Bombing Syria may please allies, but will have little effect on Isis

“War” on Isis scream the headlines. RAF Tornado strikes, soon after the Commons vote, “dealt a real blow” to Isis-controlled oilfields in eastern Syria, declared Michael Fallon, the defence secretary.

British jets joining US and French bombing strikes on their own will achieve very little in the fight against Isis. The Commons vote enabling British pilots to bomb targets across the border in Syria as well as in Iraq was significant politically and diplomatically (especially in face of appeals from the French government). It will not make our streets any safer.

From the military point of view, it was almost meaningless. Indeed, the point was made by those advocating more bombing. One of their strongest, certainly most valid, questions was: why not enable the RAF to bomb across an Iraqi/Syria border which the enemy itself does not recognise?

Labour’s Sir Gerald Kaufman, Father of the House, called it “a gesture”. Air strikes alone were a “dangerous diversion and distraction”, warned Julian Lewis, Tory chairman of the Commons defence committee.

In a reference to the discredited intelligence used to invade Iraq in 2003, Lewis told the Commons: “Instead of ‘dodgy dossiers’, we now have ‘bogus battalions’ of moderate fighters.”