Earlier this evening, Lord Bilimoria spoke in a debate in the House of Lords about whether the UK should engage in military operations in Syria. He noted the mistakes made in past operations and outlined the reasons for intervening in the region now, while stressing the limitations of relying on air power alone.
Speaking in the House of Lords on Friday, Lord Bilimoria spoke cautiously in favour of the proposed use of military force against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (known various as ‘ISIS’, ‘ISIL’ and ‘IS’) upon the recent request of the Iraqi government and President Obama’s so-called ‘Coalition of the Willing.’
In his speech, Lord Bilimoria noted the slow pace at which the government proposed the military intervention, as well as critiquing the present state of the UK Armed Forces.
The debate ran co-currently with a debate in the House of Commons, which endorsed the principle of military intervention via airstrikes by 524 votes to 43.
My Lords, in the summer of 2003 my late father, Lieutenant-General Bilimoria, was here in the UK on a visit. It was his last visit to the UK because he passed away a couple of years later. At an event he was approached by a prominent journalist who said: “General, do you think that we should have intervened in Iraq?”. My father, without blinking, said: “No. Intervention should only have taken place with the authority of the United Nations”. My father spoke from experience because as a young captain he had served with the United Nations in the Congo.