Obama & Cameron find little Enthusiasm at NATO for new Iraq War

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2014/09/cameron-little-enthusiasm.html

Obama & Cameron find little Enthusiasm at NATO for new Iraq War
By Juan Cole | Sep. 5, 2014

The NATO summit in Wales was supposed to be all about getting out of Afghanistan. Instead, two new issues dominated it– the Ukraine and ISIL in Iraq and Syria.

British prime minister David Cameron joined Barack Obama in castigating NATO members for paying ransoms to ISIL and for not stepping up to deal with it. Cameron is said to be canvassing his backbenchers in parliament about whether they would accept a Royal Air Force role in bombing ISIL positions in Iraq. He has to do this because last year this time the British parliament shot down any British role in bombing Syria in response to the Bashar al-Assad regime’s use of poison gas. Parliament’s reluctance played a role in forestalling an Obama intervention in Syria.

Cameron and Obama expect Haydar al-Abadi to form a government of national unity in Iraq within the next few days. At that point, they expect al-Abadi formally to invite Western air power into the country to combat ISIL, which has taken 40% of the country.

~snip~

My reading of the reporting from Wales is that most NATO states have little intention of intervening directly in Iraq and most of them have no intention to get involved in Syria. The US and Britain (and, far from Europe, Australia) are the most likely to commit to the Iraq front. The NATO country closest to ISIL territory, Turkey, seems reluctant to get involved in directly fighting ISIL (and critics of the religious Right party, AKP, which is in power, suggest that behind the scenes President Tayyip Erdogan is supporting the hard core Muslim rebels in Syria.