Hilary Benn's Dreadful Speech

[cressida]

Totally agree

 

So the Tories would like Corbyn to go, seems like they are more worried about him than they let on.

 

I wasn't particularly impressed with Hilary Benn's speech either and I am against air strikes, though I've only read they have targeted oil fields so far.

 

Maybe bombs are falling on empty spaces, I heard Isis are hiding in tunnels and civilians' houses!

[Eater Sundae]

I couldn't agree more. Benn's father will be turning in his grave.

 

No he wouldn't. Tony Benn was very supportive of his son having different views.

[cassity]

Very original .

 

Thank you.

 

Tony Benn was still alive when his son supported the Iraq war in 2003.

 

I'm not sure how that actually supports his sons views

 

As to the speech, it might have been a fine bit of oratory, but the arguments were essentially a rehash of the arguments we heard used to justify the Iraq war. If military action in Syria was justified on the same basis as the Iraq war then I would actually be opposed to it.

 

History has repeatedly shown that great orators can feed into present day fears. 'Great' orator doesn't necessarily mean great oratory.

 

No he wouldn't. Tony Benn was very supportive of his son having different views.

 

If it helps I'm also supportive of HB's ability to have different views..doesn't mean I have to agree with or support those views.

[Phanerothyme]

This summed it up for me:

 

https://www.facebook.com/JJDO2/photos/a.344335112430843.1073741828.314663228731365/441726332691720/?type=3&fref=nf&pnref=story

 

The House of Commons was in raptures when Hilary Benn presented the chamber with a **** wrapped beautifully in a fancy box.

“I was just inspired” said the Labour cabinet minister. “I simply wrapped the [turd] in some cling film to keep down the smell, sprinkled it with some glitter and wrapped it up in a beautiful box and tied it with an enormous bow.

Politicians from both sides of the house, media pundits and journalists were so impressed, he is now being lauded as the next Labour leader.

“It’s beautiful” said a BBC spokesman. “What happens next?”

“Oh, the whole country still has to open the box and eat the [turd]” replied Mr Benn.

[RickyM]

I wish all the Labour MPs that voted with the war wongers would get de-selected by their CLPs.

[Hogg]

This summed it up for me:

 

https://www.facebook.com/JJDO2/photos/a.344335112430843.1073741828.314663228731365/441726332691720/?type=3&fref=nf&pnref=story

 

The House of Commons was in raptures when Hilary Benn presented the chamber with a **** wrapped beautifully in a fancy box.

“I was just inspired” said the Labour cabinet minister. “I simply wrapped the [turd] in some cling film to keep down the smell, sprinkled it with some glitter and wrapped it up in a beautiful box and tied it with an enormous bow.

Politicians from both sides of the house, media pundits and journalists were so impressed, he is now being lauded as the next Labour leader.

“It’s beautiful” said a BBC spokesman. “What happens next?”

“Oh, the whole country still has to open the box and eat the [turd]” replied Mr Benn.

 

Sadly, all too true. There are some in the Labour party that will spout any rubbish in order to get rid of Corbyn. However, he is clearly not going anywhere soon. One has to wonder why the establishment is so afraid of him.

[Justin Smith]

Few speeches in the House of Commons have received such accolades as Hilary Benn's last week during the debate on the decision to extend the UK's bombing campaign to Syria. Not only was it warmly applauded in the chamber, but most commentators in the media have been vying with each other to heap praise on what has been generally regarded as one of the best speeches on foreign affairs in living memory.

 

I profoundly disagree with this near consensus. Indeed, having watched it, I feel like the boy in the story about the king and his magic suit of clothes, for the following reasons. The speech was high on emotionally charged rhetoric, but very low on substance or even basic logic. We all know by now what a vile organisation is, but this does not of itself justify the course of action favoured by the Cameron government. Indeed, Benn's speech was in my view notable for a near complete absence of any serious consideration of the consequences of a bombing campaign as outlined in Cameron's address to the Commons.

 

We know that Cameron underpinned his case for bombing with a 'strategy' involving 70,000 'moderate' Syrian fighters, a figure which has quite rightly been widely questioned, even ridiculed, by various experts on Syria. The figure is redolent of the '45 minutes' moonshine in Blair's dodgy dossier. Moreover, even if this figure was correct, most of the Syrian opposition are far more interested in fighting the Syrian government than they are in fighting Isis. If we armed the so called 'Free Syrian army' with even more weapons, the outcome is likely to be a never ending proxy war between these forces and their Western and Wahabi backers on the one hand and the Syrian government, Russia and Iran on the other, leading to even more bloodshed.

 

Cameron, of course, is a serial supporter of armed interventions in the Middle East, all of which have turned out to be disasters. There is no reason to assume that his latest foray into Syria will be any different.

 

Benn's speech essentially fell into the 'we must do something' category. But this is no substitute for a strategy. Indeed, I think it was irresponsible of Benn to advocate military action without any overt consideration of the possible consequences. Moreover, perhaps we should also consider the reasons why his speech was so warmly applauded, both inside and outside the Commons. In my view, it had a lot to do with the attempt to destroy Corbyn's leadership. No wonder Tory MPs were cheering so loudly and the Conservative media were lavishing such praise on it.

 

Well in my view, if it quickly destroys Corbyn`s leadership, so the Labour party can get someone electable in and get rid of the Tories, that`s a very positive side effect.

[Phanerothyme]

There are no party divisions between Tory and New Labour, they represent the political wing of the hedge fund industry, working both sides of the so-called political divide.

 

I think the problem Corbyn's Labour have is that "electable" essentially now means being a neoliberal centrist, and handing over as much of the state to private enterprise as possible.

 

If being electable required an act satanic fellatio, some politicians would do it at the drop of Lucifer's Y-fronts. Others would take convincing with some rhetorical tosh/false dichotomoies to make themselves feel less soiled, but would kneel all the same in the end. Surprisingly, a few politicians would not do it at all.

 

They're usually easy to spot by their almost complete absence from the media, but Corbyn is flouting that convention, and it's clearly sticking in peoples' throats here and there.

 

Which, regardless of Corbyn's ultimate political fate, is always a good thing.

 

---------- Post added 08-12-2015 at 16:38 ----------

 

But the Raf also targeted oil refineries to, presumably slow down ISIS funding, which you rightly pointed out needed to be stopped. Not bad for day one.

 

Hence the big rush to get it through Parliament because oilfields are notoriously small, well camouflaged, and can move extremely quickly over difficult terrain.

[L00b]

I wish all the Labour MPs that voted with the war wongers would get de-selected by their CLPs.

I wish all the Labour MPs who voted to invade Iraq way-back-when but voted against ISIL strikes this time round would get frog-marched onto a plane then flown over there as peace negotiators.

 

Takes a rather special case of the stupids to get it so wrong twice in a row.

[unbeliever]

I don't get it.

 

The government is doing exactly what the UN asked us to do.

With Iraq, there was no such request. We were taking down a stable government in the hope of getting something better in its place. The 2 situations are not comparable.

 

To those who object to us carrying out the explicitly stated will of the UN, and doing our part to stop these butchers, I must ask under what circumstances you would support military action?

There can be few cases when the need was clearer.