How many more children must die?

It was reported the other day that French planes had bombed a school in Mosul in northern Iraq and that 28 children died.

Across the region, from Syria and Iraq to Gaza and Lebanon, children who survive, and have survived, the decades of chaos visited upon them, live through a childhood blighted by fear, pain, trauma, loss and grief until it is no longer childhood at all, and have done so for a generation.

Interrogations of captured ISIS fighters by the Iraqi army and researchers into the resolution of intractable conflicts have found one thing they all have in common. They had no childhood or adolescence, at least not in the way we understand it, not as a stable, developmentally productive period of life, and they are, in one form or another, in mourning for its loss.

In 1996, Madaleine Albright (the USA's ambassador to the UN at the time - she became US Secretary of State the following year) was interviewed about the "excess deaths" arising as a result of UN sanctions of Iraq. "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" she was asked, and Albright, finding herself cornered, replied "we think the price is worth it."

But clearly 500,000 children was not enough after all. As the example I listed at the beginning shows, we require at least 28 more.

The answer to the question that forms the title of this article is, of course, no more children must die.

As we drop bombs in our futile macho gestures against ISIS, we are dropping bombs on an organisation that is supported by Turkey. They do this because they want to topple Assad, and because ISIS fight against the Kurds, thereby destabilising the domestic Turkish left wing platform in which Kurdish organisations participate.

They are supported by Saudi Arabia, because they fight against Shi'ite "apostates" and "Safawis" like Iran. They are supported by Israel because they fight against Hezbollah and seem to be happy to let Israel retain the Golan Heights with its recently discovered oil reserves.

And ISIS are of course supported by everyone who likes the idea of buying oil at $25 a barrel and doesn't care where it comes from, and by various commercial entities with interests in particular oil and gas pipeline routes.

ISIS are in financial crisis. They have run out of banks to rob. Their tax base is being eroded as refugees flee the country (indeed every hysterical response in the West about refugees is used as domestic propaganda by ISIS to persuade people to stay). The infrastructure that supports their oil exports is being degraded and they are finding it difficult to recruit engineers and skilled personnel to operate what remains. They rely more than ever on the support of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel, indeed they would not continue to exist without it.

ISIS clearly represent an epochal evil. However, there are no "good guys versus bad guys" here. The cycle of violence has persisted so long it has led us to a situation where we are no longer fighting our enemy any more, we are fighting our enemy's enemy's enemy, and every enemy has at some point been an ally, and every ally has at some point been guilty of the very violations of human rights and dignities we use as a pretext for punishing our enemies. Once war starts the logic that gave it birth mutates with every grievance and atrocity until the only remaining legitimate war aim is its end.

But Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel are our allies. It would be nice to think we could influence them in some way that does not involve killing children.

To make a table or chair fall over, we could remove the various legs that support it, or we could bomb the house it's in. Only one of these involves killing children. Only one of these is guaranteed to work. And not the same one.