President Obama announced on Monday that, while he remains committed to battling the Islamic State, he is not willing to commit American ground forces to Syria or anywhere else. The president believes that the strategy he has been employing has been sound and that the United States will continue to stick with it.

The president believes that the strategy of coordinated airstrikes in Syria and elsewhere is proving effective as is the strategy of coordination a coalition, gathering intelligence and training local armies, reports USA Today. The president has been pressed by the Republicans to deploy troops into Iraq and Syria to take a direct fight to the Islamic State. The president has refused and sited those ideas as being ultimately ineffective and counterproductive.

The president said that a strategy must be sustainable over the long haul. He believes that just inserting troops into Iraq and Syria will give the U.S. no exit strategy as it tries to occupy and control huge sections of these two desert countries. The president also doesn’t want the army to sustain the casualties he knows will come with a stepped-up military intervention.

Obama continued to reiterate that American strategy will continue to train local forces on the ground as well as provide air cover and intelligence to coalition forces in Iraq and Syria. The president know that it is a long-term commitment and that the strategy has to be stable despite both victories and defeats. He commented that the attacks in Paris were horrible and presented a temporary “sickening setback.”

The president said that the United States would continue to work with France and its other coalition allies as it tries to destroy the Islamic State in Syria. The Syrian civil war has been raging for more than 4 years and there appears to be no end in sight. More than 250,000 people have already been killed in the conflict.