France's President Francois Hollande leaves a news conference on climate change for agricultural sector before the upcoming COP21 World Climate Summit at the Elysee Palace in Paris, November 20, 2015.Michel Euler/Reuters
President Barack Obama ramped up the rhetoric on Tuesday, vowing the Islamic State "must be destroyed" but made no additional military commitment after huddling Tuesday with French President François Hollande who is seeking to build a "grand coalition" to crush the nascent caliphate carved out of Iraq and Syria by Muslim extremists.
Mr. Hollande had planned to urge the U.S. leader to make common cause with Russian President Vladimir Putin and create a single war-fighting coalition to attack the Islamic State. But the shooting down of a Russian Su-24 warplane by Turkish F-16 fighters only hours earlier quashed that notion.
Last week, Mr. Hollande had been calling for U.S.-Russian co-operation in a joint air war in Syria to "fight this terrorist army in a broad, single coalition."
Mr. Obama made clear that there was no room for joint operations as long as Mr. Putin backed the regime of Syria's embattled dictator Bashar al-Assad and was sending Russian warplanes to strike moderate rebels groups.
"Russia's the outlier," Mr. Obama said, claiming he leads the big coalition against the Islamic State. "We've got a coalition of 65 countries. Russia right now is a coalition of two – Iran and Russia – supporting Assad."
Both Mr. Obama and Mr. Hollande leaders urged Turkey, a key NATO ally, and Russia, a long-time adversary, to show restraint after the shoot-down. Mr. Hollande said he still planned to go to Russia for talks Thursday.
"It's very important right now for us to make sure that both the Russians and the Turks are talking to each other to find out exactly what happened and take measures to discourage any kind of escalation," Mr. Obama said.
The U.S. President, under fire at home from some critics – especial hard-line Republicans running to succeed him – for failing to escalate the war against the Islamic State, sounded a tougher tone during his joint news conference with the French leader, but didn't budge from his strategy.
Last weekend, he had referred dismissively to the Islamic State as "a bunch of killers with good social media" but on Tuesday, he said the extremist Sunni jihadist group "poses a serious threat to us all" and "must be destroyed."
Mr. Obama said thousands of U.S. air strikes over the last year have significantly degraded the Islamic State and killed some of its commanders. Last month, the President sent a few dozen U.S. Special Forces to Syria, but he continues to rule out putting significant numbers of U.S. boots on the ground.
"Make no mistake, we will win, and groups like ISIL will lose," he said, referring to the extremist group by one of its acronyms. But he also cautioned that the fight would be long and difficult.
Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the French President, with the red, white and blue flags of both countries behind them, Mr. Obama devoted much of his unusually lengthy introductory remarks to extolling the values that France stands for and pledging American solidarity with the French people in the wake of the terrorist attacks earlier this month that killed at least 130 people in multiple strikes at a stadium, concert hall and restaurants in Paris.
At one point, Mr. Obama added a personal touch, saying there was a photograph beside his bed in the White House of him as a much younger man "with no grey hair" kissing Michelle Obama in the Luxembourg Gardens. "When tragedy struck that evening, our hearts broke too," he said.
He called France America's first ally and said the two nations have each helped liberate the other.
"We love France for your spirit and your culture and your joie de vivre. Since the attacks, Americans have recalled their own visits to Paris, visiting the Eiffel Tower or walking along the Seine. We know these places. They're part of our memories, woven into the fabric of our lives and our culture," the President said. Then, echoing the famous French headline, "Nous sommes tous Américains" published in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that destroyed New York's twin towers and set the Pentagon ablaze, Mr. Obama said: "Nous sommes tous Français."
The two Presidents also pointed to next week's 150-nation gathering in Paris as proof the civilized world won't be cowed by extremists seeking to instill terror.
The Paris conference on climate change – Mr. Obama says greenhouse gas emissions, not Islamic jihadists, pose an existential threat – is expected to be held with thousands of heavily armed French troops and police deployed in the still-reeling capital.
"What a powerful rebuke to the terrorists it will be, when the world stands as one and shows that we will not be deterred from building a better future for our children," Mr. Obama said.