Obama, Cameron Warn Against Isolationism in the Face of 'Barbaric' Islamic State

At the Los Angeles Times, "Iraq crisis prompts Obama, Cameron to revisit U.S.-Britain ties":

President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron began Thursday by making a joint call to action in a newspaper piece against “barbaric” terrorists in Iraq. They also visited an elementary school in the morning before attending the NATO summit, where they were seatmates, to discuss the crisis in Ukraine.

A year after an embarrassing stumble in U.S.-Britain relations over Syria, the two leaders seemed determined to show that their relationship is, indeed, still special.

Obama came to Wales this week searching for allies to confront Islamic State militants, and Cameron appeared the most eager to volunteer. The prime minister declared that he had not ruled out airstrikes on the group's forces in Iraq and Syria, echoing language frequently used by the White House to preserve the option of increased military action. He vowed, as Obama has in recent days, not to shy away from confrontation.

“Countries like Britain and America will not be cowed by barbaric killers,” Cameron and Obama wrote in their joint opinion piece in the Times of London. “We will be more forthright in the defense of our values, not least because a world of greater freedom is a fundamental part of how we keep our people safe.”

The Iraq crisis is shaping up as a do-over for a prime minister and a president whose relationship has been overshadowed — some say haunted — by the exceptional and problematic closeness of two of their predecessors, Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush.

Like many Americans, Britons remain wary of new military engagements after more than a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. For the British, there is the added perception that they were led into war by a leader too eager to please his American counterpart...

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