“There will be an intensification of the strategy we put forward, but the strategy we putting forward is will ultimately going to work”, Obama said.
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In critiquing the Republicans overall, Obama said that “some of them seem to think that if I were just more bellicose in expressing what we’re doing, that that would make a difference – because that seems to be the only thing that they’re doing, is talking as if they’re tough”.
He said, however, the US would not send additional ground troops into Syria to combat the Islamic State.
Billionaire businessman Donald Trump, another Republican White House contender, supported sending as many as 10,000 United States troops in the region, while SC Senator Lindsey Graham spoke of creating a ground force of USA, French and other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces to fight Daesh. “And, I’ve been meeting with them intensively for years now discussing these various options and it is not just my view, but the view of my closest military and civilian advisers that that would be a mistake”, Obama said.
Obama said he envisioned escalating that strategy, not overhauling it. And he called on other nations to step up their involvement in the fight against the extremists. “The bad events in Paris were obviously a awful and sickening setback”. Since their initial involvement, the coalition has conducted 1,300 aerial missions in Iraq, but France only conducted two airstrikes in Syria.
Bennis agrees with Obama that the United States should not send troops.
But the administration has been under pressure from Democrats, too, after appearing to underestimate the threat from Isis and boasting of “containing” its threat during remarks recorded shortly before the Paris attacks.
Republican candidates weigh in on how the United States should respond to the Syrian refugee crisis in light of the deadly attacks in Paris.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s main play for differentiation is an executive order instructing his state’s agencies to stop the influx of Syrian refugees. “We need to be doing everything we can to protect against more attacks and protect our citizens”.
“If you have a handful of people who don’t mind dying, they can kill a lot of people”, Obama said.
The Islamic State said the attacks in Paris were retaliation for French air strikes in Iraq and Syria.
And so we have to take the approach of being rigorous on our counterterrorism efforts and consistently improve and figure out how we can get more information, how we can infiltrate these networks, how we can reduce their operational space, even as we also try to shrink the amount of territory they control to defeat their narrative.
“It’s interesting to me that the French have carried out all these bombing runs over the past couple of days all on targets that we gave them”, Thornberry told reporters.
Although analysts say the attacks in Paris would be one of the most sophisticated ever committed by ISIS, the group has already demonstrated an ability to inflict violence across a broad area.
“The values that we’re fighting against ISIL for”, he said, “are precisely that we don’t discriminate against people due to their faith”.
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Political solution Speaking after yesterday’s meeting of foreign affairs ministers, which was attended by Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan and Minister for European Affairs Dara Murphy, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the focus of the meeting had been on finding “a political solution to the Syria conflict”.
