The British government is "terrified" of
intervening militarily in Iraq ahead of elections
due next year and is happy to posture rather than take real
action, an ex-senior general who previously helped lead NATO
missions said on Tuesday.
Islamic State insurgents - radical Islamists who want to
re-create a mediaeval-style caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria
- have swept across northern Iraq in recent weeks, pushing back
Kurdish regional forces despite coming under U.S. air strikes.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has so far refused to
back the United States militarily, with Britain instead dropping
relief aid onto Sinjar mountain, where thousands of people of
the Yazidi minority sect have taken refuge from Islamic State.
Former general Richard Shirreff, who retired from the
British army last week and was NATO's Deputy Supreme Allied
Commander in Europe until March 2014, told the Times of London
that British action was insufficient and he chided policymakers.
"We have politicians who want to posture, who make a lot of
noise but do not have any stick," said Shirreff.
"This government is terrified of any form of intervention
involving boots on the ground before an election next year."
A spokesman at Britain's Ministry of Defence and a
spokeswoman at Prime Minister David Cameron's office both
declined comment when contacted by Reuters.
The last time Cameron tried to sign Britain up to potential
military strikes in the Middle East, against Syria in August
2013, he lost a parliamentary vote.
It was the first time a British prime minister had failed on
such a vote of war since 1782, according to commentators.
The defeat was attributed in part to the bitter legacy of
Britain's involvement in the 2003 Iraq war, which had done much
to turn British public opinion against foreign military
interventions.
Under then Prime Minister Tony Blair, Britain helped the
United States invade Iraq after asserting - wrongly, it later
turned out - that President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of
mass destruction; 179 British soldiers died in the eight-year
long deployment that ensued.
A YouGov poll for The Sun newspaper showed on Tuesday that
Britons were split over whether their country should launch air
strikes against the Islamic State militant forces.
It showed 37 percent of respondents were in favour with 36
percent of people against and 27 percent uncertain, according to
a poll of 1,676 adults conducted on Aug. 10-11.
REUTERS