Obama authorizes Iraq airstrikes

US drops food, water to imperiled religious minorities

WASHINGTON — President Obama announced Thursday that he had authorized targeted US airstrikes against Islamic militants in Iraq, scrambling to avert the fall of the Kurdish capital of Irbil and returning the United States to a significant role in Iraq for the first time since the last US soldier left the country at the end of 2011.

Speaking at the White House on Thursday night, Obama also said that US military aircraft had dropped food and water to tens of thousands of Iraqis trapped on a barren mountain range in northwestern Iraq, having fled the militants from the Islamic State who threaten them with what Obama called genocide.

“Earlier this week, one Iraqi cried that there is no one coming to help,” Obama said in a televised statement delivered from the State Dining Room. “Well, today, America is coming to help.”

The president insisted the twin military operations did not amount to a full-scale re-engagement in Iraq. But the relentless advance of the militants, whom he described as barbaric, has put them within a 30-minute drive of Irbil, raising an immediate danger for the US diplomats, military advisers, and other citizens based there.

“As commander in chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into another war in Iraq,” said Obama, who defined himself during his run for the presidency in large part around his opposition to the war in Iraq.

While Obama has authorized airstrikes, there had not yet been any as of late Thursday. But a senior administration official said after the speech that as conditions in Iraq deteriorated in recent days, the United States had worked with Iraqi security forces and Kurdish fighters to coordinate the response to the Islamists’ advances. The official said the cooperation had included airstrikes by Iraqi forces against Islamic State targets in the north.

Kurdish and Iraqi officials said that airstrikes were carried out Thursday night on two towns in northern Iraq seized by the Islamic State — Gwer and Mahmour, near Irbil. The New York Times on its website Thursday quoted Kurdish and Iraqi officials as saying that the strikes were carried out by US planes.

The cargo planes assigned to drop food and water over the mountainside were one C-17 and two C-130 aircraft. They were escorted by a pair of F-18 jet-fighters, the official said. The cargo aircraft were over the drop zone for about 15 minutes and flew at a relatively low altitude, the official said.

For Obama, who has steadfastly avoided being drawn into the sectarian furies of the Middle East, the decision raises a host of thorny questions, injecting the US military into Iraq’s broader political struggle — something Obama said he would not agree to unless Iraq’s three main ethnic groups agreed on a national unity government.

The decision could also open Obama to charges that he is willing to use US military might to protect Iraqi Christians and other religious minorities but not to prevent the slaughter of Muslims by other Muslims, either in Iraq or neighboring Syria.

But the president said the imminent threat to Irbil and the dire situation unfolding on Mount Sinjar met both his criteria for deploying US force: protecting American lives and assets, and averting a humanitarian disaster.

“When we have the unique capacity to avert a massacre, the United States cannot turn a blind eye,” he said.

Obama has been reluctant to order direct military action in Iraq while Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki remains in office, but in recent weeks there had been repeated pleas from Kurdish officials for arms, weapons, and assistance as Islamic State militants have swept across northwestern Iraq.

The militants, an offshoot of Al Qaeda, view Iraq’s majority Shi’ite and minority Christians and Yazidis, a Kurdish religious group, as infidels.

Deliberations at the White House went on all day Thursday, as reports surfaced that administration officials were considering either humanitarian flights, airstrikes, or both.

Shortly after 6 p.m., the White House released a photo of Obama consulting his national security team in the Situation Room. To his right was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin E. Dempsey. Watching from across the table were Susan E. Rice, the national security adviser, and her principal deputy, Antony J. Blinken. On the wall behind them, the clock recorded the time: 10:37 a.m.

Obama made only one public appearance, a rushed visit to Fort Belvoir, Va., where he signed into law a bill expanding access to health care for veterans. Before getting into his limousine, Obama was observed holding an intense conversation with his chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough, stabbing his finger several times for emphasis. Minutes after signing the bill and shaking a few hands, he rushed back to his limousine and returned to the White House.

Later, the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, confirmed that Obama was weighing action in Iraq and warned about the danger of a humanitarian catastrophe. But he declined to offer any details about a potential military operation, prompting a storm of questions about why, if the danger was so dire, Obama was not acting immediately.

Administration officials said Thursday that the crisis on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq forced their hand. Some 40 children have already died from the heat and dehydration, according to the United Nations organization, UNICEF, while more than 40,000 people have been sheltering in the bare mountains without food, water, or access to supplies.