“The strategy of aerial bombardment is not going to work to destroy Isil [Isis],” the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham told CNN. “You cannot destroy Isil without a ground component.” He argued that training the inexperienced fighters of the Free Syrian Army in Saudi Arabia was “militarily unsound” and “will lead to their slaughter”. His words were echoed in London by the former chief of the defence staff General Sir David Richards. “Air power alone will not win a campaign like this,” he told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show. “It isn’t actually a counter-terrorist operation. This is a conventional enemy in that it has armour, tanks, artillery … it is quite wealthy, it holds ground and it is going to fight. So therefore you have to view it as a conventional military campaign.” Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, disagreed. “How you respond is not quite as straightforward as David Richards, much as I respect him, suggests,” he said. “I don’t think it is a question of simply ramping up conventional armed forces again as if we were fighting state-to-state conflicts.” Clegg said states would cooperate in a “jigsaw” operation in which different countries bring different capabilities against “stateless mobile troops”. But Britain has thus far committed only to air strikes over Iraq, and Clegg said he was opposed to stepping up the British action. “I wouldn’t advocate extending the air campaign into Syria which is why we didn’t do it last week,” he said. The prime minister, David Cameron, will not propose a vote on Syrian air strikes unless the Lib Dems and Labour agree. news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/69595000/jpg/_69595505_syria_strikes_624_v3.jpg
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 22:55:50 +0000
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