A British Typhoon fighter flies over Iraq, Dec. 22, 2015. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Corey Hook/Released)
The claim by Jeremy Corbyn’s spokesman that the government’s focus on Russian airstrikes in Syria “diverts attention” away from other “atrocities”, including those committed by the West, created a backlash in liberal circles.
“Jeremy is unwilling to face up to the role that Putin’s Russia is playing in Syria”, said Labour MP Angela Smith. Alice Ross from the independent monitoring group Airwars took a different tack, jumping to the conclusion Corbyn was making a direct comparison between Russian and Western airstrikes, even though his spokesman had explicitly said he was not drawing a “moral equivalence” between the two. “Russia and the [Western] coalition are fighting different wars when it comes to civilians”, Airwars Director Chris Woods responded. The US-led coalition tries to limit civilian deaths, he noted, “while everything we understand about the way Russia is behaving shows they are deliberately targeting civilians, civilian infrastructure”.
