The human cost

The concern today, as the British Prime Minister is set to ask Parliament for permission to drop bombs in Syria, is that as we stir the hornets nest we will inevitably be stung. 
With 1.3 billion Muslims spread across the world upsetting them has the potential to be, one hell of a hornets nest and although not all of the Hornets carry a sting there are sufficient, given the identification Muslims have of a common religious identity to give us an ongoing problem.

Perhaps this is the foundation of the Jihadi  plan. To publicly commit such atrocities whereby 'world citizenry' was forced to react. Well they seem to have got their wish and the nations are lining up to to join the bombing campaign.
Of course the main ingredient, and one that no one seems to be talking about, is the schism between the Shia and the Sunni sections of the Muslim community. The enmity runs so deep that Muslims often do not know why they hate the other side but have been bred, from childhood (much like the hatred that still exists in Northern Island between the Catholic and the Protestant, again a religious conflict) to shut out any hope of collaboration.
The conflict is crazy to a non Muslim. Born out of the lineage argument on the death of Mohamed as to who would carry the faith forward it becomes an intrinsic faith argument and you know how intransigent those arguments can be. The number of Sunni attacks on the Shia and visa versa with carnage unheard of in the west, carried out on a weekly basis in certain countries seems to have no end as one side butchers the other.  One wonders why no leadership, within the Muslim community at large, can not come together to quell the internecine conflict.
Anyway with this in mind, perhaps we shouldn't go in to Syria since what ever the short term gains, there can be no long term solution without peace between the Shia and the Sunni factions.
The West's time would be better spent in trying to bring these factions together whilst simply allowing the conflict in the various parts of the Middle East and the Far East to burn itself out, no matter how unpalatable in terms of the human cost.