‘National security’ has become our main justification for war

I’ve been in touch with Anisa for just over a year, ever since I met her in a dingy refugee compound on the outskirts of Amman. She’s a super-educated young woman from Damascus (most of the early wave of refugees were) and she’s never had much time for self-styled IS (‘none of them are actually Syrian, they’re invaders,’ she insists).

Today Anisa is more depressed than ever. If Britain joins the coalition of airstrikes against IS territory in Syria, it will largely be symbolic, as The Spectator’s leader explains. The US has already been bombing Raqqa for nearly a year and a half. As the analyst Shashank Joshi suggests, we have a limited airforce, and ‘neither Cameron nor Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has explained whether or how British air strikes in Syria might dilute current efforts in Iraq.’ But Anisa remembers only one thing about the British Parliament. They’re the people who voted no, in August 2013, to punishing Assad for the use of chemical gas against civilians.