The Obama Administration has spent months endorsing French calls for war in Mali, but last weekend’s invasion took them, and indeed everyone else, off guard. Some US aircraft and surveillance drones are in place, but with the war being initially planned for autumn, broader US support simply wasn’t.

 

Still, the administration never saw an open-ended “war on terror” it didn’t want a piece of, and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta says that the US is promising to provide whatever aid the French need for the invasion.