Striking Syria

All this talk of 'we're going to war' is crass and immature, but it's certainly caught the imagination of the British public, who have forgotten we already are at war with Daesh, dropping the occasional bomb on them in Iraq.  If we do so in Syria, we will be trampling on the sovereignty of another country, even if Bashar al-Assad is officially in charge.  There must be a compelling reason to add eight (yes, just eight) RAF planes to the lacklustre Franco-American campaign (with the Russians preferring to go after non-Daesh rebels).  Nothing David Cameron outlined in parliament justified it, unless what he said was true - it manifestly was not and he has misled parliament.  A bombing campaign extended to Syria will not make us any safer - it will not dislodge Daesh and the latter can still strike us: the bomb placed in the Russian plane, destroying it over the Sinai, was meant for a British plane until the Kremlin decided to intervene directly in Syria.  Plucking a figure out of the air of a force of 90,000 Syrians ready to fight Daesh cannot be verified and the rebel groups in Syria are hopelessly divided and impossible to co-ordinate (unlike, say, the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in 2001).  If Cameron possessed the ability to have shame, his cheeks would burn.
Francois Hollande's appeal to show solidarity with France changes the calculus.  Hollande may be a hawk regarding foreign policy but France is the country that - wisely - opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  For the reason of supporting an ally that is not as fatally hubristic as the George W Bush administration is probably what tips the scales for me into supporting it.
It is still loaded with hubris.  Air campaigns are always over-rated in their effectiveness.  NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 didn't bring Milosevic to the table - it was Russian intervention that did that.  The dumbness of many British people was summed up by one Labour voter in Leeds who cited the Blitz as the reason the British wouldn't crumple in the face of adversity.  So why would people in Daesh-controlled territory be any more susceptible.  It is a view at best parochial and at worst racist.
Nor is there a political plan in place (another Cameron lie) for a post-Daesh situation.  Throughout World War Two, allied leaders met regularly to plan the post-war world.  Don't see that here.  But any political resolution is hypothetical without boots on the ground.  Absolutely no point in half-arsed air strikes (save sticking with the French).  There is a legal argument for self-defence and that takes into account the migrant crisis.  I would be in favour of sending in the army to smash Daesh and then, for good measure, turning around and taking down Assad too, no matter what Russia, Iran and Hezbollash protest.  Assad has killed ten times as many of his own people as Daesh and people are fleeing the country primarily because of him.  It would be a show of vigour to show the Russians post-Crimea that the West can be decisive.  The USA won't commit its soldiers - Obama is too stand-offish to make such a bold move.  So it should be British and French troops fighting side-by-side to implement a political settlement.  I think Hollande would be up for that, given French intervention in Mali but we can't allow Syria to descend into Libya-style chaos.  None of this will happen though since Cameron indulges in the worst kind of gesture politics and can't even be honest about it.