WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Tuesday hailed the U.S.-led coalition that conducted airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria on Tuesday morning, declaring, “We’re going to do what is necessary to take the fight to this terrorist group.”
Speaking on the South Lawn of the White House, just before leaving for New York to attend the U.N. General Assembly, Obama said U.S. planes had also struck targets of another militant group, Khorasan, and declared that there would be “no safe haven” for the group, which officials say is linked to al-Qaida and has been plotting attacks against Americans.
The United States already has bombed Islamic State targets in Iraq at that country’s request. But it did not seek permission to bomb the group in neighboring Syria.
The president emphasized that Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain had taken part in the air operation Monday night.
“America is proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with these nations on behalf of our common security,” Obama said. “The strength of this coalition makes clear to the world that this is not just America’s fight alone.”
The expansion of military action to Syria, as leaders of 180 countries are gathering at the United Nations, is very likely to galvanize a meeting that was already going to be dominated by Obama’s efforts to build a coalition for the fight against the Islamic State.
Ahead of that meeting, the U.S. moved quickly to justify the aerial attacks as legal. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, told Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a letter that such attacks were permitted under a fundamental principle in the U.N. Charter that gives countries the right to defend themselves, including using force on another country’s territory when that country is unwilling or unable to address it.
The participation of five Arab countries in the operation will bolster the president’s argument that this campaign does not pit the U.S. against the Sunni Muslim world, but rather a broad coalition of Sunni Muslim and Western countries against a Sunni extremist group.
The air attacks were said to have scattered the jihadist forces and damaged facilities they have built in Syria that helped fuel their seizure of a large part of Iraq this year.
