Well, this is just lovely:
As the threat from Sunni militants in western Iraq escalated last month, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki secretly asked the Obama administration to consider carrying out airstrikes against extremist staging areas, according to Iraqi and American officials.
But Iraq’s appeals for a military response have so far been rebuffed by the White House, which has been reluctant to open a new chapter in a conflict that President Obama has insisted was over when the United States withdrew the last of its forces from Iraq in 2011.
You have to love that. President Obama insists the war is over and won't let reality intrude.
Recall that last month I was begging America to provide air support, among other assistance, to help fight the war on terror that is inconveniently being waged in Iraq.
We launch drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and even Somalia. But not in Iraq where al Qaeda has seized territory.
But does our president even care?
The fall of Mosul, Iraq, to al Qaeda terrorists this week is as big in its implications as Russia's annexation of Crimea. But from the Obama presidency, barely a peep.
Barack Obama is fiddling while the world burns. Iraq, Pakistan, Ukraine, Russia, Nigeria, Kenya, Syria. These foreign wildfires, with more surely to come, will burn unabated for two years until the United States has a new president. The one we've got can barely notice or doesn't care.
Sure, President Obama says all options are on the table:
"I don’t rule out anything because we do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in either Iraq or Syria," President Obama said when asked whether he was contemplating air strikes. Officials later stressed that ground troops would not be sent in, however.
Obama said he was looking at "all options" to help Iraq's leaders, who took full control when the U.S. occupation ended in 2011. "In our consultations with the Iraqis there will be some short-term immediate things that need to be done militarily," he said.
Ah, so some options are ruled out--no ground troops. I'm not advocating that option, but I'm just pointing out that an option has been ruled out.
But when no options are ever chosen, what difference does it make, at this point, what is ruled in or out?
And to think some people suspect Bowe Bergdahl of going AWOL in the war on terror. It's a funny world.
