WE OWE Labour MP Clive Lewis a debt of gratitude for his frank warning about the drift to war on Syria.
Lewis speaks with authority, as someone who saw first-hand the “death and mayhem” of Afghanistan.

“I sometimes think if we had a few more MPs in there seeing the direct consequences of their lust for war, maybe they’d think twice about it,” he says.

But we are at a dangerous moment.

Despite Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s well-known commitment to peace and opposition to military adventurism, some in his party — even up to shadow cabinet level — are letting it be known that they might be amenable to launching air strikes on Syria, if the Tories come up with a “coherent” plan.

What we’ve seen from the government so far has been anything but coherent.

Within days of the Prime Minister bragging that he had authorised the extrajudicial assassination of two British citizens fighting for Isis in Syria, the Chancellor remarked that the priority was “tackling” the “evil” Assad regime.

So, who is the mooted military action supposed to target?

The Syrian government, which is the principal force resisting Isis?

The Isis terrorists, who are the principal force fighting the Assad government?

Both of them? In the hope that some third force, no doubt committed to liberal democracy and human rights, will magically emerge to rebuild the country?

Confusion over this issue must end. Last week US General Lloyd Austin admitted to the Senate that the number of US-trained rebels still fighting in Syria was “four or five.”

Other members of the so-called “moderate” Division 30, trained and equipped by the United States, immediately surrendered to the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and handed all their state-of-the-art Western weaponry over to the terrorists.

Ending the war means defeating Isis, and that means working with the Syrian government to do so.

Labour deserves credit for preventing war on the country in 2013.

It must not now be bamboozled into air strikes in some pointless piece of macho posturing. Nor must it surrender to the insidious hints from No 10 that Britain could simply create “no-fly zones,” which in Libya were used by Nato powers to destroy the government’s ability to fight.

The result? Victory for the religious extremists, the collapse of the Libyan state, permanent civil war, a torrent of Libyan weaponry finding its way to radical insurgent groups across northern Africa and the beginning of the current refugee crisis.

But despite the repeated and painfully obvious catastrophes caused by bombing the Middle East, we are being jostled in the direction of yet another war.

Why else the exclusive touted by the liberal Guardian newspaper, in which Washington’s permanent representative at the United Nations Samantha Powell says the security council will lose legitimacy if Russia keeps vetoing action on Syria?

Powell’s disingenuousness beggars belief.

Since the end of the cold war, the US has wielded the security council veto far more than any other country — generally to prevent Israel from being held to account.

Russia and China are accused of preventing action in the face of “consensus” among the other permanent members. But the other permanent members — Britain, France and the US — are all Nato members, close military allies.

That they are agreed on a course of action — and it isn’t even clear that they are — does not indicate any international mandate.

The US has always accused the United Nations of being unfit for purpose when its members do not fall into line with Washington’s wishes — over Iraq in 2003, for instance.

Britain should not parrot this nefarious narrative. No single issue has damaged Labour’s reputation more this century than launching illegal wars.

The party has a chance for a root and branch rethink of its foreign policy objectives — it should grasp it.