Differences also are evident among coalition members, especially between Saudi Arabia and Qatar over the support of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and their respective involvement in the Syrian crisis.

At the insistence of the Saudis and UAE, Iran was not invited to attend the Paris conference. However, Russia, a staunch ally of both Syria and Iran, and an U.S. adversary over Ukraine, attended the conference.

So the coalition is really a motley collection of countries working with cross purposes, especially with regard to Syria. It is obvious that military action against IS means strengthening Bashar al-Assad's regime. And that is not what the United States or its Western and Arab allies want to see. Can they work out a strategy that would both weaken al-Assad and the IS? U.S. defense chief Chuck Hagel admits that training and arming the "moderate" Syrian rebels the Free Syrian Army is risky.

In spite of these problems, however, the third Iraq war enjoys much greater legitimacy compared with George W. Bush's second Iraq war, which was not supported by any of the major powers except Tony Blair's Britain, and the war was an unmitigated strategic disaster. At huge costs, it created the conditions for the rise of the Islamic State, and thus forced the third Iraq war.

The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.ccgp-fushun.com/opinion/zhaojinglun.htm

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