And just like that another country has decided it would send its fighter planes in the already congested skies above Syria, when moments ago the UK parliament decided, in a 397 to 223 vote, to begin airstrikes on Syria.
According to the vote, U.K. lawmakers backed Prime Minister David Cameron’s plan to extend air strikes against Islamic State from Iraq into Syria, after the opposition Labour Party split over whether to support military action.
The House of Commons in London voted in favor of a motion by Cameron’s government authorizing action. Lawmakers had earlier rejected an amendment that would have blocked the use of military force.
The 10 1/2 hours of debate saw many tetchy speeches and interventions, but the best received came from Labour foreign-affairs spokesman Hilary Benn, ending the debate by taking the opposite side of the argument from his leader, Jeremy Corbyn, a career-long opponent of military interventions.
“We must now confront this evil,” Benn said, as Corbyn sat in silence beside him. “It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria.”
What the RAF's fighters will instead confront upon their campaign, which is set to begin imminently, is a lot of Russian dogfighters, each armed with Air to Air missiles thanks to Turkey, making the probability of a deadly chance encounter above Syria that much higher.
