Now that British fighter jets have begun bombing raids in Iraq, it’s tempting to ask “why a single British Grenadier, or indeed strike aircraft, should be put at renewed risk in the Middle East”, says Max Hastings in The Daily Telegraph.
However, Isis is “wedded only to a culture of intolerance and death”, and is “bent upon using its resources to attack the ‘infidels’ of the West”. This means that the threat posed by Isis “to the security of all our peoples is too great to stand aside”.
That said, restricting action just to Iraq may be a mistake, according to The Daily Telegraph. Action in Syria is necessary to destroy Isis, “and, therefore, is something Britain will have to consider”.
While this view has many critics, including Labour leader Ed Miliband, “it is hard to understand how someone can support destroying [Isis] in one country yet be reluctant to do so in another”.
Indeed, restricting action to “only one side of the Sykes-Picot line, which divides Iraq and Syria, defies military logic”, says The Sunday Times.
Too many restrictions will result in “an approach that is not merely cautious but doomed to fail”. What’s more, “airstrikes need to be supplemented with coalition special forces on the ground to identify Isis targets”.
Taking no action against Isis will mean that “militant Islam will drive the Christians and Zoroastrians out of Iraq like the Jews before them”, says Nick Cohen in The Observer.
However, focusing solely on Isis, while refusing to intervene against Assad, means that the Syrian dictator “is now enjoying the collateral benefits of Western foreign policy”.
Indeed, “Assad must be waiting for the news that Obama is prepared to allow him to dominate Syria and his Iranian puppet masters to dominate Iraq and Lebanon as well”.