Could be that our plan makes no sense at all. Strikes in Syria are already compromising other objectives, as Kurdish officials report that the strikes are pushing ISIS forces toward Kurdish territory. The idea that we can successfully arm and train “moderate” Syrian rebels is simply ludicrous. As Ross Douthat points out, we just tried that with the Iraqi Army, for eight years, and it was an utter failure. Everything about Syria suggests that such an effort will be more difficult than before, not less.

It has been barely a year since we came within a hair’s breadth of supporting ISIS and other Syrian rebels in their quest to topple the dictator Bashar al-Assad. Now, as Glenn Greenwald points out, we’re tipping off Assad in advance about coming airstrikes. All our quagmire alarms should go off when a civil war is so chaotic that the target of intervention shifts 180 degrees in a single year.

There is also a fundamental disconnect between means and ends here. President Obama says we must eventually destroy ISIS. Airstrikes alone almost certainly won’t accomplish this. We’ve been bombing ISIS in Iraq now for weeks and it has barely dented their territory. Setting an objective without the means to achieve it is a great way to get national credibility invested in yet more escalation that ends in ground troops and a doomed-to-fail occupation.

Finally, this war could become illegal in short order.