Obama Dismisses Calls for US Ground Troops to Fight ISIS in Syria

Speaking in a measured tone, Obama said the USA would intensify its campaign of airstrikes and arming and training moderate forces.

“It would take a while to carry out, take a while to implement and we’ve learned from Iraq and Afghanistan it’s probably not optimal”, he said, but cautioned: “We should also not also go to the other extreme and just conclude that we can entirely minimize our role”.

Feinstein said she doesn’t believe administration officials’ claim that while ISIS has an ambition to target the USA, they don’t have the capability.

Michael O’Hanlon, a national security analyst with the Brookings Institution, agrees with the president on that view, though he said he would like to see a different emphasis in the future for American military personnel in Syria.

“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. What he’s hearing there, he said, is far more urgent than the characterizations he is hearing from the White House.

So far, five Republican governors have said they would postpone programs to bring in Syrian refugees, or they’re against the idea entirely, according to the Associated Press. “They are organized and capable and the president needs to show worldwide leadership and act”. He also sought a no-fly zone in Syria, a move Obama has resisted, in part because Islamic State has no air force. “The president has no strategy”.

Obama’s reluctance to put troops on the ground is understandable, given that the US military has been at war in the region since 2001. “We’re now working with Syrian forces as well to squeeze ISIL”. “That’s not who we are”, he said.

“President Obama stands alone in his commitment to a failed strategy”, asserted Sen.

The Democratic president said he had a lot of disagreement with Bush on policy.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, meanwhile, called for the terrorist organization to be “completely destroyed”.

U.S. President Barack Obama addresses a news conference following a working session at the Group of 20 (G20) leaders summit in the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya, Turkey, November 16, 2015. “ISIS is the most violent Islamic terrorist group in the world today”. “The more we shrink that territory, the less they can pretend they are somehow a functioning state and the more it becomes apparent that they are simply a network of brutal killers”.

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

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.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

In just the past two weeks, ISIS massacred 224 civilians by downing a Russian Metrojet over Egypt, along with killings of 41 in Beirut and 19 in Baghdad – and now 132 in Paris, which Obama on Monday called a “setback”. You can join the discussion on our Ohio Politics Facebook page.