Obama defends USA military strategy against Islamic State

“We are together. That is very important”, Patrick Grivel, a man who traveled to Paris from a town named Chantilly, said at a special memorial service in honor of the slain victims at the Notre Dame cathedral.

At the G20 summit, Obama also advocated for political solutions to the Syrian civil war, saying the conflict’s end is a prerequisite for regaining territory from ISIS.

“But because it would be a repetition of what we have seen before”.

Obama has taken flak for not wanting to send USA troops to the region to aide in the fight.

“We have the right strategy and we’re going to see it through”, said the president, who added that his senior civilian and military advisers have cautioned him that sending in large numbers of ground troops into Syria “would be a mistake”.

“We have the right strategy, and we’re going to see it through”, the president vowed.

“There will be an intensification of the strategy that we’ve put forward”, he said.

“What we saw Friday we will see here if we continue on the present course”.

With the world’s attention brought to the Paris attacks, it has also brought the concern of national security and increased scrutiny of refugees as it has been reported that some of the attackers posed as a group of refugees entering France.

His comments, in response to a series of critical questions from reporters at the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, were in stark contrast to a speech delivered by French President Francoise Hollande at the same time.

In a Monday address to a joint meeting of parliament, Hollande repeated his declaration that France “is at war”.

He said the United States was seeking to persuade other allies to engage more deeply in the fight against the Islamic State, and he said the U.S. effort to find more partners on the ground in Syria and Iraq was accelerating.

For now, Obama isn’t shying away from confronting his critics head-on.

He said United States intelligence agencies have been concerned about a potential attack on the west by Isis militants for over a year but they did not pick up specific threats about an attack on Paris that would have enabled officials there to respond effectively to deter the assault.

“When I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which a person who is fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted, when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution, that’s shameful, that’s not American”, Obama said.

Addressing criticism of his administration’s actions against ISIS, Obama said most of his critics’ proposals “describe things we are already doing”. Since their initial involvement, the coalition has conducted 1,300 aerial missions in Iraq, but France only conducted two airstrikes in Syria.

In a Monday radio interview, newly-elected House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said he’s asked the White House to provide lawmakers with classified briefings in the aftermath of the Paris shootings. That has completely failed. American negotiators must leverage this opportunity to help steer Russia’s involvement directly to undermining ISIS rather than protecting Syria’s embattled President Bashar al-Assad.

“It’s obviously a awful, coordinated terrorist attack”, he continued. “It’s time that we treat them as the threat to western civilization that they are”. A senior administration official said the US was assisting the operation.

Despite allegations that the Russian policy on Syria is not supported by majority of countries, the highest level meetings at the 70th UN General Assembly in NY has shown that many actually support Moscow, the Ambassador said.