Speaking to reporters in Antalya, Turkey on Monday, President Barack Obama said his approach to countering the so-called Islamic State “is the strategy that ultimately is going to work” but the terrorist network still can exact serious damage worldwide.
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Obama announced a new effort to share intelligence with France following the coordinated terror spree across Paris that killed at least 129 people and injured hundreds.
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 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.
Asked whether the USA had advance warning of the Paris attacks, Obama said that while American intelligence regularly detects hints of possible threats, “there were no specific mentions of this particular attack that would give” law enforcement or the military the chance to disrupt the plot. Obama says the danger of the group is the reason the U.S.is operating in Iraq and Syria, and why it has mobilized 65 countries to go after IS.
“We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the heinous terrorist attacks in Paris and in Ankara on October 10”.
He said, “It will take time”.
Obama said the government can’t “shoot first and aim later”, and but must stick with the strategy, while still being flexible. Key Islamic State leaders and commanders have been killed and the group has lost territory in Syria and Iraq.
Obama also rejected building sentiment in the U.S.to turn back refugees from Syria out of fear that terrorists will hide among them. “And as we, I’m sure, each said to President Hollande and the French people, we stand in solidarity with them in hunting down the perpetrators of this crime and bringing them to justice”.
President Obama chided American critics Monday over their calls for him to cancel his plans to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees, saying the USA can not “close our hearts” to the plight of those fleeing violence. Raqqa, the radical group’s headquarters city in Syria, was the site of heavy bombing by French warplanes Sunday night in retaliation for the Paris attacks.
Critics, such as Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign rival Mitt Romney, have said that the latest developments are proof that the strategy is not working. “And so I think it is very important for us right now, particularly those who are in leadership, particularly those who have a platform and can be heard, not to fall into that trap, not to feed that dark impulse inside of us”.
Airstrikes France conducted yesterday against Islamic State were targeted by the French military based on information the USA shared with them under the new arrangement, Davis said.
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The Vienna talks have seen the world powers find common ground on the need for a ceasefire in Syria, UN-brokered peace talks and a political transition. Al Qaeda’s policy, as Osama bin Laden defined it, was “to provoke and bait” the United States into “bleeding” itself “to the point of bankruptcy”, just as the Soviet Union had done in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
