I used to mock non-interventionists like Corbyn, but events have proved them right

I hate to say it, but Jeremy Corbyn is right where I have been wrong. Corbyn’s protest that the Syrian intervention displays a ‘lack of a strategy worth the name, the absence of credible ground troops, the missing diplomatic plan for a Syrian settlement…’ was spot on. I am embarrassed to say that last year, I penned a rather conceited piece – for Spectator Australia, no less – in which I mocked proponents of non-intervention against the millennial, genocidal fascists of Isis. Having watched events since publication, I feel little but embarrassment.

True, it makes little sense to restrict our campaign to Iraq: as James Forsyth rightly noted, Isis don’t recognise international borders, operating in Iraq, Syria, and other territorialities simultaneously through recognised ’emirates’. But the West’s campaign against Isis has a fundamental weakness: there is no political will for the sort of enormous effort, both military and diplomatic, that it would take to truly defeat them.