The idea of enforcing a no-fly zone in Syria is gaining steam. Hillary Clinton said during the second presidential debate that she supports the idea and last week the British parliament debated the concept. On Friday, Barack Obama and his foreign policy advisers met to discuss their options in Syria.

The rationale offered for a no-fly zone is that it will end Russian and Syrian bombing in eastern Aleppo and perhaps break the harsh siege those forces have enacted there. But while NFZ proponents present it in humanitarian terms, it would actually represent an escalation of war that is guaranteed to harm civilians in the name of protecting them.

NFZs involve destroying the air force and anti-aircraft weaponry of the country subject to them. Clinton herself has acknowledged that implementing the NFZ she advocates would entail the deaths of “a lot” of civilians. None of this is to minimize or rationalize the torture, mass killings, or severe sieges enacted by the Syrian state and its allies. The imminent question, however, is not, “Is the Syrian government good?”; it’s “Should America drop more bombs on Syria?”