond with military strikes to Assad's apparent use of Sarin gas to murder 1,400 of his own civilians.
As an opponent of military intervention, Parris also welcomes the result of the vote in the House of Commons and David Cameron's decision to respect it. He points some fairly gentle fun at those who would have preferred the opposite decision and are now reduced to complaining about how the decision was taken and why it produced the "wrong" result.
"They complain about everything, in fact," he says, "but the awkward central truth. The awkward central truth is that Cameron failed to get Parliament’s approval because Cameron asked for Parliament’s approval. This they dare not criticise, and fall back on muttering that he asked Parliament in the wrong way."
He then admits that if the vote had gone the other way, many of those who were opposed to intervention would have played the same game in reverse.
"My side are no better," he explains. "Imagine a dozen Tory MPs had voted differently last week, and the result had been a narrow yes to intervention rather than a narrow no. Do you honestly think we doves would be cooing, ‘The people have spoken. Tally ho! Launch those missiles!’?
"Of course not. The doves would be doing what the hawks are now reduced to doing.
"They would be complaining about the whipping, complaining that by calling a snap debate Cameron bounced the Commons into war, complaining that insufficient information about the risks and the complexities was provided — and demanding the promised second vote to give them another chance of blocking military action.
"Finally they would be complaining that MPs do not anyway represent British public opinion."
I think he has a point, and one that some people on both sides could learn from.
As an opponent of military intervention, Parris also welcomes the result of the vote in the House of Commons and David Cameron's decision to respect it. He points some fairly gentle fun at those who would have preferred the opposite decision and are now reduced to complaining about how the decision was taken and why it produced the "wrong" result.
"They complain about everything, in fact," he says, "but the awkward central truth. The awkward central truth is that Cameron failed to get Parliament’s approval because Cameron asked for Parliament’s approval. This they dare not criticise, and fall back on muttering that he asked Parliament in the wrong way."
He then admits that if the vote had gone the other way, many of those who were opposed to intervention would have played the same game in reverse.
"My side are no better," he explains. "Imagine a dozen Tory MPs had voted differently last week, and the result had been a narrow yes to intervention rather than a narrow no. Do you honestly think we doves would be cooing, ‘The people have spoken. Tally ho! Launch those missiles!’?
"Of course not. The doves would be doing what the hawks are now reduced to doing.
"They would be complaining about the whipping, complaining that by calling a snap debate Cameron bounced the Commons into war, complaining that insufficient information about the risks and the complexities was provided — and demanding the promised second vote to give them another chance of blocking military action.
"Finally they would be complaining that MPs do not anyway represent British public opinion."
I think he has a point, and one that some people on both sides could learn from.
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