If Syrian carnage isn’t a war, then what is?

Michael A Moriarty (Letters, December 12) described the war in Syria as the “conflict” — the use of inverted commas thus intimating that to describe what is happening there as conflict to be arguably inaccurate.

This should be rebuked in the same way that writing “the holocaust” would be rebuked.

If what is happening in Syria — barrel-bombs, chemical gas, hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, numerous countries bombing it — does not constitute war then one wonders exactly what criteria does Mr Moriarty use to reach an accurate definition of “conflict”.