Tragically, it seems possible:
President Obama announced on Friday that in the “days ahead” he will decide on a package of military and diplomatic options to halt the rapid advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), as the jihadist army’s march from Syria through Sunni Iraq has upended Obama’s achievement of extricating the US military from the Iraq conflict.
Obama has ruled out sending US soldiers and marines back to the Iraqi streets they patrolled from 2003 to 2011, but signaled a new, reluctant openness to returning the US to war in Iraq. .. Options under discussion include an air campaign, using either or both air force or navy warplanes, the potential duration of which has yet to be determined. Drone strikes remain under consideration, but manned aircraft are said to the preferred option, owing to their superiority against moving and manoeuvrable targets.
Zack Beauchamp calls the following sentence the “most important line from Obama’s Iraq speech”:
The US is not simply going to involve itself in a military action in the absence of a political plan by the Iraqis.
I certainly take some comfort from the president’s strong words of caution. But he’s going to have to withstand an army of bedwetter interventionists in the Beltway. Zack comments:
If this is is true, then Obama has ruled out the most likely scenario for military action in Iraq: a short-term drone campaign designed to help the Iraqi military halt ISIS’ momentum.
Political reform inside Iraq is really complicated, and would involve serious reform from Nuri al-Maliki’s Shia sectarian government to accommodate Sunni demands. Putting together a credible political reform plan will take a long time, and certainly won’t happen in time for the US to get involved in the immediate fighting.
Throughout his speech, Obama took pains to emphasize the importance of Iraqi political reform and minimize the prospects of US military involvement. While he said he was considering military action, he flatly ruled out deploying US troops. He also repeatedly stressed the need for the Iraqi government to reform itself to deal with the root causes of ISIS’ success, sectarian divisions and poor governance.
Tom Ricks is against air strikes:
The last thing we need is American pilots being held prisoner by the new guys. And where would you base your combat search & rescue helicopters, and what do you do when one of them gets show down? I don’t think Obama faces hard choices in Iraq.
The one interesting suggestion I’ve heard is that the U.S. government make military aid to Iraq dependent on Maliki stepping down. But I think Iran has more say in that than we do.
Hayes Brown sees no good options for the US. How airstrikes could backfire:
Air strikes, while often effective in the short-term, are not a long-term strategy for defeating ISIS. It’s also far more expensive than many realize. There is also still the chance of accidentally killing civilians, which would provide backlash so soon after a decade in which the United States occupied the entirety of Iraq. There’s also the risk that air strikes could lead to mission creep and a full reinsertion into Iraq.
The Dish 