Twitchy brought this tweet to my attention:
Here’s the headline and excerpt from the Wall Street Journal article she linked to (I highlighted the key text):
Europe’s Lack of Military Commitment Vexes American Effort
President Barack Obama has said that he wants the mission in Iraq to be international in scope, but on Tuesday European countries offered no firm military commitment to fight a powerful Islamic militant force there.
Mr. Obama’s approach in Iraq—authorizing airstrikes and then seeking partners—is the reverse of the campaign to oust the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, in which he waited to join France and the U.K.
The risks of his new Iraq approach, which prioritized speedy action over ally buy-in, became apparent Tuesday, when France’s call for arming Kurdish forces met with vocal support but an unclear timetable for action.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius , back from a weekend trip to Iraq, urged his European counterparts to consider supplying soldiers in Iraq’s semiautonomous region of Kurdistan with weapons.
The equipment, he said, would help Kurds contain the advance of Islamist militants calling themselves the Islamic State, who have taken over large swaths of Iraq and neighboring Syria in recent months.
“There is an evident imbalance between this horrible terrorist group which has highly sophisticated weapons, and Peshmergas, the Kurdish fighters, who are extremely courageous but don’t have the same equipment,” Mr. Fabius said on France Info radio. “I know it is the holiday period in our Western countries, but when people are dying, you must come back from vacation.”
WSJ subscribers can read the article here.
