The deadly attacks in Paris last week were “a bad and sickening setback” in what will be a long campaign against Islamic State, Obama said Monday, shortly after meeting with leaders of European countries at a summit in Turkey. To date, Republican governors of Arkansas, Alabama, MI and Texas have called for a prohibition on Syrian refugees to their states.
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“That’s shameful”, he said, his voice rising.
It came to a head after a question by CNN reporter Jim Acosta, who asked, “I guess the question is – if you’ll forgive the language – why can’t we take out these bastards?”
Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, epitomized the disgraceful tone of his party’s response, saying, “Never before have I seen an American president project such weakness on the global stage”.
Obama described Friday’s killing of more than 120 people in Paris, claimed by the radical Sunni militant group, as an attack on the civilised world and said the United States would work with France to hunt down those responsible. The group in a video released Monday pledged additional attacks, including strikes against Washington, D.C.
“There will be drawbacks and there will be successes”, Obama said, adding that “we’ve the correct strategy and we are going to see it through”. “But…it is going to take time”.
The president promised that the U.S. has not underestimated the ability of IS to strike Western countries militarily, but because the terrorist group does not conduct “conventional warfare”, it is hard to stop. But he’s vowed to avoid the kind of large-scale ground combat that USA troops engaged in for years in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Some of those are people I’ve ordered into battle”, he said.
Obama has been criticized for his administration’s handling of the current turmoil in Syria and Iraq, with a few Republicans calling for a more aggressive approach that would include more USA troops on the ground in the region. “Or Libya, perhaps? Or if there’s a terrorist network that’s operating anywhere else – in North Africa, or in Southeast Asia?” From Turkey, Obama headed to Asia for regional summits in the Philippines and Malaysia. He said the United States should not “shoot first and aim later”, and cited terrorist threats from other nations like Libya and Yemen.
Amid the G-20 talks, the shock over the Paris attacks that killed at least 129 people raised the demand for quick action.
The leaders of the Group of 20 rich and developing nations were wrapping up their two-day summit in Turkey against the backdrop of heavy French bombardment of the Islamic State’s stronghold in Syria.
Obama announced a new agreement between the United States and France to share more intelligence information, saying that the new arrangement would “allow our personnel to pass threat information, including on ISIL, even more quickly and more often”. Obama also express ongoing support for diplomacy created to seek a political resolution in Syria, where civil war has aided the development of the Islamic State.
Mr Obama is also understood to have reiterated his hope that the Russian airstrikes would focus on ISIS rather than groups opposing Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
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“It’s not their sophistication or the particular weaponry they possess but it is the ideology that they carry with them and their willingness to die”, Obama added.
