President Barack Obama on Saturday reiterated his determination to avoid being pulled into a longer involvement in Iraq but said strikes against Islamic militants who he called “barbaric terrorists” would continue if necessary, in order to protect Americans and “prevent an act of genocide”.
Obama said he could not say how long military and humanitarian operations would continue, but said: “We feel confident that we can prevent [Isis] from going up a mountain and slaughtering the people who are there.”
When he announced the air strikes on northern Iraq on Thursday, the president had stressed that the first priority was to protect US military personnel in the area.
US forces launched three waves of strikes on Friday, targeting Islamic State (Isis) fighters around the Kurdish city of Irbil. On Saturday, a second airdrop of humanitarian supplies was made to refugees hiding in mountainous areas after fleeing persecution by the militants.
Obama said US forces were now “positioned to strike [Isis] terrorists around the mountain”.
Speaking on the South Lawn of the White House in front of the Marine One helicopter, which waited to take him to a scheduled vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, Obama delivered a four-minute statement in which he said air strikes had protected Americans in Irbil and Kurdish Yazidi refugees on Mount Sinjar, and that the US and the Iraqi government had “stepped up military assistance” to Kurdish forces fighting the militants.
He said he had spoken on Saturday morning to the British prime minister, David Cameron, and the French president, François Hollande, who had agreed to help with the humanitarian effort. A British plane left an RAF base to drop supplies; earlier Tony Abbott, the prime minister of Australia, said his country was preparing to join the aid flights.
On Saturday afternoon it was confirmed that Obama had spoken to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, from Air Force One.
Answering questions, Obama said he would not give “a particular timetable” for the air strikes and humanitarian effort in Iraq, “because as I’ve said from the start, wherever and whenever US personnel and facilities are threatened, it’s my obligation to make sure they are protected … given the challenging security environment, we’re going to maintain vigilance and make sure our people are safe.
“Our initial goal is not only to make sure Americans are protected, but also to deal with this humanitarian situation in Sinjar. We feel confident that we can prevent [Isis] from going up a mountain and slaughtering the people who are there. But the next step, which is going to be complicated logistically, is how do we give safe passage for people down from the mountain. That’s the kind of coordination we need to do internationally.”
Obama called for an international effort to set up “some sort of mechanism or safe corridor so that these people can move”.
He also, repeatedly, said the Iraqi government needed to take ultimate responsibility for security within the country. “We can conduct air strikes,” he said, “but ultimately there’s not going to be an American military solution to the problem. There’s going to have to be an Iraqi solution that America and other countries support.”
The president repeated that US troops – beyond the special-forces “advisers” currently in the country – would not set foot in Iraq again.
“We are going to maintain that because we should have learned a lesson from our long and immensely costly incursion into Iraq,” he said.
Asked if it had been a mistake to withdraw US troops from the country, a process which began in 2009 and was completed in 2011, Obama said the withdrawal had been made because of Iraqi government policy and that had troops stayed anyway, such policy would have caused the same problems that now affect the country.
“The only difference,” he said, “is we would have a bunch of troops on the ground that would be vulnerable.
“So that entire analysis is bogus and is wrong, but gets frequently peddled around here by folks who oftentimes are trying to defend previous policies that they themselves made.”
Obama is scheduled to return from his vacation temporarily next Sunday. As he headed for Marine 1, he said: “I’m ready to not have a suit on for a while.”
Earlier on Saturday, in his weekly address, Obama said he would “not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war” but added that strikes would continue “if necessary”. Referring to his original statement to the nation, in which he announced the strikes and the humanitarian effort, he said: “I made it clear that if [Isis] attempted to advance further, our military would respond with targeted strikes.
“That’s what we’ve done. And, if necessary, that’s what we will continue to do.”
On Friday, religious leaders said Isis persecution of religious minorities in Iraq had already become a genocide.
In his address, Obama said: “The terrorists that have taken over parts of Iraq have been especially brutal to religious minorities – rounding up families, executing men, enslaving women, and threatening the systematic destruction of an entire religious community, which would be genocide.”
The president has gained broad domestic support for the strikes, although Republican voices have dissented. On Friday John Boehner, the Speaker of the House of the Representatives, issued a statement in which he said: “The president’s authorisation of air strikes is appropriate, but like many Americans, I am dismayed by the ongoing absence of a strategy for countering the grave threat Isis poses to the region.”
On Saturday, giving the Republican weekly address, Mike McFadden, a Senate candidate from Minnesota, criticised the Obama administration’s record on the economy.
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion