Much of the British media has been negative about the decision by a large majority in the Westminster Parliament to support the bombing of ISIS targets in Iraq. As an editor and commentator during both the first and second Gulf wars, I found the contrast today with the gung-ho media enthusiasm for war against Saddam Hussein quite revealing.

Then, only The Guardian and some parts of the BBC, along with an assortment of left-leaning MPs expressed serious doubts about getting involved in the so-called “coalition of the willing”. Today, criticism of the onslaught against ISIS is coming from all sides.

Rupert Murdoch’s The Sunday Times has led the charge, giving the lie to those in Australia who still believe–despite much evidence to the contrary–that all News Corporation newspapers sing from the same hymn sheet.

Britain’s top-selling broadsheet noted on the weekend that “it will take more than missiles to beat Isis”. In a main editorial, it said that the clear-cut 524 to 23 support for action only prevailed because it restricted airstrikes to Iraq, and “any proposal to extend them to Syria will require a second House of Commons vote”. It is interesting that there has been no vote, or debate, in the Australian House of Representatives, and the government has imposed no such restrictions on Australian military action.

The right-wing columnist Dominic Lawson, in a long feature, headed “We’ve counted all the Tornados out; we’ll count terrorists back in” understands the call for revenge against brutal beheadings by ISIS, but draws attention to the irony that Britain is now fighting those it supported in the attempt to dislodge the Syrian dictator, Bashar al Assad.

He argues, ”why we should take up arms for either side in the sectarian war between Sunni and Shi’ite Islam is a mystery to me, but to have tried to join the fight between two different sides within 12 months is proof only that our government has no clear idea of what it wants out of the conflict, or of what is going on”.

The Financial Times says the US president Barack Obama has launched an unpredictable and uncertain operation, whose “success is far from assured”. The New York Times goes further, describing the decision to bomb Syria as a “wrong turn with no convincing plan”. The Times weighs in with an opinion from its editorial board that it’s time to learn the lessons from Libya and Yemen.

The chief foreign affairs columnist of the Financial Times, Gideon Rachman, uses the Middle East–and other recent issues such as Scottish independence–to point to the worrying rise of rationalism. However Bloomberg columnist Clive Crook notes that nationalism has some advantages.