Beyond the anti-Corbyn hysteria UK newspapers run measured editorials

Labour at war” about whether to go to war, said Friday’s front page headlines in the Times, Daily Telegraph and the Independent.
“Labour in Syria turmoil as PM makes the case for war”, said the Guardian. Similarly, i splashed on “Labour torn over UK war in Syria” and Metro went with “Corbyn faces a Labour revolt on air strikes.”
The Daily Mail led a page with “Labour chaos over Syria strikes”, as did the Daily Express with “Labour shambles as Cameron demands blitz on jihadis”. The Sun split its headlines: “Cam calls for war” and “Jezza gets civil war.”
Although the Daily Mirror didn’t headline the story, it did refer to Labour being divided and its editorial conceded that the party was “hopelessly split”. It had “plunged into civil war” with its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn having aired differing views in public.
Even accepting that the bulk of the national press has been pursuing an anti-Corbyn line since he became leader, the newspapers clearly reflected the state of Labour’s crisis over a crucial policy matter.
One of the most serious decisions any country can take is whether or not to go to war and the divisions in the Labour party and, to a lesser extent, in the Tory party, are a reminder that no parliament has been unanimous about waging war in any conflict over the past 70 years.
So, amid the hysteria about Labour’s split, it was noticeable that leading articles in newspapers over military action in Syria were altogether more measured. Most of them point to defects in the prime minister’s argument to bomb Isis in Syria.
The Times thought David Cameron had made a convincing case for Britain to attack Isis’s headquarters in Raqqa but wondered what would happen after air strikes.
Which ground forces, it asked, will finish the job? And it argued that the alleged 70,000 fighters who oppose Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad are not united because they have separate agendas. The Times contended:

“The grim reality is that only the United States has the military muscle needed to bring Isis to its knees and to do so without rewarding the murderous regime of Assad.
It is, in the light of its experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, understandably reluctant to do so. We have to be correspondingly realistic about what can be achieved by our Tornados in the coming months.”

The Daily Telegraph also thought Cameron’s case convincing but, like the Times, was concerned about an air war leading to a ground war through mission creep.
If Isis is defeated, said the paper, “only Assad’s Russian-backed forces are strong enough to reclaim the territory ceded to the Islamists.”
And yet the Telegraph believed it necessary to bomb Isis anyway, concluding:

“Provided this fight is about defeating Isil, not regime change, Britain should play a full part with its allies in a clearly defined campaign to destroy this menace.”

The Independent, in the belief that Isis cannot “be left to cement its brand of far-reaching and indiscriminate savagery”, said the case for British air strikes “has merit - so long as the drawbacks are acknowledged.”
It identified, in company with the Times and Telegraph, “the weakness of the air-strike strategy alone”. It said: “Without boots on the ground Isis will remain embedded in the urban communities that it currently controls.”
Should Isis be beaten, the paper favoured a brokered ceasefire between Assad and his non-Isis opposition.
The Guardian, in viewing Isis as “a formidable enemy” that having attacked us and our allies previously and “will attack again unless stopped”, thought the UK’s response “must include a military element.”
But the paper recalled that “there was either no plan or a bad plan” when military action took place in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Syria presents greater problems because occupation of the country should Assad be desposed is neither possible nor desirable.
Like the Times, the Guardian argued that the United States should be pushing harder to create a diplomatic consensus.
It was unimpressed with Cameron’s claim about the existence of 70,000 non-extremist Syrian opposition fighters, arguing that “experts on Syria” have found such claims to be unfounded. The Guardian thought it was an example of Cameron’s penchant “to glide past difficulties.
As for the shadow cabinet’s split, it urged Labour to reach “a place where its MPs can make their decisions without plunging the party into chaos.”
The Mirror refused to say whether it favoured military action, running an editorial that merely said: “The moment for a decision is fast approaching. To bomb or not to bomb?”
But it did run pieces by two of its senior executives, Alison Phillips and Kevin Maguire, in which they took opposing positions.
“How,” asked Philips, “can we let the French and Russians do all the work against IS?... Of course we need to be working towards a negotiated solution in Syria with the region’s powers and our European cousins...
“But how can we have any meaningful role in those conversations if we’re not prepared to get our hands dirty?... Air strikes are not an easy decision. But if we do not take it we may spend many terrifying and bloody years regretting it.”
By contrast, Maguire - characterising those in favour of bombing as members of a “Start the War Coalition” - rejected the argument for British air strikes. He continued:

“Let’s be honest, a few hundred British missiles would make no military difference when 29,000 US bombs didn’t prevent mass murder in Paris.
I spent two hours listening to Cameron answer questions in the Commons and I read his 30-page report. He has no clear strategy to destroy IS or guarantee a better future for Syria...
Labour is tearing itself apart but blundering into Syria’s civil war would be Britain shooting itself in the head.”

In the Telegraph, Fraser Nelson pointed out that “there is a great temptation for a politician, when making the case for war, to simplify or exaggerate.” He wrote:

“For example, the prime minister revealed to MPs that there was an army of 70,000 moderate Syrian rebels ready to move against Isil. He then suggested a straightforward plan: that Raqqa is bombed, the Islamic State routed by Western-armed rebels and then a political settlement is reached with a new government in Damascus which unites Syrians.
It’s a wonderful ambition, but one that seems even more optimistic than his plan for stable government in Libya. Those 70,000 rebels, for example, don’t exist as a coherent force.”

But Nelson favoured action for political rather than military reasons: to stand beside the US and France. He did not mention Russia.
However, in an article below his, the Russian ambassador to London, Alexander Yakovenko, summoned up second world war memories by urging Britain to stand firm with Russia (rather than, of course, the Soviet Union) to defeat the evil of Isis. He wrote:

“The outrageous downing of a Russian plane over Syria exposes the inherent dangers of western alliances in the region... It is high time that some regional players stopped solving problems of their own at somebody else’s expense...
Having committed substantial resources in pursuit of a realistic strategy in Syria, Russia provided an impetus for a genuine coalition of nations able and willing to fight Isil in earnest. The ISSG [International Syria Support Group] provides a political framework.”

He concluded by suggesting that the matter should not be linked to Russia’s incursion into Ukraine and its support for Ukrainian rebels. With allies like this...