Hollande’s message to Obama: This is ‘an emergency’

Special to WorldTribune.com

French President Francois Hollande reportedly will urge U.S. President Barack Obama to escalate U.S. attacks against Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), which Hollande called “the biggest terrorist factory the world has ever seen.”

Hollande, who will meet with Obama on Nov. 24, is expected to make clear to Obama the urgency of stronger action against the terror group.

French President Francois Hollande. /Reuters
French President Francois Hollande. /Reuters

“The message that we want to send to the Americans is simply that the crisis is destabilizing Europe,” a French diplomat told The Guardian.

“The problem is that the attacks in Paris and the refugee crisis show that we don’t have time. There is an emergency.”

In a speech to French mayors on Nov. 18, Hollande said France was “at war against terrorism, terrorism which declared war on us.

“It has an army. It has financial resources. It has oil. It has a territory,” Hollande said. “It has allies in Europe, including in our country, with young, radicalized Islamist people. It committed atrocities there and wants to kill here. It has killed here.”

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Nov. 19 that “if all the countries in the world aren’t capable of fighting against 30,000 [ISIL members], it’s incomprehensible … we need to harness all our efforts in the fight against [ISIL].”

Critics say Obama’s strategy of small numbers of air strikes, combined with strict rules of engagement, have failed miserably.

“Thousands of airstrikes against ISIL targets have conjured the illusion of progress, but they have produced little in the way of decisive battlefield effects,” Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, said on Nov. 17.

Gen. Joseph Dunford, Obama’s new top military adviser, has said the rules of engagement, with the main focus on avoiding civilian casualties, will remain in place. “We are fighting the long fight, and for us to do otherwise would be shortsighted,” Dunford said.

Hollande, who will travel to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Nov. 26, called on the U.S. and Russia to come together in what he called “a wide and single coalition” against ISIL.

Obama on Nov. 19 restated his belief that Syrian President Bashar Assad “cannot regain legitimacy,” and added that Iran and Russia, Assad’s top two allies, must decide to either keep the Assad regime alive or “save the Syrian state” by backing a new government.

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