“And, if there’s a good idea out there, we’re going to do it. I don’t think I’ve shown hesitation to act whether it’s in respect to Bin Laden or respect to sending additional troops to Afghanistan or keeping them there if it’s determined it’s actually going to work”, said Obama.
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The remarks by Obama and Bush about Syrian refugees followed Friday night’s bombing and shooting attacks in Paris that killed 129 people.
President Barack Obama on Monday firmly rejected calls for a shift in USA strategy against the Islamic State following the Paris attacks, saying Republicans who want to send ground troops into the volatile region are “talking as if they’re tough” but fail to understand the potentially grave consequences.
As “unsatisfying” as the USA approach may be – a strategy that Obama defined last week as “containment” of the Islamic State (IS), also known as ISIS or ISIL – Dr. Schanzer says that “the basic contours of the current strategy are right”. “We are going to continue the strategy that has the best chance of working”, Mr Obama told a press conference.
The President said ISIS controls less territory than it did past year. “And we can have that debate”.
Bush has also suggested that any USA assistance to refugees fleeing the Middle East should be primarily focused on Christians, another idea that rankled Obama. GOP presidential candidates Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz have made such suggestions, while a few Republican governors want to ban all Syrian refugees from their states. Obama called that notion “shameful”.
The group warned in a new video on Monday that countries taking part in air strikes against Syria would suffer the same fate as France, and threatened to target Washington. “It’s going to take time”.
Obama conceded that the attacks in France marked a “terrible and sickening setback” in the anti-Islamic State campaign.
“We’ve seen that when we have an effective partner on the ground ISIL can and is pushed back”, Obama said during his speech. And he called on other nations to step up their involvement in the fight against the extremists.
“I’m not aware of anything that was specific”, he said.
Obama dismissed the suggestion that he failed to comprehend the Islamic State’s strength, but said there were challenges in defeating a group whose fighters have a “willingness to die”. Russian President Vladimir Putin emphasized the need to cut off the Islamic State’s ability to generate revenue through oil smuggling.
The discussions about the Islamic State came amid a glimmer of progress in efforts to end the Syrian civil war, which created the chaos that allowed the extremist group to thrive.
The President announced a new agreement that he said will streamline the process “by which we share intelligence and operational military information with France”.
Meanwhile, the French military has carried out attacks on Islamic State positions in Raqqa, Syria, destroying a training camp and a munitions dump. “And the more it becomes apparent that they are simply a network of killers who are brutalizing local populations”.
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“I’m not aware of anything that was specific”, he said.
