FOR a serving general to publicly encourage military action abroad when Parliament has endorsed no such thing is a breach of the proper relationship between army and government.

General Nicholas Houghton’s comments to Sky News on Sunday are even worse.

For one thing he is not merely a serving general but the chief of the defence staff — the effective leader of the country’s armed forces.

For another, he spoke out on Remembrance Sunday.

On a solemn day when we remember the victims of previous conflicts, the general’s emotive language — that we “are letting our allies down” by not extending air strikes into Syria — looks to be a cynical attempt to manipulate popular sentiment in favour of war.
But thirdly and most importantly, he is wrong.

“In its most simplistic way, it’s like being asked to win a football match but not being able to go in the opponent’s half,” is how Houghton describes the admittedly confusing role being played by British forces when it comes to the so-called Islamic State (Isis) terror group.

This is because as part of a US-led coalition we are launching air strikes against Isis in Iraq, but are not (officially) doing so in Syria.

Isis controls a large and contiguous territory straddling much of Syria and Iraq. So why attack it in one country but not in the other?

Part of the answer lies in international law.

Such is the contempt shown for all rules of international conduct by Western powers since the end of the cold war that you can almost see ministers rolling their eyes when the words “international law” pop up.

But law is important because it remains the only constraint on “might is right” triumphalism, where any country can do whatever it can get away with.

We are bombing Isis in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government, which makes it legal. Russia is bombing Isis in Syria at the invitation of the Syrian government, which makes that legal too.

But Syria has not invited Britain to bomb Isis on its territory. Probably because our government seems at least as intent on removing President Bashar al-Assad as it is on tackling Isis.

Liberals point out that Assad’s forces kill civilians too and claim equivalence between the regime and the terrorists. The narrative in Western capitals is that we somehow attack both Isis and Assad.

Aside from the sheer arrogance and imperial swagger of this assumption that the West should determine who governs Syria, the position is simply insane.

The “third forces” in Syria, the likes of the Nusra Front or the Army of Conquest, are hardly less genocidal than Isis and in many cases are co-operating with it. None are remotely as strong as either Isis or the Syrian army, either.

Houghton says we aren’t making headway against Isis because we can’t bomb Syria.

But if Russian aircraft are taking a heavier toll on the group than ours, it is more likely because Russia is co-ordinating its strikes closely with a Syrian ground offensive, and because confusion as to our own battle aims means Western forces avoid hitting Isis if they believe a strike will assist Syrian state forces.

That is before we even go into the murkier parts of this morass — the attacks by our Nato ally Turkey on Kurdish militias seeking to defend themselves from Isis, or the trails of blood and money that link the terrorists to another of our allies, Saudi Arabia.

If Britain is to take the fight to Isis, it must get round a table with all anti-Isis forces — including Syria, Russia and Iran as well as fellow Nato powers — to work out a common strategy.

Without that, extending the range of our air strikes is at best ineffective and at worst could be of actual assistance to one of the most bloodthirsty death cults the world has seen.