WASHINGTON — In sending warplanes back into the skies over Iraq, President Obama on Thursday night found himself exactly where he did not want to be. Hoping to end the war in Iraq, Mr. Obama became the fourth president in a row to order military action in that graveyard of American ambition.
The mandate he gave to the armed forces was more limited than that of his predecessors, focused mainly on dropping food and water. But he also authorized targeted airstrikes “if necessary” against Islamic radicals advancing on the Kurdish capital of Erbil and others threatening to wipe out thousands of non-Muslims stranded on a remote mountaintop.
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“I know that many of you are rightly concerned about any American military action in Iraq, even limited strikes like these,” he said. “I understand that. I ran for this office in part to end our war in Iraq and welcome our troops home, and that’s what we’ve done. As commander in chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq.” [But what about the airstrikes?]
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In June, he sent in 300 special forces troops not to fight but to assess the situation, an assessment that has yet to be completed, and he increased surveillance passes over Iraq. But Mr. Obama rebuffed calls, including those from within his administration, to quickly send in air power to hit ISIS forces.
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To longtime opponents of the Iraq war, the president’s decision represented a step back down a dangerous path, one that may once again entangle the United States in a bloody and destructive venture. Far better, in their view, to find alternatives like urging the United Nations to help the Iraqis conduct their own humanitarian airdrop mission.
“This is a slippery slope if I ever saw one,” said Phyllis Bennis, a scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, a research organization for peace activists. “Whatever else we may have learned from the president’s ‘dumb war,’ it should be eminently clear that we cannot bomb Islamist extremists into submission or disappearance. Every bomb recruits more supporters.”
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“This is about America’s national security,” said Ryan Crocker, who was ambassador to Iraq under Mr. Bush and to Afghanistan under Mr. Obama. “We don’t understand real evil, organized evil, very well. This is evil incarnate. People like Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” the ISIS leader, “have been in a fight for a decade. They are messianic in their vision, and they are not going to stop.”
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“Nobody has the sense about why in some cases and not in others,” said James B. Steinberg, a former deputy secretary of state under Mr. Obama and now dean of the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. “His last news conference just leaves you scratching your head. Yeah, we can’t do everything. But what matters to us?”
Iraq, of course, offers a special case, given the amount of American blood spilled since Mr. Bush’s invasion in 2003. Beyond that, Mr. Obama said that this was an instance where there was a genuine calamity in the making; the government of the country requested help, and the United States had the capacity to step in and make a difference.
“The United States cannot and should not intervene every time there is a crisis in the world,” he said. But in this case, he added, “I believe the United States cannot turn a blind eye.”
EU-NATO IMPERIALISM ❌ 