O pledges French fraternité
WASHINGTON — President Obama stood side by side with French President François Hollande at the White House Tuesday and declared the terror assault on Paris to be “an attack against the world itself.”
Both men vowed to expand the military campaign against ISIS and urged Russia to start playing a constructive role.
With Belgium still in lockdown as authorities hunt down those responsible for the Nov. 13 Paris carnage, Hollande said he and Obama had agreed to “scale up our strikes both in Syria and in Iraq” and “broaden their scope.”
Obama declared that ISIS “cannot be tolerated — it must be destroyed.” He vowed to “deliver justice to those terrorists and those who sent them, and to defend our nations.”
Obama said that even before the attacks, he had met with his security team to forge a plan to “accelerate and advance the pressure that we can place on ISIL.”
Neither leader outlined major new specific steps that the alliance would undertake.
“As Americans, we stand by our friends in good times and in bad, no matter what,” Obama said.
THE leader of the free world urged a broader assault on Islamic State yesterday and called for more nations to join forces to crush the enemy. In response, President Obama said he would think about it.
The upsidedown quality of the meeting between Obama and French President François Hollande was painful to watch. The attacks in Paris have energized and emboldened Hollande, but Obama again oozed an air of “this too shall pass.” A week after he shamefully called the Paris slaughter a “setback,” he’s still in a fog of his own making.
He refuses to call the spreading cancer what it plainly is — Islamic terrorism. Instead, he has adopted the Arabic pejorative for Islamic State, Daesh, perhaps believing he can insult the barbarians to death.
What he won’t do is assert American leadership when it is needed most. Without the world’s military and economic superpower leading the charge, there can be no real charge.
Thankfully, Hollande is not giving up. His Washington visit is part of a frenetic shuttle mission to assemble a coalition that he hopes will smash Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and break up its murderous networks across Europe.
He met with Great Britain’s David Cameron Monday, will see Germany’s Angela Merkel Wednesday, Russia’s Vladimir Putin Thursday and then other European leaders.
The point, he said, “is so that we can act.”
At that, Obama stirred himself to take offense at the suggestion that there was no action now. He interjected to say, “We’ve got a coalition,” and insisted 65 countries are united.
His is a coalition on paper only and is having little impact on Islamic State’s caliphate and has not stopped it from carrying out the attacks in Paris and elsewhere. Much of America and Europe are on heightened alert, and Belgium remains in a security lockdown.
It’s not that Obama doesn’t want to do anything. It’s just that he doesn’t want to do much more than he’s already doing, which is clearly inadequate.
Though he’s often wrong, he’s never in doubt, and even adopted a weary attitude of “I told you so” about Turkey shooting down a Russian jet. The incident “points to the ongoing problem with the Russian operations,” he said.
Yet oddly, he never mentioned that Turkey is a member of NATO, a significant element that raises the risk of wider war and could imperil the alliance if it does not support Turkey.
Although he was a portrait of peevish hesitancy for most of the hour, Obama did show real passion when he talked about Syrian refugees. Adopting a scolding tone, he emphasized the need to uphold America’s “ideals” and quoted from the Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty.
The moment smacked of a political diversion, and was rich with irony.
Obama’s eagerness to take in refugees that Islamic State vows to infiltrate stands in shocking contrast to the State Department’s worldwide travel alert for all Americans. “US citizens should exercise particular caution during the holiday season and at holiday festivals and events,” the alert said. “Extremists have targeted large sporting events, theaters, open markets and aviation services.”
In a nutshell, that’s Obama World. Appeasement leading to a deadly chaos around the world that requires Americans to hunker down at home, twinned with an accusation that we are frightened bigots unless we open our borders.
By the end of their exercise in role reversals, you had to feel for Hollande. And you certainly couldn’t blame him for rushing out of a country whose commander in chief makes a virtue of leading from behind.