In a famous Shakespearean tragedy, a young hero professes to a swooning maiden, “That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet.” US secretary of state John Kerry was in Cairo growing a campaign to build a broad international coalition for a “war”, while insisting to the CNN that the US was not at war with ISIS. The Bush administration made chaos in Iraq, but Obama’s team is in denial. Kerry has called it a counterterrorism operation. A war by any other name? The long story of Iraq reads like a tragedy of epic proportions. Between the US, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Sunni Wahabism, Iran and Saudi Arabia, Iraq has been crippled beyond recognition.

Just to recap, the US is still anti-Assad, they still want to train Syrians rebels. They also want to get ISIS, and with the videotaped beheadings attributed to ISIS, including two murders of American journalists, they have popular support. Their mission might include airstrikes in civil war-torn Syria but there will be no troops for a ground offensive.

Egypt has one of the largest militaries in the region, with only Israel in the region having bigger guns. They will be essential in the coalition, as well as Turkey. Turkey is already sick of the Iraqi problem with the large influx of refugees. As if the Palestinians were not enough to deal with. With the Muslim Brotherhood deposed in Egypt, the Egyptians have taken a pragmatic stance on Israel and closed off their borders with Gaza. Yet, while their governments may differ on their policies towards Israel, they want ISIS gone. So far, Shiite-majority Iran has played the biggest role on the ground in Northern Iraq, where its militias have been helping Iraqi forces. We may yet get a huge surprise of Muslim unity in the region, because in the beginning (for this is a new war), everybody hates ISIS.