UK lawmakers wary of government plan for Syria airstrikes

LONDON — An influential group of lawmakers says launching British airstrikes against Islamic State group militants in Syria would be “incoherent” and ineffective without a plan to end the country’s civil war.

The Foreign Affairs Select Committee has dealt a blow to Prime Minister David Cameron’s attempts to expand British military action against the militants from Iraq into Syria.

Committee chairman Crispin Blunt, a legislator from Cameron’s Conservative Party, said he feared the government was “responding to the powerful sense that something must be done ... without any expectation that its action will be militarily decisive, and without a coherent and long-term plan for defeating (IS) and ending the civil war.”

The Royal Air Force is part of a U.S.-led campaign of airstrikes against militant targets in Iraq. But in 2013 British lawmakers unexpectedly rejected the government’s proposal for military action in neighboring Syria.

Cameron and his defense minister, Michael Fallon, have said they favor expanding the strikes to Syria, but only with the approval of Parliament.

In a report published Tuesday, the foreign affairs committee said Russia’s intervention in the conflict in support of Bashar Assad’s government “has complicated even further any proposed action in Syria by the U.K.”

It said that without “a coherent international strategy” to end Syria’s civil war, “taking action to meet the desire to do something is still incoherent.”

The committee said the government needs to answer fundamental questions about the proposed airstrikes — including their legality without United Nations approval and whether they would have support from regional powers including Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

Until then, it said, “we recommend that it does not bring to the House a motion seeking the extension of British military action to Syria.”

The committee’s report is not binding on the government, but its warnings will make it harder for Cameron to gain lawmakers’ approval for airstrikes.

Lawless, Jill. "UK lawmakers wary of government plan for Syria airstrikes." 3 Nov. 2015. The Washington Post. 3 Nov. 2015. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/uk-lawmakers-wary-of-government-plan-for-syria-airstrikes/2015/11/02/8d12372a-81be-11e5-8bd2-680fff868306_story.html> 

Comment: The article is about the British government's view of the problems of the Iraq militants that are going into Syria. The Prime Minister David Cameron proposes that they take more action towards Syria in expanding their strikes to them. Others are saying that the action of striking Syria wouldn't solve any of the problems since they don't have an ultimate solution for the matter and attacking them without a specific plan would cause more problems than solutions. I agree with the author in that the British government should be careful in their involvement or their actions since they may aggravate Syria and Iraq if they do not have a specific plan or solution for the matter. I feel that the author was not particularly biased towards one side but he does seem to show more support to the side of not attacking Syria without a specific plan.