SECRETARY of State for “Defence” Michael Fallon wants MPs to revisit the issue of direct British military intervention in Syria.

Playing upon people’s outrage at the massacre of tourists in Tunisia by an Islamic State terrorist, he is urging the Westminster Parliament to sanction air strikes against the Isis “caliphate” which centres upon Raqqa but extends across other parts of Syria and into Iraq.

This would effectively reverse the House of Commons vote of August 29 2013 against direct British military intervention in Syria.

On the BBC World at One programme on Wednesday, Fallon argued that it was “illogical” to bomb Isis targets in Iraq but not in Syria.

But he then went on to engage in such a gross falsification of history that it calls into question his fitness for any public office, let alone one concerning matters of war and peace.

Referring to the 2013 vote, he claimed that “there were reservations in the last parliament about doing anything in Syria that would prop up the Assad regime.”

Yet the whole purpose of the proposed military action back then was to punish — and almost certainly bring down — the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad for its alleged use of chemical weapons against opposition forces, some of which have since played a major part in building up Isis in Syria.

Labour, the SNP, Plaid Cymru and even 30 Tory and nine Lib Dem MPs opposed action precisely because they feared it would destabilise Syria still further to the benefit of Islamist forces, not because any such action might prop up the Assad regime.

They were finally reflecting massive public opposition in Britain to any more calamitous Iraq-style military invasions.
Fallon is now standing the truth on its head, trying to make out that his concern in Syria has always been to defeat Isis.

Yet that worthy objective formed no part of the case made for British military intervention in 2013. The real aim then, as now, was to hasten the overthrow of the secular Assad regime.

Had the Cameron coalition won that vote back in 2013, Isis would most likely be governing — and terrorising — the whole of Syria today.

Instead, Syrian government forces together with Lebanese Hezbollah and Kurdish Peshmerga continue to bear the brunt of the fight on the ground in Syria against Isis.

If Fallon is sincere in his belated desire to roll back Isis, he should desist from rewriting history and propose policies to support those Middle East forces already engaged in that struggle.

In particular, the British government should stop trying to resurrect and train the so-called “moderate” armed opposition to Assad, and instead provide aid to the Damascus regime as and when requested.

Britain should put pressure on Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian Islamist regime to facilitate Kurdish solidarity with the people of Kobane and other Syrian border towns resisting Isis attacks, instead of blocking it.

The British government should stop supporting the Saudi Arabian, Qatari and allied dictatorships which are bombing the Houthi movement which constitutes the main opposition to Isis and al-Qaida in Yemen.

Fallon and Cameron should be demanding action from those same Arab rulers to halt the flow of funds to their fellow Sunni fundamentalists in Isis.

These are the policies needed by the people of the Middle East in the battle against sectarian tyranny, not more British bombs which helped create the whole bloody mess in the first place.