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War on Iran: Labour admits it’s willing to sacrifice British lives for Israeli crimes

Following Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran, Britain’s Labour government has faced renewed scrutiny for arming and supporting the rogue apartheid state. Now – understandably – the media is asking Labour and its ministers if they’re clueless or misanthropic enough to drag us into a wider regional conflict. Alarmingly, the response from Rachel Reeves suggests they very much are.

UK doublespeak as Israel pushes for war on Iran

Speaking to Sky News, Reeves said:

This is a fast moving situation. Israel has every right to defend itself. We also are very concerned about Iran’s nuclear deterrent.

Clearly, this is Reeves and Labour seeking to echo the Israeli government’s lie that its unprovoked assault was somehow an ‘act of self-defence’.

Reeves also said:

We have, in the past, supported Israel when there had been missiles coming in. I’m not going to comment on what might happen in the future. But so far we haven’t been involved. We’re sending in assets to protect ourselves and also potentially to support our allies.

And when pushed on whether Labour would be foolish enough to join this war, she said:

I’m not going to rule anything out at this stage. It’s a fast moving situation, a very volatile situation. But we don’t want to see escalation.

Any reasonable person would agree that if the Labour doesn’t want to see escalation in a Middle Eastern conflict, then they probably shouldn’t be shipping in more weapons and troops (or training Israeli soldiers, or sending regular flights from RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus, or pretending that the genocide in Gaza doesn’t exist). Indeed, many ordinary people did say this:

History repeating itself

Make no mistake – sending the UK army into this mess would mean sacrificing the lives of countless British people for the sake of propping up a crooked and genocidal regime (not to mention the countless more lives that our troops would cut short in the territories they invade).

This has the potential to be the invasion of Iraq all over again, and with that in mind, let’s remind ourselves of what a then-obscure Labour backbencher said in 2003 (emphasis added):

For those who say that this is a necessary and just conflict because it will bring about peace and security: September the 11th was a dreadful event. 8000 deaths in Afghanistan brought back none of those who died in the World Trade Centre. Thousands more deaths in Iraq will not make things right. It will set off a spiral of conflict, of hate, of misery, of desperation, that will fuel the wars, the conflict, the terrorism, the depression, and the misery of future generations.

You cannot humiliate the Palestinian people in the way that they’ve been humiliated and not expect some problem in the future. You cannot arm regimes like Iraq, Iran, and many others, without expecting further problems in the future.

Our message, our message today here in London, a million and more strong, is this. We want to live in a world free from war. The way to free us from the scourge of war is to free ourselves from the scourge of injustice, of poverty, and the misery that’s associated with that. This movement, this movement is giving that message to the British government. Stop now, or pay a political price.

That figure was Jeremy Corbyn, and history has proven him to be right on both the invasion of Iraq and how the Labour right would behave if they returned to power.

Remember the disaster that followed the invasion of Iraq

On the “spiral of conflict” which Corbyn predicted, Kim Sengupta wrote in 2023 of how the disastrous occupation of Iraq spawned much of the Middle Eastern conflict which followed. In part, this happened because US “neo-cons, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld” and others pursued:

a disastrous policy of de-Baathification – banning anyone who had been a member of the ruling Baath Party. This failed to take into account the fact that membership of the Baath was necessary to get government jobs in Iraq and did not indicate blind adherence to the regime. The ban also meant it became virtually impossible to keep the machinery of government running in an increasingly chaotic environment.

The occupying forces additionally made conditions for the Iraqi police forces intolerable, with Sengupta noting:

There was confusion, followed by anger when the American military decreed that patrols going out must be unarmed. Most of the Iraqi officers simply refused to set out and many walked off. Among them was Major Rashid Hussein Janabi who said, shaking his head in disbelief: “Do they even realise this is Baghdad?”

Sengupta highlighted how these decisions would go on to have staggering repercussions:

The conditions were brewing for a perfect storm. Many of the experienced Iraqi police and soldiers sent home under de-Baathification stayed away from the vicious insurgent war which followed. Worse, others joined the Islamist fighters, providing valuable experience and leadership.

One head of Isis military council, Abu Muhanad al Sweidawi, was a former member of the Iraqi military, as was his successor, Abu Ahmad al Alwani. Major Janabi, the disgruntled police officer I met in 2003, died fighting for Isis in Mosul 11 years later.

Within months of the regime’s fall, a savage insurgent war broke out, with bombings and shootings, kidnappings and murders. The death toll began to rise dramatically as Sunni insurgents stepped up their attacks on Western forces.

Then came an incendiary sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shias Waves of Sunni suicide bombers left Fallujah to wreak havoc on Baghdad, and Shia fighters, some in government-run militias, sought vengeance.

Insanity is repeating the same action yet expecting a different outcome

At this point, the impacts of the invasion of Iraq are well known to everyone. Now, just imagine the impacts of an even larger conflict overseen by an even more temperamental US president.

The horrors that will unfold really don’t bear thinking about, and yet Labour is immediately willing to sign us up.

We cannot allow them to do this again.

Featured image via Sky News

By John Shafthauer

This post was originally published on Canary.