Emma Sky is a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. She served in Iraq from 2003 to 2004 as the Governorate Coordinator of Kirkuk, and from 2007 to 2010 as a political adviser to Gen. Raymond Odierno, who was the commanding general of U.S. forces in Iraq.

The U.S. Must Act Now in Iraq

It is unconscionable in this day and age that the United States should not act to save minorities in Iraq from certain genocide. The rapid advance of ISIS since the fall of Mosul in June has put the lives of Iraq’s minorities at risk.

The United States should use precise airstrikes to prevent the advance of the Islamic State – which is a far more extreme group than the Taliban in Afghanistan - and to stop them taking over the areas where the religious minorities reside. Christians are being forced to flee their homes on the Nineveh plains in which they have lived for centuries – under the threat to convert or die. Yezidis, who have survived centuries in Sinjar, are being murdered by the militants due to their beliefs; and those who have fled to the mountains are dying of starvation and dehydration.

The United States should use precise airstrikes to prevent the advance of ISIS and to stop them from taking over the areas where the religious minorities live.

Military airstrikes should not be construed as taking sides in a sectarian war of Sunnis against Shiites, but as support of Iraq’s minorities. Previously, I argued that Prime Minister Maliki was the cause of much of Iraq’s woes. And while the US must continue to insist that he step down, US action can no longer wait until another Shia leader replaces him. Rather than continuing to only deal with Baghdad, the United States should provide weapons directly to the Kurdish pesh merga, the only credible force battling ISIS. The U.S. should also appoint a senior official to lead an outreach effort to moderate Sunnis to provide them with advice on how to battle the Islamic State. And, in recognition of the situation on the ground in Iraq today, the United States should support Iraqi initiatives to establish regional forces that will help Sunnis defeat ISIS and which will also serve to absorb the Shiite militias.

This is not the time to turn a blind eye and wish that Iraq’s problems would go away. They won’t. Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs should stand together in support of the use of U.S. military power to prevent the extinction of Iraq’s religious minorities and to provide them with humanitarian support. The United States has the greatest military in the world – and is the only country capable of such action.

It was the morally correct intervention of the United States in 1991 to impose a no-fly zone and to drop humanitarian supplies that prevented Saddam’s forces from massacring Kurds. We need to act again. And quickly, before it is too late.

The New York Times