National will reveal its hand today about how it plans to respond to the Syrian refugee crisis.

The party is isolated – its coalition partners say New Zealand needs to act, and it does. This is rare for the national party to be so isolated on an issue.

Cross-party support isn't something that occurs often in this country – so when you have the Greens and Act agreeing that we need to take in more refugees, National has to respond.

David Cameron, under enormous pressure at the weekend, said Britain will take another 15,000 refugees.

Whatever National's response is today, it will raise another question.

What role are we prepared to play in helping to address the root cause of the problem? And that is Islamic State?

Cameron has agreed to take thousands of refugees but he wants military action against the Islamic State too. He said as much at the weekend. He and some of his supporters say the royal air force should extend airstrikes to Syria, targeting the Islamic State.

And remember, two years ago, Cameron wanted military action then but was thumped in the commons. Labour and tory rebels all voted him down.

Likewise here - Labour and the Greens weighed in heavily on the issue of whether we should send troops to Iraq. "No" said the Greens and Labour. "Absolutely not".

So if you don't support intervention, then what is the plan?

As one political commentator said to me over the weekend - the opposite of intervention is not peace.

It is easy to call on National to show some compassion and extend its humanitarian reach to the people of Syria. That's the easy part. We can all do that.

But we also need to agree on what we're prepared to do to target the root cause of all this misery. Isis.

When a conflict rages on unchecked, like it has in Syria and Iraq, the result is what we're seeing now. Thousands upon thousands of people fleeing the violence.

And as we watch this tragedy unfold. Syria's people, its cities, its history and its culture destroyed. We need to address that question.

The opposite of war isn't peace - so what are we prepared to do to target the killing machine that is Islamic State?