I pay tribute to the work of my hon. Friend and others on both sides of the House in asking those difficult questions a year ago. We were right to do that. He is absolutely right about Afghanistan as well.
The litany of errors does not stop with Afghanistan. We now have the Libyan Government meeting on a Greek ferry off Tobruk; there is civil war; the number of civilian casualties is shooting up; and we have not got a proper policy. I certainly do not think our intervention helped the situation. We have now discussed Syria, and it is clear that the Government’s intentions to arm the rebels were misplaced, given that it would have been impossible to track and trace the arms. Our bigger issue is now taking on in Iraq some of the rebels who confronted Assad.
It is right to be cautious and to ask questions, and it is right that the bar has been set higher. I am pleased that Ministers realise the difference between air strikes in Iraq, which many of us could support, provided certain preconditions were in place, including a request from the Baghdad Government, and air strikes in Syria, which would be a much higher risk policy, not only because of Russian-built air defences, but because of the legalities and the fact that a common feature of the Syrian civil war has been the extremist groups lurking in the shadows and morphing into each other—al-Nusra, linked to al-Qaeda, for example—and would be difficult to say who might take ISIS’s place in Syria.
I welcome the caution. At the end of the day, the politics in Iraq must succeed. The elephant in the room is the Iraqi army. It has to be ground forces that defeat ISIS—air strikes alone will not succeed—but they must not be western. The symbolism of the west defeating this caliphate would be too great. The Iraqi army is the elephant in the room, but the politics must come through and succeed. What fomented the presence of ISIS was the very sectarian politics pursued by Maliki, the predecessor of the current Government. We must have more inclusive politics in Iraq, but at the same time we have to ensure that the army drives out ISIS.
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