Isis drags US back

The Financial Times has an article by Geoff Dyer about Iraq:

The US is examining air strikes and other forms of direct military action against the jihadists who have taken control of a large area of northern Iraq but the White House remains deeply reluctant to involve itself again in the country’s conflicts.
The Obama administration has received requests from the Iraqi government since the end of last year to use air power against extremist groups in the north. That pressure has become more urgent since the capture of Mosul, the country’s second-largest city, say current and former US officials.
However, although the administration has indicated it will accelerate the sale of arms to Iraq, it has not yet decided to get directly involved in the conflict with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the al-Qaeda splinter group known as Isis.
President Barack Obama said that the US had been providing intelligence assistance and military equipment to Iraq as the threat from Isis has grown. “What we have seen over the last couple of days indicates the degree to which Iraq is going to need more help,” he said. “I do not rule out anything.”
Jennifer Psaki, state department spokeswoman, said all options were being considered except “boots on the ground”.
Amid the fears of escalating civil war and the potential break-up of the country, the renewed violence has forced leaders of both the US and Iraq to re-examine long-held positions.
Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, who helped prevent the Americans from keeping a small force in the country after 2011, has been obliged to ask the US to intervene and help his government’s military forces. Meanwhile, Obama, who ran for office on a pledge to end the war in Iraq, has been pushed into reopening a discussion about a new intervention in the country.
Obama, already under fire from critics at home who say the US is withdrawing from its leadership role in the world, faced renewed Republican attacks this week for not doing more to ensure a long-term US military presence in Iraq. “This growing threat to our national security interests is the cost of President Obama’s decision to withdraw all of our troops from Iraq in 2011, against the advice of our commanders,” said Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina.
The short-term military option for the US would be to launch air strikes against Isis, either using drones or fighter jets launched from an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf or the Mediterranean. Before Mosul fell, Baghdad had asked the US to bomb the camps that Isis operates near Iraq’s border with Syria. However, officials and military analysts said drones– which have been used extensively in Yemen and Pakistan– would be much less useful against a more organized and better equipped force, as Isis appears to have become.
Bombing raids using F-16s run the risk of heavy civilian casualties in the urban areas Isis now holds. Moreover, they would also require on-the-ground intelligence, using information provided by the Iraqis, which the Pentagon might not always trust, or putting US special forces into the conflict area. “You would need very good intelligence, almost in real time, to be able to conduct that kind of bombing,” said a former military official. “It is hard for me to see this president supporting an option like this, after everything he has said.”
The willingness of the US to ramp up help for the Baghdad government is also colored in part by the view of many in the US administration that Maliki is the source of the country’s problems because of the way he has alienated Iraq’s Kurds and other Sunnis.
“Frankly, over the last several years we have not seen the kind of trust and co-operation develop between moderate Sunni and Shia leaders in Iraq, which accounts for some of the weakness of the state,” Obama has said.
US officials say that a new billion-dollar package of military assistance for Iraq is being accelerated, but it is likely to make little difference in the short term. Iraq started last week to take delivery of eighteen F-16 fighter jets sold to it by the US, yet they will only be operational in September.
Decisions about military intervention will be guided in part by the progress of Isis forces in the coming days. Officials say they are watching closely not just whether insurgents start to threaten Baghdad, but also the reaction of forces operated by the Kurdish authorities and of Iran.
The surge of violence in Iraq also raises uncomfortable questions about the administration’s policy in Syria. Critics suggest that tepid US support for moderate rebels has created more space for groups such as Isis, an argument that would gather steam if the US military intervenes in Iraq. “If Iraq, why not Syria?” says a former Middle Eastern military official.

Rico says carpet bombing is the answer; it worked in Vietnam, it'll work even better in Iraq...