It’s about time.
Via The Wall Street Journal (H/T Hot Air):
A new coalition government in Baghdad could also eliminate much of the congressional opposition to expanding military aid to Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
The Pentagon is speeding up efforts to send thousands of Hellfire air-to-surface missiles to Iraq. If approved by Congress, the $700 million deal would send 5,000 Hellfire missiles to Iraq. This year, the U.S. has sent Iraq about 1,200 Hellfire missiles, usually fired from small planes and helicopters, with another 366 expected to arrive this month.
Iraq also hopes to receive several new U.S. F-16s and Apache attack helicopters, but the transfers have been held up because of resistance in Washington from lawmakers who were reluctant to send weapons Mr. Maliki might have been able to use to suppress Sunni opposition.
“We do expect an increase in U.S. support, with the cooperation from other players in the region, against ISIS,” said Lukman Faily, Iraq’s ambassador to the U.S., in an interview on Friday. “We expect there will be a heavier military involvement down in the south against ISIS, as well as the north.”
Experts on Iraq say any stepped-up U.S. engagement in Iraq will require a major makeover of the Iraq military, which has shown limited ability to contain Islamic State militants.
Mr. Maliki stripped his country’s military of many senior Sunni officers and replaced them with Shiite loyalists.
“The political solution has to have the effect of reforming the Iraqi security forces to make them plausible defenders of Sunnis,” said Stephen Biddle, an Iraq expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Overhauling the military will likely take time, and the U.S. will need to seek immediate ways to assuage Sunnis that it can work with Mr. Abadi.