President responds angrily to mounting pressure to put ‘boots on the ground’ in wake of Paris attacks and warns against toll of repeated US interventions

A visibly emotional Barack Obama rejected growing clamour for a US-led ground invasion of Syria on Monday in the most passionate defence yet of his strategy of trying to contain Islamic State extremists rather than treating them as a conventional enemy.



“It’s best that we don’t shoot first and aim later,” said the US president during an intense press conference at the G20 summit in Turkey that saw reporters urging him to “take out these bastards”.

Pressure has been mounting among American politicians for a more robust military intervention against Isis in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Paris on Friday.

But Obama accused his critics of failing to explain what ground forces would do once they had retaken territory controlled by Isis and suggested the strategy could be a slippery slope toward the US occupation of other countries such as Yemen and Libya.

“If folks want to pop off and have opinions about what they want to do, present a specific plan,” said an unusually angry Obama. “What I am not interested in doing is posing, or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning or whatever other slogans they come up with ... I’m too busy for that.”

At one point the US commander in chief also appeared glassy-eyed and upset as he described the burden placed on American troops and their families of repeated overseas intervention.

“What I do not do is to take actions either because it is going to work politically or somehow make America look tough, or make me look tough,” said the president. “And maybe part of the reason is that every few months I go to Walter Reed [military hospital] and I see a 25-year-old kid who is paralysed or has lost his limbs. And some of those are people who I have ordered into battle. So I can’t afford to play some of the political games that others play.”

A febrile mood back home in Washington has only been exacerbated this week by a specific Isis threat against the US capital city and an unrelated security scare that shut down much of downtown Washington DC on Monday morning.

But the administration has been under pressure from Democrats, too, after appearing to underestimate the threat from Isis and boasting of “containing” its threat during remarks recorded shortly before the Paris attacks.

“When I said that we are containing their spread in Iraq and Syria – in fact, they control less territory than they did last year,” said Obama at the G20 on Monday. “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.”

The president insisted that a patient approach was needed and committed the US only to “intensify” its current strategy.

“That allows us to reduce the flow of foreign fighters, which over time will lessen the numbers of terrorists who can potentially carry out terrible acts like they did in Paris,” he added.

A major philosophical disagreement between Obama and his critics is over whether to treat Isis as a conventional state enemy or a terrorist network.



“Our goals here have to be aggressive and leave no stone here, but also recognise this is not conventional warfare,” said the president. “We play into the Isil narrative when we act as if they are a state and 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.”

Obama also launched a savage attack on “shameful” Republican candidates and eastern European politicians who argued Muslim refugees must be kept out of Europe or the US, saying: “We do not have religious tests for our compassion.”

Praising former president George W Bush for making it clear the US was not involved in a war against Islam, he implicitly contrasted those remarks with the president’s brother and current presidential candidate Jeb Bush, who has called for priority to be given to Middle East refugees who are Christian.

“That’s shameful,” Obama declared. “That’s not American. That’s not who we are.” He added: “We do not have a religious test for people who are fleeing from persecution. It is very important that we do not close out hearts to those victims of such violence.

“When I hear folks say that ‘maybe, well, we should just admit the Christians and not the Muslims’, I hear political leaders suggesting there would be a religious test for which a person 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.”

Praising German chancellor Angela Merkel for showing compassion and leadership on the issue of refugees, Obama urged the world to remember the biggest victims of violence in Syria by President Bashar al-Assad were Muslims.

Speaking at a close of G20 press conference in southern Turkey, Obama said: “The people who are fleeing Syria are the most harmed by terrorism. They are the most vulnerable as a consequence of civil war and strife. They are parents. They are children. They are orphans and it is very important ... that we do not close our hearts to these victims of such violence and somehow start equating the issue of refugees with the issue of terrorism.”

Saying “I will do what is required to keep America safe”, he said defeating Isis would always take time and there will be setbacks, adding Paris was “a terrible setback”.

“There will be an intensification of the strategy that we put forward, but the strategy that we put forward is the strategy that ultimately is going to work,” Obama told reporters. “But ... it is going to take time.

“It is not just my view, but the view of my closest military and civilian advisers, that [boots on the ground] would be a mistake,” the US president added.



He said US 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.

“There were no specific mentions of this particular attack that would give us a sense of something that we could provide French authorities, for example, or act on ourselves,” he said.

He claimed progress was being made in the diplomatic front with Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader, on securing a long political transition in Syria, but he added: “There are a number of ways that this diplomatic initiative would falter.”