What the world saw last Thursday evening was an American president torn between personal preferences and cold reality. The result is a US that is once more moving towards greater military involvement in Iraq – but only reluctantly and incrementally.
Describing himself as someone who ran for office “in part to end our war in Iraq and welcome our troops home”, Barack Obama announced a policy of dropping supplies to save thousands of members of the Iraqi Yazidi religious minority – and authorised but did not order air strikes on advancing insurgents from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (known as Isis).
He deployed humanitarian terms (“to prevent a potential act of genocide”) as well as self-interest (“to protect our American personnel”). Conspicuously absent was any strategic rationale, and longer-term plan, for US action.