We must stop these evil chemical attacks on innocent people in Syria — and blitz President Assad’s bases

IT was heartbreaking to see the horrific images coming out of Damascus again on Sunday morning that show in graphic detail what happens when we do nothing in Syria.

Lifeless children, foam seeping from their mouths, the victims of another barbaric chemical attack.

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I tweeted with a link to photographs of the dead Syrian children: “If you’re not prepared to ever countenance military intervention abroad after Iraq, at least make yourself look at the consequences of inaction. A stain on our collective humanity that evil can continue so unabated.”

I’m ashamed that my largely Labour Party fellow parliamentarians voted against taking military action against President Assad in 2013.

I’m ashamed that while we have the means to intervene, we don’t.

I’m ashamed that despite almost everyone in this country now accepting the mistakes made in the operation to remove Saddam Hussein in 2003, this is used as a pretext for a “little Britain” unable and unwilling to fulfil international responsibilities to our fellow man.

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Let me be clear — nobody wants Iraq mark II. Much has changed and I don’t believe we could make the same fundamental mistakes again.

Warfare has changed too. Clean, binary outcomes resulting in total success or total failure are a thing of the past.

Violence is not always king. What’s the point of bombing a Syrian airfield when you could disable it through offensive cyber attacks?

And with all this change we must change too. We politicians must start to get out there and explain to the public what modern warfare is really like.

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Clean outcomes — winners and losers on the battlefield — and protagonist nations admitting their guilt over atrocities such as chemical attacks are not a feature of modern war. Look how much Russia lies. Daily.

Above all this, though, we must decide what we stand for. I know that the country I live in is not prepared to stand by and let a cowardly thug such as Assad murder kids with chemical weapons. The Iraq hangover has gone on too long.

The sight of pious — mostly Labour politicians pontificating about the innumerable things that can go wrong in military conflict, while our servicemen and women look on bemused, cannot be allowed to stand in the way of what we actually believe in as a nation — the rule of law, human rights and our duty and tradition of defending those who cannot defend themselves from unrestrained evil.

So in the age of the professional politician, I’m afraid the temptation to “vanity vote” down military action is too tempting — it cannot go through Parliament.

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We elect a government and we elect a Prime Minister to make these decisions. They have all the facts, all the high-level security briefing, assimilate all the evidence then act in the national interest. That’s what they get paid for.

Going through Parliament is a cop-out on that responsibility.

And then we act. Anyone involved in the decision-making process of using chemical weapons in Syria must be targeted. They cannot be allowed to rest easy.

The airfield and equipment used in their deployment must be destroyed, as Trump tried to do last time.

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Putin, Assad and cowardly thugs everywhere respect one thing only — decisive strength.

You can draw a clear correlation between our vote in Parliament in 2013, Obama’s unenforced red line in 2013 and an emboldened Putin and Assad. Ukraine, the Baltics, Salisbury and the US elections, the list goes on.

It’s time to take a stand.

We cannot allow our fellow man to be slaughtered in this manner and walk on by, wearing the sackcloth from Iraq and fretting about the unpredictability of modern warfare.

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Sometimes you have to stand for what you believe in.

On my regular visits to the Middle East I sense a waning tide of trust towards the West, Britain and America. In particular when it comes to standing up for our values and friends in the region who work so hard to bring peace to such a volatile part of the world.

They expect us to play a role. A post-Brexit global Britain is a chance to rekindle old relationships and refocus our priorities, restate what we believe in and what we stand for.

The world has changed since 2003, conflict has changed and the nature of warfare has irrevocably shifted.

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We keep up with the pace or we fall back into irrelevance.

Time to decide.

• Johnny Mercer is Conservative MP for Plymouth Moor View. Formerly a captain in the Royal Artillery, he served three tours of Afghanistan.