In the wake of the devastating coordinated attacks in Paris Friday by radical Islamic terrorists that left 129 dead and over 350 injured, France’s socialist president Francois Hollande announced that his country would wage a “pitiless” war against the Islamic State. Questions about how committed the French government will be to such a campaign will be answered in the months to come, but so far the country has taken more aggressive measures than it has in the past and responded with far more urgency than it did to the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
“We are going to lead a war which will be pitiless,” President Hollande said at the Bataclan, the site of the most deadly of the attacks. “Because when terrorists are capable of committing such atrocities, they must be certain that they are facing a determined France, a united France, a France that is together and does not let itself be moved, even if today we express infinite sorrow.”
A day after Hollande’s declaration of “war,” France launched an airstrike Sunday on the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa, Syria, which ISIS calls the capital of its “caliphate.” According to France’s defense department, 10 fighter jets dropped 20 bombs on targets in Raqqa, including the command center, an ammunition storage base, a training center, and a recruitment center.
According to CNN, ISIS is claiming that all the facilities were abandoned before the strike and there were no casualties.
“We are going to lead a war which will be pitiless.”
French President Francois Hollande
Meanwhile, AFP’s parliamentary sources said that President Hollande indicated Sunday that he wanted the nation’s current state of emergency he declared after the attacks to extend for three months. An extension beyond 12 days requires parliament to approve it. AFP notes that the three-month extension would mean that the 12-day UN conference (beginning Nov 30), which involves numerous world leaders, would be held under a state of emergency.
If France actually has the political will to continue to ramp up the campaign against ISIS, two major questions will be how Russia will play into the equation and how President Obama will respond. The New York Times reported that Obama discussed the situation with Russian President Vladimir Putin Saturday for over a half-hour, the two reportedly not coming to agreement on specific steps forward, though the White House attempted to put a positive spin on the impasse.
While a senior intelligence official called the Paris attack a “game changer,” so far the Obama administration seems more concerned with trying to put out the fire caused by the president’s claim in an interview that aired just hours before the attack that his policies had effectively “contained” ISIS. White House officials have been scrambling to downplay the “contained” comment, denying that it indicated an underestimation of the threat of the group and attempted to reassure the press and the public that the president fully understands what’s at stake, particularly after Paris.
“We have to look hard at what happened in Paris, at the trajectory of the group and the potential threat it poses to the entire international community,” a senior intelligence official told the The New York Times. “This clearly shows ISIS is looking at an international level and is capable of carrying out large-scale attacks outside Iraq and Syria. There will be a greater sense of urgency in how we go about trying to combat these kinds of attacks. Paris shows that they can attack soft targets on any day, anywhere, including in any major American city.”
Despite such statements, the administration has signaled that it remains unwilling to send in forces, the president’s deputy national security adviser telling reporters Sunday that troops are not the “answer.”
“We don’t believe U.S. troops are the answer to the problem,” Benjamin J. Rhodes told reporters at the Group of 20 meeting in Turkey Sunday. “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.”
Image (via AP): “French President Francois Hollande speaks at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Saturday, Nov. 14, 2015, following a series of coordinated attacks in and around Paris late Friday which left more than 120 people dead.”