Obama defends U.S. military strategy against Islamic State

The shock and horror rippling around the globe after Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris is as discomforting as it is familiar.

“It is not just my view, but the view of my closest military and civilian advisers that that would be a mistake”, Obama said Monday.

Pressed several times to explain his resistance to a broader war against the Islamic State, Obama twice chided reporters for asking the same question in slightly different ways.

Before the victims are laid to rest following Friday’s vicious terror attacks carried out across Paris by the Islamic State, some politicians are rallying once again for the U.S.to send combat troops into the Syrian civil war. He is reaching out to Russian Federation and Iran, who are supporting the Bashar Assad regime in Syria, explaining that ultimately, an organization like ISIL is the greatest danger to them, as well as to us.

According to numerous military experts, here and around the world, who I’ve spoken to that our strategy is working – people do not believe that to be the case. His critics – some of them Republican presidential hopefuls – are just “talking as if they’re tough” and don’t know what they’re talking about, Obama said.

He cited USA efforts to help Kurds retake Sinjar Mountain in Iraq and the recent killing of an ISIS leader in Libya as examples of his strategy working.

Former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said earlier this year that the USA government were “blinded by their own ideology”.

Obama and Hollande could play up a newly announced intelligence sharing agreement between France and the U.S.to better coordinate the campaign against ISIS. And some of those are people who I have ordered into battle. We’re streamlining the process with which we share intelligence and operational military information with France.

Appearing on Fox News Monday, he said the USA must rely on strong intelligence and coalition building in order to fight ISIS.

The fruits of that cooperation were borne Sunday night, when French jets began a bombardment of Raqqa, the Syrian headquarters of ISIS. The President admitted that ISIS is filling a “void” in the region, but failed to mention why the void exists in the first place: The Obama Administration refused to leave a residual force in Iraq and then dismissed ISIS as a ‘jayvee team’.

Calling the attacks “terrible and sickening”, he refused to send additional troops even as ISIS threatened to hit Washington, saying he doesn’t want a repeat of the 2003 Iraq attack. ISIS is also known as ISIL. It has exploited wars in both Iraq and Syria to gain control of territory. The Islamic State is no longer gobbling territory and in fact has lost a bit, but its leaders can still claim to have established and defended an Islamic “caliphate” that serves as magnet and inspiration for jihadist militants around the world. Obama called that notion “shameful”. “And we are going to continue to generate more partners for that strategy”. “We don’t have religious tests to our compassion”. Marco Rubio has criticized the current strategy while coincidentally offering a plan that looks very similar to the current strategy. “So, what we’re seeing, in my opinion, is the outcome of the president’s continued reluctance to take this threat fully and seriously”, Ryan said on Bill Bennett’s “Morning in America” program.