I hope we, or the U.N., can organize some kind of airlift to help the Yazidi. Above all, they need water. I hate to get involved in Iraq again in any way, but this is a humanitarian crisis that we bear some responsibility for causing. George Packer is right about one thing, for sure:
According to the Times, Washington has turned down Kurdish requests for American weapons for fear of alienating and undermining Iraq’s central government in Baghdad.
It seems delusional to imagine that there is such a thing as an Iraqi central government that should be given priority over stopping ISIS and preventing a massacre. That dream of the American project in Iraq is gone.
Whether we should intervene or not, and if so how, are separate questions from how we should treat the government in Baghdad. We should not pretend that they will ever unify or exercise effective control over the north and west of Iraq. What we share with them is an abhorrence at the behavior of ISIS, and that should be the only common purpose we care about. Somehow, someway, the Sunni Arab elders must be separated from ISIS, and Baghdad is the biggest obstacle to that happening.
Here is the Wiki entry for the Yazidi.
