U.S. President Barack Obama, in an interview given last weekend to The New York Times' Thomas Friedman, illuminated his foreign policy thinking, at this moment of fraught drama in both Iraq and Ukraine, but the counsels concerning the two didn't match.
He made it clear that he does not intend to take the United States more deeply into the Middle East (again!) unless the authorities there "agree to an inclusive policy of no victor/no vanquished."
He is not willing to provide an air force for one or another of the factions contending for power in Iraq, Friedman reported, although the air intervention now taking place has — so far — been to protect the Kurd, Christian and Yazidi minorities that have been under assault by the Islamic State.