ALJAZEERA: The lightning offensive that has seen Al-Qaeda-inspired fighters drive government security forces out of some of northern Iraq’s key cities has left the U.S. facing a strategic dilemma: A fractious and fragile Iraqi state created by the American-led invasion in 2003 is crumbling; putting it back together — or, at least, containing the spread of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) — looks likely to require cooperation among foreign stakeholders who are anything but allies.
President Barack Obama, fresh off a speech at West Point where he vaunted the successful withdrawal from a “sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq,” confirmed in a hastily arranged press conference on the White House’s South Lawn on Friday that he wouldn’t send U.S. troops back to Iraq.
But after rebuffing requests from Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for U.S. airstrikes on ISIL strongholds for months, according to The New York Times, Obama on Friday made clear that the speed of the rebel advance had prompted his administration to reconsider targeted military action — and maybe recalibrate his noninterventionist approach in the Middle East… (more)
