This past June at the G-7 Summit of leading industrial nations in Germany, Obama said, “We don’t yet have a complete strategy” to train and equip Iraqi forces to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
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Obama told reporters that U.S. intelligence agencies had been concerned about a potential attack on the West by Daesh for more than a year, but he said none of the warnings they had received were specific enough to have prevented Friday’s attacks in Paris.
If you have a handful of people who dont mind dying, they can kill a lot of people, Obama said, stating the tragically obvious.
“That’s not American, it’s not who we are”, Obama said during a news conference in Turkey following a Group of 20 nations summit.
He rejected the notion that his administration had misjudged ISIS – on Friday morning, hours before the attacks in Paris, Obama had said on ABC News that “we have contained” ISIS – or that he doesn’t truly understand this enemy. And they praised the president for not bowing to some critics’ suggestions, including a no-fly zone and ground troops, which Obama labeled a “shoot first and aim later” approach.
“If they think their advisers are better than the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [of military forces on the ground]”, the president said, “I want to meet them”.
Obama called on world leaders to accept refugees fleeing the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, though he added that accepting refugees required “rigorous screening and security checks”.
But this country’s role in the battle against a terrorist force more potent than al-Qaida has largely been limited to air attacks on ISIS-held territory in Iraq and Syria.
“I would listen to the military commanders and give them the mission, which is, how do we destroy ISIS?” he said on CNN’s State of the Union.
The governors of at least 16 states – Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Texas and MA among others – have since announced they will not accept Syrian refugees.
He huddled for 30 minutes with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday, agreeing during the informal meeting on a path toward a political transition in Syria.
Obama conceded that the attacks in France marked a “terrible and sickening setback” in the anti-Islamic State campaign.
“These are not a bunch of bank robbers that we need to extradite to the United States”, he said.
Shortly after the interview aired, Islamic terrorists attacked six venues in Paris, killing more than 130 with the number continuing to rise. As The Wall Street Journal noted in an editorial Monday, “Mr. Obama’s every instinct has been to suggest that America will be safer if we stop provoking jihadists and treat them as common criminals”. But he’s vowed to avoid the kind of large-scale ground combat that US troops engaged in for years in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His more muted comments were in contrast to those of French President Francois Hollande who said France is “at war”.
Despite their concerns, several Democrats said they understand Obama’s frustration.
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It’s unclear what the difference in tone and rhetoric between the two leaders will mean for the U.S.-led fight against ISIS in the weeks and months ahead. The USA was expanding its intelligence sharing with the French and helping them identify targets, according to American officials. Now, 27 of 50 states, including Alabama, Michigan, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, MS and MA, have all said they will suspend receiving refugees.
