“The awful events in Paris were obviously a bad and sickening setback”.
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“What I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing a few notion of American leadership or America winning or whatever other slogans they come up with that has no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American people and to protect the people in the region who are getting killed and to protect our allies and people like France”, Obama said. The coalition is intensifying air strikes and targeting leaders of the group, Obama added.
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 US troops on the ground in the region. “That’s what they’re fleeing”, he said.
The president says the fight against the Islamic State terrorist threat requires participation of the people in Iraq and Syria to push back against ideological extremes.
“We can retake territory and as long as we keep our troops there we can hold it. But that does not solve the underlying problem of eliminating the dynamics that are producing these kinds of violent, extremist groups”, Obama said.
Even so, the United States is streamlining the process by which it shares intelligence and operational military information with France. “And it’s precisely why we have mobilized 65 countries to go after ISIL”.
Disputing the suggestion that he has underestimated the group known as ISIL – Obama said: “This is precisely why we’re in Iraq as we speak and why we’re operating in Syria as we speak”.
Republican critics are offering few concrete alternatives, he said, with the exceptions of sending in ground forces or establishing no-fly zones, moves that open up a “whole set of questions that have to be answered”.
Obama also denounced a few Republicans’ “shameful” calls to give preference to Christian refugees from Syria, a proposal made by GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush among others.
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Obama spoke Monday at a news conference in Antalya, Turkey, at the close of a summit of 20 nations. “I’m not aware of anything that was specific”, he said.
