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On Friday, U.S. fighter jets began airstrikes against ISIL militant artillery targets in Iraq by dropping laser guided bombs.

The bombing was conducted by two Navy F-18 fighter jets as they dropped 500 pound bombs each near the city of Erbil, located in the Northern part of Iraq.  ISIL was using artillery to target Kurdish forces defending the crucial Northern Iraqi city.

A press release issued by Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby stated, the U.S. military conducted a targeted airstrike against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorists.

Kirby continued to state, the president made clear, the United States military will continue to take direct action against ISIL when they threaten our personnel and facilities.

Real Clear Politics reported, hours after the president’s announcement, the Pentagon reported U.S. military aircraft dropped bombs on artillery used against Kurdish forces that were defending Erbil “near U.S. personnel.”

Real Clear Politics continued to report there is no evidence, as senior administration officials described the president’s aims, that U.S. protection of Erbil and humanitarian aid to tens of thousands of minority Iraqis known as the Yezidis can do more than deter ISIL in the short term. Iraqi forces have not been up to the challenge, and there was no suggestion by senior administration officials that this would change soon without international intervention.

Sinjar is the ancestral homeland of the Yazidi people who have always been persecuted for their religious beliefs, but had been protected by Kurdish fighters known as the pesh mergas.  Unfortunately, the Kurds are poorly equipped and cannot sustain the defense of nearly 650 miles with the Islamic militants.

Kurdish officials have been warning for weeks it was unsustainable for them to even try to defend such a large area, considering ISIL is vastly better equipped.

The Washington Post reported that this all began with the lightning-quick advance of the Islamic State militant group, south from the northern city of Mosul to within 60 miles of Baghdad, has been a source of deep concern since it began two months ago. But the administration worried that interjecting itself into the conflict would inevitably open it to charges of siding with one side or the other in what has become an increasingly sectarian battle.

The Post continued to report that strategy has been upended this week, however, as the Islamic State has turned its attention eastward to the semiautonomous Kurdish region it had largely circumvented in its march toward Baghdad.

On Thursday night President Obama issued a statement, “Today I authorized two operations in Iraq — targeted airstrikes to protect our American personnel, and a humanitarian effort to help save thousands of Iraqi civilians who are trapped on a mountain without food and water and facing almost certain death.”

Two issues changed the president’s calculation and forced him to reverse himself and actively engage in the deteriorating situation in Northern Iraq.

First, was the continued march of ISIL across northern Iraq, and as the president stated was the request by the Iraqi government to prevent the massacre of innocent Iraqi civilians stranded on a mountain in Northern Iraq.

The president commented, “We’ve begun operations to help save Iraqi civilians stranded on the mountain.  As ISIL has marched across Iraq, it has waged a ruthless campaign against innocent Iraqis.  And these terrorists have been especially barbaric towards religious minorities, including Christian and Yezidis, a small and ancient religious sect.  Countless Iraqis have been displaced.  And chilling reports describe ISIL militants rounding up families, conducting mass executions, and enslaving Yezidi women.”

Obama continued to comment, “In recent days, Yezidi women, men and children from the area of Sinjar have fled for their lives.  Thousands — perhaps tens of thousands — are now hiding high up on the mountain, with little but the clothes on their backs.  They’re without food, they’re without water.  People are starving.  And children are dying of thirst.  Meanwhile, ISIL forces below have called for the systematic destruction of the entire Yezidi people, which would constitute genocide.  So these innocent families are faced with a horrible choice:  descend the mountain and be slaughtered, or stay and slowly die of thirst and hunger.”

The prospect of genocide being perpetrated by ISIL against anyone who opposes their strict brand of Islam, led the president to act after having sat on the sidelines until now.

Now that the U.S. is beginning to act and provide humanitarian relief supplies to the Yezidi people many who have been without food or water in the harsh sweltering heat of Northern Iraq, but the question becomes what happens in a few months when winter begins to set in?

One only has to remember the airdrop of relief supplies to the Kurds in the Northern Iraq in 1991 after the ending of the Persian Gulf War.  Will we continue to provide humanitarian supplies through the winter months?

What is our strategy? In his statement on Thursday the president has not articulated what his strategy in Iraq or the broader Middle East is.  What is the strategy of the U.S. in rolling back the gains of ISIL?

There are numerous unanswered questions, now that the president has ownership of this conflict.  The world is now watching how the president conducts himself in Iraq, and how he handles himself will have ramifications in other regions of the world.