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Obama Calls Paris Events ‘an Attack on the Civilized World’ Obama Calls Paris Events ‘an Attack on the Civilized World’
(about 5 hours later)
ANTALYA, Turkey — President Obama said on Sunday that the “skies have been darkened by the horrific attacks” in Paris and pledged again that the United States would stand with the French as they pursue the terrorists who killed at least 129 people and wounded hundreds more. ANTALYA, Turkey — President Obama on Sunday sought to stoke in American allies a new sense of urgency in the fight against the Islamic State, even as his top aides made clear that Friday’s horrific attacks in Paris would not alter the president’s reluctance to substantially escalate his campaign against the terror group.
“We stand in solidarity with them in hunting down the perpetrators of this crime and bringing them to justice,” Mr. Obama said after meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey at the start of a 10-day trip that will also take him to the Philippines and Malaysia. Meeting with world leaders in Turkey less than 48 hours after gunmen and suicide bombers killed at least 129 people in simultaneous attacks across Paris, Mr. Obama vowed to stand with the French authorities as they hunt down the terrorists, calling the spasms of violence in the center of the city “an attack on the civilized world.”
“The killing of innocent people based on a twisted ideology is not just an attack on France, not just an attack on Turkey, it is an attack on the civilized world,” said Mr. Obama, who met face to face with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia later in the day at the Group of 20 meeting here. White House officials said Mr. Obama agreed wholeheartedly with President François Hollande of France that the mass killings in Paris were an “act of war.” They promised that the United States would intensify the military campaign against the Islamic State even as they accelerated their pursuit of a diplomatic solution to the civil war raging inside Syria.
Mr. Erdogan also strongly condemned the Paris attacks and said that the leaders gathering here for the annual economic summit meeting would take a “firm stance” against terrorism by issuing a strong statement. “We are confronted with a collective terrorism activity around the world,” he said. Yet the highly emotional statements from France — in which Mr. Hollande promised to be “merciless” and the prime minister, Manuel Valls, vowed to “annihilate the enemies of the republic” — appeared to do little to fundamentally change how Mr. Obama or his national security team views the high costs of significantly widening the role of the United States military in Iraq and Syria.
For Mr. Obama, the meeting of the world’s industrialized and emerging economies was intended to be an opportunity to showcase the strength of the United States recovery and to rally support for a pact to be finalized at a climate change conference in Paris that begins on Nov. 30. While Mr. Obama was already moving to intensify bombing and the targeting of Islamic State leaders, he still does not appear ready to question the underlying, incremental approach.
But White House officials said after the Paris terrorist attacks that Mr. Obama would spend a significant amount of time at the summit meeting in consultations with his counterparts about how to respond to the growing threat posed by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, outside Iraq and Syria. Senior national security advisers said the president remained steadfastly opposed to a large-scale ground operation in Iraq and Syria. And even as he met with world leaders, aides insisted that the Americans had not underestimated the ability of the Islamic State to project its terror beyond that region.
Among the questions facing Mr. Obama and his colleagues during their two days in this Mediterranean resort town is whether they need to fundamentally rethink their approach to a foe they once viewed as having limited interest in reaching beyond Iraq and Syria. In briefings with reporters in Turkey and in a series of back-to-back appearances on Sunday morning television programs, Benjamin J. Rhodes, the president’s deputy national security adviser, said the United States would work with France and other allies to “intensify their efforts” against the Islamic State — but only within limits.
Mr. Obama praised Turkey as a “strong partner” in the fight against the Islamic State. The United States will “redouble our efforts, working with other members of the coalition to bring about a peaceful transition in Syria and eliminate Daesh,” Mr. Obama said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. “We don’t believe U.S. troops are the answer to the problem,” Mr. Rhodes told reporters at the Group of 20 meetings here. “The further introduction of U.S. troops to fully re-engage in ground combat in the Middle East is not the way to deal with this challenge.”
Obama administration officials said on Sunday that the president had warned for more than a year of the danger that Islamic State fighters pose to Europe, the United States and beyond. In a speech in September 2014 announcing airstrikes against the militant group in Iraq, Mr. Obama argued that point. Mr. Obama’s arrival at the G-20 summit meeting Sunday morning forced him and his advisers to spend the day carefully balancing two competing interests: their desire to support France at an extraordinarily difficult moment, while standing firm in their defense of Mr. Obama’s basic strategy for waging war against terrorists.
“If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region, including to the United States,” Mr. Obama said at the time. “While we have not yet detected specific plotting against our homeland, ISIL leaders have threatened America and our allies.” Aides said the president had discussed the need for more cooperation with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, especially along the border between Turkey and Syria. And the last-minute addition of a meeting between Mr. Obama and King Salman of Saudi Arabia was described as an effort to urge more from the kingdom.
That prediction came true in January when terrorist attacks at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper, left a dozen dead and an attack at kosher supermarket killed four. Friday’s much larger attacks in Paris highlighted that the theoretical dangers have become all too real. White House officials on Sunday, however, rejected any notion that the administration had underestimated the threat posed by the Islamic State several years ago. And they defended Mr. Obama’s comment last week that the terrorist group had been “contained” in recent months by the United States and its coalition in Iraq and Syria.
The Islamic State has also claimed responsibility for suicide bombings in Beirut, Lebanon, last week that killed dozens of people, and for bringing down a Russian jet over the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt that killed all 224 people aboard. Mr. Obama made that comment in an interview with ABC News just hours before the Paris attacks, which seemed to dramatically demonstrate that the group was not contained within the borders of Syria and Iraq.
Mr. Obama is expected to hold a series of meetings on Sunday with other world leaders, including a dinner to discuss global terrorism that was scheduled before the Paris attacks. The leaders are also expected to discuss efforts by Secretary of State John Kerry and his counterparts to organize a peace plan to end the Syrian civil war that began more than four years ago. “A year ago, we saw them on the march in both Iraq and Syria, taking more and more population centers,” Mr. Rhodes said on “This Week” on ABC News. “The fact is we have been able to stop that geographic advance and take back significant amounts of territory in both northern Iraq and northern Syria.”
On Saturday, Mr. Kerry and top diplomats from more than a dozen countries agreed to a timetable that could lead to a cease-fire in Syria and, eventually, to a political transition in the war-torn country. Mr. Obama and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia again broached their longstanding disagreement about how to confront the Islamic State and resolve the civil war in Syria. The two men spoke for 35 minutes on a pair of couches during a reception on the gathering’s first day.
Mr. Obama said on Sunday that he discussed with Mr. Erdogan the huge influx of refugees from the Syrian war into Turkey. The president said the two leaders discussed how to “help those who need help right now, even as we hope to reduce the flow of migrants.” American officials described the meeting as “constructive” and emphasized that the two leaders agreed on the need for a cease-fire in Syria and a political transition to a new government. But Russian officials described the meeting in less glowing terms, saying Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin remained at odds about how to achieve those goals.
The president will meet with King Salman of Saudi Arabia on Sunday evening in Turkey, a last-minute addition to Mr. Obama’s schedule, White House officials said. White House officials said the Paris attacks had prompted a higher level of cooperation with French officials in the fight against the Islamic State. Mr. Rhodes said France now had a two-star general stationed in the headquarters of United States Central Command, which is coordinating the American airstrikes in Syria and Iraq.
Officials for the United States and Russia did not say what Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin discussed, but their conversation, which was captured by a closed-circuit television camera and shown to reporters in a nearby hotel, appeared to be animated. “The French have been with us in Iraq and Syria and conducting airstrikes,” he said on ABC. “I think we want to continue to intensify that coordination.”
The two men leaned in as they used their hands to punctuate their discussion while sitting on dark-colored couches. They were joined by Susan E. Rice, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, and by a man who appeared to be serving as interpreter. But Mr. Rhodes and other officials were less clear about what that higher intensity would include. And while no one in the French government has yet said publicly that France would take the next logical step and request other NATO member countries to defend it under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, many experts were talking about the need for joint action.
The relationship between Mr. Putin and Mr. Obama has grown increasingly tense, especially since the Russian leader began an air campaign in Syria just days after another tense conversation with the American president, during the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September. A senior American defense official said the military already had a range of options prepared after 18 months of near continual debate within the administration about how to handle the Islamic State. The options range from substantive ground operations — which no one appears to be seriously considering at this point — to ramping up the air war or increasing the number of special operations troops already committed to Syria by the administration.
The Pentagon is also working out ways to accommodate a more robust French role in the air campaign, the official said, though it was not yet certain what course of action France had decided upon. The administration also wants to make sure it has thought through the impact that any new military action would have on the diplomatic efforts to open a peace process that Secretary of State John Kerry is leading.
“It’s a matter of making sure it’s all been thought out,” added the defense official, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters. “If it looks like a shift in our posture would be beneficial in terms of diplomacy, or would have a negative impact, that is something that the administration wants to consider.”
A senior administration official involved in the debate over how to counter the Islamic State said in a conversation over the weekend that while the president had declared the mission to “degrade and defeat” the Islamic State, “what we had in essence was a containment policy.” It was based on Mr. Obama’s longtime belief that any effort to counter the Islamic State’s ideology had to be led by Sunni Muslim states, with backup from the United States for the “unique capabilities” it can offer: mostly air support and intelligence.
Yet Mr. Obama’s strategy was also based on intelligence assessments that the Islamic State was overextended, that it was vulnerable to a cutoff in its oil and black-market revenues, and that in the long war against extremism there was still time to bolster the most capable local forces and bring Arab states to the fight.
The official said that “if Paris changes anything, it’s the recognition that we can’t wait for those two events to happen, if they ever happen.”