Dear Mr. Corbyn,
You have made a lot of headline-worthy fuss of trying to make some form of settlement with the extremist group known as ISIL. You have mentioned the progress made with the talks in Vienna for a potential peace in Syria.
This is not peace with ISIL. This is peace with Syria in the face of, as you said in your speech in the Commons on Wednesday 2nd December "the chaos and horror of a multi-front civil war", and nothing more. This peace blooming in Vienna is a fragile flower that ISIL would love nothing more than to crush under boot, and then execute, shoot and bomb that same peace for good measure.
Sir, I am not a woman to condone senseless violence for the sake of it. I have and did have family in Paris at the time of the horrific attacks three weeks ago; thankfully, none of my family were injured. But the same cannot be said for the 130 victims, both of British and international origin who were killed for an extremist, fascist, and intolerable religious point of view.
Granted, ISIL perhaps entirely owes its existence to the invasion of Iraq - a war based almost entirely on mistakes made by both UK and US governments of the day. However, when even Al Qaeda is attacking ISIL, then you know that you cannot necessarily argue for peaceful and fair settlement!
While I know little of their lives before they became infamous leaders, I know that Hitler and Pol Pot, and others like them, were terrible, and true examples of the adage "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". And yet, it is exactly that kind of absolute power that ISIL is bent on achieving at any cost. And I believe that it is from the bloody crucible of their birth in the Syrian civil war, that ISIL have learned their current means of achieving their ultimate and final goal.
Between them, Hitler and Pol Pot killed over 37 million people - and these numbers are from the time that they came into power. ISIL have yet to achieve any power on the same level as these aforementioned tyrants, and yet besides those killed in their depraved attempts to grab land and power for themselves, they have killed 567 innocent people who had nothing to do with their war or their way of life.
ISIL killed four men for being gay. They killed the Palmyra curator, Professor Halid Al Assad, for being the guardian of, to their mind, heinous and blasphemous relics and ruins. They killed older or elderly Yazidi women for being, in their eyes, too old to be sold for sex. Can you honestly believe that "[Such] a settlement is widely accepted to be the only way to ensure the isolation and defeat of ISIL in the country [Syria]... All our efforts should instead go into bringing the Syrian civil war to an end"?
Hillary Benn described ISIL perfectly in his speech to the Commons: A group of fascists united by "...their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in this Chamber tonight and all of the people that we represent. They hold us... [and] our democracy, the means by which we will make our decision tonight, in contempt."
They will not accept any peace brokered with the West. ISIL will not rest until what happened in Paris happens in London, and Leeds, and Birmingham, and Glasgow and right across the West and they will not rest until the West surrenders to their fascism, their greed, and to their totalitarian control.
And that, Mr. Corbyn, is why we will never achieve any peace with ISIL. We won't even get a table to talk peace at, on, or over.
I rarely tend to quote film characters. However, a quote from Alfred Pennyworth, portrayed brilliantly by Sir Michael Caine in the Dark Knight, sum up the goals and aims of ISIL simply: "Some men aren't looking for something logical, some men just want to watch the world burn."
ISIL is not a logical organisation. If they were, Mr. Corbyn, they would see that peace, in the face of annihilation from 60 different countries, would be an absolute priority to ensure their own survival, let alone the chance to have any country to call their own. Instead, ISIL wants to impose their selfish, brutal ideology and politics on the whole world, or else, much like the Joker, they will want nothing more than to light the match and watch it burn.
I can understand why you want peace in Syria. A lack of it is what gave birth to radicals like ISIL. But some peaces can only be forged in blood, with all the regret and grief that the world can offer. And I believe that, if ISIL can be removed in its entirety, then a peace in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon and the entire Middle East can be one of the strongest peaces ever to be forged in blood, and tempered by the grief and regret that ISIL has brought to the world.
Sincerely,
Isabelle
