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| Iraq |
| Brits join air campaign against Islamic State in Iraq |
| 2014-09-28 |
| LONDON -- Three European nations, including Britain, joined the widening U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq on Friday, even as the group's fighters renewed their attempt to overrun a strategic border city in Syria. Britain's entry seven weeks after the United States began carrying out strikes followed an overwhelming parliamentary vote to authorize attacks. Denmark and Belgium also opted to join the fight. All three countries that authorized military action Friday are limiting their roles to Iraq. But no European ally has been willing to join the Syria campaign -- raising the prospect that the Islamic State could try to use the country as a refuge. “Simply allowing [the Islamic State] to retreat across an invisible border is no answer,” said Peter Hain, a member of Parliament and former cabinet minister, during Britain's day-long debate. British Prime Minister David Cameron, scarred by a humiliating defeat last year when he sought permission to launch strikes against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, did not try to win approval for attacks in Syria this time around. Instead, he limited his proposal to Iraq, where he had a clear consensus, thanks to the Iraqi government's request for Western help. No such invitation from Syria exists, and British opposition leader Ed Miliband has suggested he will not support widening the campaign without a U.N. resolution, which is unlikely to come. Friday's House of Commons vote endorsing Cameron's plan to deploy six Tornado fighter jets to Iraq was lopsided, at 524 to 43. Still, there was opposition from the backbenches, both from hawks who wanted to go further and from doves who insisted that Britain had not learned the right lessons from more than a decade of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Cameron argued that ignoring the Islamic State was impossible, given the threat he said it poses to Britain. “This is not a threat on the far side of the world. Left unchecked, we will face a terrorist caliphate on the shores of the Mediterranean and bordering a NATO member, with a declared and proven intention to attack our country and our people,” Cameron said as he opened the debate. |
| Posted by:Steve White |