President Barack Obama on Monday dismissed growing calls for a dramatic rethink of the U.S. approach to the Islamic State despite last week's deadly attacks in Paris, ruling out sending combat troops to fight the terrorist group on grounds that it would not lead to a permanent solution.

But if anyone has a genuinely better plan, an irritated Obama said, he's all ears.


Obama spoke as Republicans and some Democrats lashed out at his policies following Friday's bloodshed in France, where more than 130 people died and numerous others were wounded. As the CIA chief warned that more attacks were likely "in the pipeline," several GOP-led states said they would not accept any Syrian refugees, while the Pentagon announced it was stepping up its cooperation with France, which launched a slew of airstrikes against an Islamic State stronghold in Syria over the weekend.

The developments all underscored the growing menace the terrorist group, also known as ISIS or ISIL poses, to the Middle East and the world, as well as the difficulties facing the U.S.-led coalition trying to eradicate it, few of whom are unwilling to send their own troops to die in the fight.

Obama, speaking during a G-20 press conference in Antalya, Turkey, called the Paris attacks a “terrible and sickening setback," while also noting that the Islamic State was suspected in other recent mass attacks elsewhere, including Turkey and Lebanon. Yet he appeared to lose patience with repeated questions about whether he underestimated the threat of the terror network, which he once infamously likened to a junior varsity team. The criticisms of Obama's judgment heightened after he said last week, before the Paris attacks, that the Islamic State had been "contained."

Obama has deployed thousands of U.S. forces to advise and train Iraqi troops and Syrian groups fighting ISIS, but he held firm that he would not send American soldiers to the front lines.

"It is not just my view but the view of my closest military and civilian advisers that that would be a mistake," the president 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.”

At times, he responded to reporters' very similar questions with mild irritation. "All right, this is another variation on the same question. And I guess, let me try it one last time," he told one.

The president said he had yet to see a sound alternative to his own administration's "degrade and destroy" approach. "If there's a good idea out there, then we're going to do it," Obama said. "I don't think I've shown a hesitation to act."

The president also implicitly rebuked some Republican presidential candidates, especially retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who told reporters last week that he had better intelligence about what's happening on the ground in Syria than the White House. If "folks want to pop off and have opinions about what they think they would do, present a specific plan," Obama said. "If they think somehow that their advisers are better than my joint chiefs of staff or my generals on the ground, I want to meet them. And we can have that debate."

The president took a veiled shot at real estate mogul Donald Trump, who has been especially harsh in his criticisms of the White House. "What I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning or whatever other slogans they come up with that has no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American people and to protect the people in the region who are getting killed and to protect our allies and people like France," Obama said, adding, "I’m too busy for that.”

Obama took particular umbrage at calls by presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz and other Republicans to bar Muslim refugees from Syria while allowing in Christians fleeing the conflict that has killed 250,000 people in the Arab country. (As of Monday, governors in a number of states — Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Michigan and Texas, to name a few — announced they would not permit Syrian refugees to be resettled in their territory.

“That’s shameful. That’s not American. That’s not who we are," Obama said. "We don’t have a religious test for our compassion."

At the same time, Obama said, addressing other world leaders, "slamming the door" in the faces of refugees fleeing conflict in Syria "would be a betrayal of our values." "Our nations can welcome refugees who are desperately seeking safety and ensure our own safety. We can and must do both," the president said.

Regarding his earlier description of the Islamic State as being "contained," Obama noted on Monday that the group, which claims a region that cuts across Iraq and Syria, controls less territory than it did at this point last year.

"And the more we shrink that territory, the less they can pretend that they are a functioning state and the more it becomes apparent that they are a network of killers that are brutalizing local populations," he said. "We play into the ISIL narrative when we use routine military tactics that are designed to fight a state that is attacking another state. That's not what's going on here. These are killers with fantasies of glory who are very savvy when it comes to social media and are able to infiltrate the minds not just of Iraqis and Syrians but disaffected individuals around the world."

But in a strong sign of growing dissatisfaction among his fellow Democrats, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking member of Senate Intelligence Committee, sharply disagreed with Obama's notion that the Islamic State is "contained."

“I’ve never been more concerned,” the Californian told MSNBC. “I read the intelligence faithfully. ISIL is not contained. ISIL is expanding.”

Obama insisted that the strategy against the terror network needs to be one "that can be sustained" and that it will require ending the Syrian civil war and making sure that Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq are able to work together to build a functioning government. Even if the U.S. were to send 50,000 troops to Syria, problems could crop up elsewhere, Obama said, adding, "We have the right strategy, and we’re gonna see it through."

Also Monday, French President François Hollande called for a meeting of the U.N. Security Council, telling a special session of Parliament in Versailles that he would meet with Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin to join forces. Hollande struck a forceful tone, saying the "need to destroy" the Islamic State is a concern for the whole world and "not beyond reach."

The Pentagon announced, meanwhile, that the U.S. and France will bolster their intelligence sharing per "new instructions" from Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

The guidance, agreed to over the weekend, will "enable the U.S. military to more easily share operational planning information and intelligence with our French counterparts on a range of shared challenges to the fullest extent allowed by existing law and policy," Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters.

The new cooperation played a role in French strikes overnight against targets in Raqqa, Syria, the self-proclaimed capital of the Islamic State's declared caliphate, he added. Those strikes were "nominated" by France but relied heavily on U.S. intelligence, Davis said.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in a press conference in Washington, called the attacks "a crime against civilization" and said Justice Department attorneys are "working aggressively" in concert with the FBI, the French government and other international law enforcement agencies to "ensure that those responsible for this carnage are brought to justice."

Earlier Monday, CIA Director John Brennan, warned that the Islamic State likely has more operations “in the pipeline.”

"It’s not a surprise this attack was carried out, from the standpoint of we did have strategic warning," Brennan said at a Center for Strategic & International Studies forum in Washington. "We knew that these plans or plotting by ISIL was underway, looking at Europe in particular as a venue for carrying out these attacks."

Friday’s attacks were not likely a "one-off event," he added. "This is something that was deliberately and carefully planned over the course I think of several months," he said. The terror network is "not going to content itself with violence inside of the Syrian and Iraqi borders."

The Islamic State itself reportedly weighed in, releasing a new video threatening all countries taking part in the airstrikes against it, and specifically identifying Washington as a target.

"We say to the states that take part in the crusader campaign that, by God, you will have a day God willing, like France's and by God, as we struck France in the center of its abode in Paris, then we swear that we will strike America at its center in Washington," a man in the video said, according to Reuters, which could not verify the video's authenticity.

Hours earlier, U.S. warplanes bombed 116 oil trucks in eastern Syria in a new effort to cut off the group's ability to transport crude oil that it has been producing in the country.