President Barack Obama called the Paris carnage “an attack on all of humanity” even as US experts saw striking similarities to the coordinated Mumbai attacks of 2008 and major American cities began ramping up their security.
“Once again, we’ve seen an outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians,” Obama said in a statement he delivered from the White House briefing room. “This is an attack not just on Paris, it’s an attack not just on the people of France, but this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.”
Calling France “our oldest ally”, Obama said the US stands ready to provide whatever assistance that the French government and people need to respond. “We want to be very clear that we stand together with them in the fight against terrorism and extremism,” he said.
“We’re going to do whatever it takes to work with the French people and with nations around the world to bring these terrorists to justice and to go after any terrorist networks that go after our people,” Obama said.
The Paris attacks, whether by coincidence or design, came close on the heels of an American drone strike that is thought to have killed ISIS’s masked executioner ‘Jehadi John’ in Syria.
Hours after the drone strike, Obama went on to assert in an interview to ABC News that the United States has “contained” ISIS, though not having succeeded yet in efforts to “decapitate” its leadership.
“I don’t think they (ISIS) are gaining strength,” Obama said in the interview. “What is true, from the start our goal has been first to contain and we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq and in Syria.”
“What we have not yet been able to do is to completely decapitate their command and control structures. We’ve made some progress in trying to reduce the flow of foreign fighters,” he said. Some US counterterrorism experts saw in the Paris attacks a close resemblance to the horrendous 26/11 attacks in Mumbai in 2008. John Miller, Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism of the New York Police Department, said both were similar in certain respects, including the low-cost resources with which they were carried out.
“The attacks show a level of sophistication we really haven’t seen in an urban area since 2008 in the attack in Mumbai,” Michael leiter, former director of National Counterterrorism Center. told NBC News.
Major American cities, including New York, Washington, los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Miami began to hurriedly beef up their security as news of the Paris attacks unfolded. The authorities, however, said there were no credible or specific intelligence about threats to the United States.
In New York, the police authorities deployed their Critical Response Group and the Hercules team to sensitive French sites in the city as well as public areas. “There are no specific threats directed at New York City that we know of at this time. But we are monitoring very, very closely the situation with our federal partners,” New York Mayor Bill De Blasio said.