When confronted with the atrocious truth of the Islamic State death cult's murder videos there is a natural instinct to "do something".
In the case of the British Government, the reflex has led to muddled thinking. In the case of two former British soldiers, it led to the front line.
Both are naïve. But only one of these groups is guaranteeing their own failure.
Jamie Read and James Hughes travelled to Kurdistan and took up arms against IS. They spent a little over three weeks on the front line.
They were interviewed by the police on their return but not, unlike every other group of Britons that has travelled to fight in the Syrian civil war, arrested and charged with terrorism.
Volunteers who have gone to fight against the regime of Bashar al Assad are all deemed to be dangerous terrorists.
Those who fight alongside the Kurds are seen as intelligence assets.
Of course, some of those who choose to fight in Syria do so because they subscribe to the theology of the IS and its global ambitions to enforce a Caliphate.
But other Syrian groups fighting against Assad do not have this agenda. Seen as "moderates", these rebel movements have received funding, training, and non-lethal aid from London and Washington.
Join them, though, and you'll be jailed.
Right now, in Jordan, there is a Military Operations Centre (MoC) staffed by, among others, British and American officers working with Syrian rebels and trying to put together a coherent ground force to exploit the effects of air strikes by the US-led coalition against Islamic State.
It's a bit of a struggle to win the trust of Syria's non-Kurd rebels.
The West has done very little to help them, has not imposed a no-fly zone on the Damascus regime but has bombed the al Nusra Front, probably the most effective rebel group fighting Assad.
Syrian rebel sources have told Sky News that the coalition has "about six months" before they collapse completely and may throw their lot in with Islamic State or al Qaeda affiliate the al Nusra Front.
Meanwhile, a small but steady trickle of volunteers - all of them unpaid - are making their way to the Kurds from the UK and other parts of Europe.
Their motivations are mixed.
Some, Hughes and Read admitted, have a "death wish" and nothing to live for back home. Others, like them, felt a compulsion to do their bit to stop IS, and no doubt others are war junkies, fantasists or downright nutters.
They have, though, managed to do something that their governments have shied away from. They have reached a conclusion about who in this war are the "goodies" and then joined up.
UK and US leaders have not quite figured out who they want to win in Syria.
The Kurds get backing for their plucky defence of their autonomous region.
But Syria's other rebels are a mixed bag, which in terms of UK law, are all being defined as "terrorists" - even the ones that the UK and US are funding.
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Gallery: British Pair Joined Fight Against Islamic State
James Hughes and Jamie Read gave an exclusive interview to Sky News
James Hughes from Worcestershire is a former soldier who served three tours in Afghanistan
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