Obama rejects calls to send USA ground troops to fight ISIS

“The awful events in Paris were obviously a bad and sickening setback”.

“That’s not American. That’s not who we are”, Obama said. The coalition is intensifying air strikes and targeting leaders of the group, Obama added. He said many critics are proposing “things that we’re already doing”. “That’s what they’re fleeing”, he said.

The French certainly know that Obama is not going to suddenly decide to put USA infantry on the ground in Syria, and they are unwilling, a French diplomat said Wednesday, to embarrass Obama, whose support they need, let alone themselves, by “asking for the impossible”. “We don’t kill people because they are different from us”, he said. “Not because our military could not march into Mosul or Raqqa or Ramadi and temporarily clear out ISIL but because we would see a repetition of what we’ve seen before, which is if you do not have local populations that are committing to inclusive governance and who are pushing back against ideological extremes, that they resurface, unless we’re prepared to have a permanent occupation of these countries”.

ANTALYA, Turkey (AP) – Pressed for a strong answer to the Islamic State group’s attacks in Paris, the world’s top industrial and developing nations are set to outline their coordinated response to what President Barack Obama has described as an “attack on the civilized world”.

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”.

He also rejected Republican criticism of the Obama administration’s plan to allow more Syrian refugees into the U.S. “Slamming the door in their faces would be a betrayal of our values”.

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.

“We are going to continue the strategy that has the best chance of working”, he told a news conference, adding that there would be “an intensification” of the effort against Islamic State.