The discovery that Jeremy Corbyn equates the barbarity of Islamic State in Syria (Isis) to the actions of American forces during the fighting in Fallujah in 2004 will come as no surprise to those familiar with his voting record on foreign affairs. As on domestic issues, Mr Corbyn is nothing if not consistent when he lifts his gaze further afield. Discover the prevailing view in Washington, appears to be Mr Corbyn’s guiding principle, and then oppose it. Such consistency no doubt goes a long way towards explaining his appeal to those Labour party members who appear set to install him as their leader next month.
In the world beyond that electorate, however, Mr Corbyn’s blanket opposition to US foreign policy, combined with a steadfast support for those he judges to be America’s enemies, appears naïve, blinkered and potentially injurious to Britain’s national interest. There is nothing admirable about being consistently wrong. Rather, Mr Corbyn’s views smack of a politician who has, on the subject of American military action overseas, long abandoned any desire to think with coherence or regard to proportionality.
Consider what Mr Corbyn said in 2014 regarding Isis atrocities. “Yes, they are brutal,” he admitted. “Yes, some of what they have done is quite appalling, likewise what the Americans did in Fallujah and other places is appalling.”
Islamic State quite deliberately and proudly murders anyone opposed to it on the basis of faith, gender and sexuality. The US forces in Fallujah, by contrast, fought under specific and strict orders to limit civilian casualties, even to the extent of placing themselves in greater danger. A small minority of American soldiers disobeyed those orders. No US soldiers, however, threw a man off a high building because they thought he was gay. Or stoned a woman to death because she was inconveniently outspoken. Or forced a teenager to become a suicide bomber. Or systematically enslaved and raped Yazidi women. Nor, while some US troops certainly mistreated some prisoners, did American soldiers routinely parade and execute captured Iraqis.
To oppose the invasion of Iraq is legitimate. To suggest a moral equivalence between isolated transgressions that occurred in that invasion and current Isis atrocities is reprehensible. Given that it seems likely Mr Corbyn will soon be in charge of Her Majesty’s opposition, his predilection for insulting Britain’s chief ally is concerning.
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Mr Corbyn is fêted for his implacable opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Indeed, given the trauma that conflict caused to his party, his popularity can in large measure be explained by that opposition. His view, he now tells activists, was rooted in a belief that the then Labour government should not yoke itself to George Bush’s right-wing American administration. Such a claim, those activists should realise, is wholly disingenuous. Four years earlier, with Bill Clinton of the Democrats in the White House, Corbyn had similarly opposed Nato’s intervention in Kosovo.
He has more recently argued that the war in Ukraine has less to do with Russian aggression than “in the US drive to expand eastwards,” a drive which appears, to most other observers, to be wholly imaginary. He has referred to both Hamas and Hezbollah, organisations committed to the destruction of Israel, as “friends.” He has long campaigned for the lifting of United Nations sanctions imposed on Iran in an attempt to curtail that country’s uranium enrichment programme.
Such foreign policy positions may be fit for the pub, the soapbox or the sixth form common room. But they have no credibility whatsoever in the real world. Mr Corbyn’s opponents in the Labour leadership race would do well to point this out, and soon. Who knows? Some of the 600,000 electorate may even be listening.