President Barack Obama is standing firmly with France while just as adamantly defending his administration's strategy for fighting ISIS, or the Islamic State. On Monday, while speaking at the G-20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, Obama slammed the terrorist group as "the face of evil" while saying that the goal is to "destroy this barbaric organization," according to Reuters.
Obama's statements come just days after Friday's deadly attack on Paris, where three groups of terrorists wearing suicide vests and armed with automatic rifles killed 129 people and injured more than 300, Reuters reports. French President François Hollande has called the attacks on the French capital an "act of war," and the nation has responded by launching airstrikes on the terrorist group's stronghold of Raqqa, Syria.
Obama defended his administration's handling of the Islamic State, which the administration refers to as ISIL. "We play into the ISIL narrative when we act as if they are a state and we use routine tactics used to fight a state that is not a state," the president said. "That's not what is going on here. These are killers with fantasies of glory.
"What I do not do is take actions either because it is going to work politically or it is going to somehow in the abstract make America look tough, or make me look tough," he added. "Folks want to pop off and have opinions about what they think they would do—present a specific plan."
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Watch Obama's remarks responding to criticisms below:
Read more at NBC News.