Vastly Superior

Kevin Maguire writes:

Jeremy Corbyn’s record on foreign wars is vastly superior to that of Theresa May, who repeatedly made bad international decisions – with deadly consequences – as a Tory MP, Home Secretary and then Prime Minister.

May’s predictable endorsement of an irrational US President’s impulsive missile strike contrasted sharply with Corbyn’s more thoughtful call for a renewed drive to secure peace and a United Nations investigation into the sarin gas war crime.

Antagonistic Labour MPs, who are training their guns on a party leader most want toppled, piled in behind the Conservative Prime Minister and an unhinged Republican President.

Reasoned argument was drowned out in the din of fratricide. 

And, because former colonial powers such as Britain and the US dropped explosives, the cycle of violence was perpetuated. 

You might remember that May voted for and Corbyn against an invasion of Afghanistan that claimed the lives of 456 British service personnel. 

The same is true of a disastrous Iraq adventure which cost another 179 armed forces’ lives and those of tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of innocents in the devastated country. 

She backed, and he was against, the bombing of Libya which transformed the North African state into killing fields for jihadis and unleashed waves of boat migrants prepared to risk drowning in the Mediterranean. 

May would have deployed the RAF four years ago as an Islamic State air force had the likes of Corbyn, Ed Miliband and a platoon of Tory rebels not put up a resistance which was right in 2013 and remains right in 2017.

And ignoring civilian deaths in Syria and Iraq by a US/UK-led coalition currently targeting the Islamist medieval barbarians is disdainful double-standards when Assad’s violent ally, Russia, is ­justifiably blasted.

Assad is a monster and I don’t offer an easy answer but nor do armed politicians when they’ve failed time after time. 

Viewing the Trump-May reflex through rose-coloured spectacles, before dismissing Corbyn’s judgment with green bilious glasses, is to ignore damning evidence.

Remember that Corbyn opposed the regime during the Blair era in 2002, when Assad was invited for tea with the Queen in Buckingham Palace – just as he opposed Saddam during the Thatcher years when Britain backed a dictator slaughtering Iraqis and Iranians.

It is to Jeremy Corbyn’s credit that he has consistently championed human rights and peace.

Surely he deserves a fair hearing.