“The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it. We will destroy ISIL and any other organisation that tries to harm us”, he said.
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“We were founded upon a belief in human dignity that no matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or what religion you practice, you are equal in the eyes of God and equal in the eyes of the law”, he said. He also demanded tougher gun control, saying it was key to combating ISIS. He announced no significant shift in strategy and offered no new policy prescriptions for defeating IS, underscoring both his confidence in his current approach and the lack of easy options for countering the extremist group. It came three weeks after a terrorist attack in Paris killed 130 people and four days after husband-and-wife shooters – apparently inspired by a similar ideology – killed 14 at a California holiday party.
“This was an act of terrorism created to kill innocent people”, he said.
Given that the California couple were not on the USA national security radar before they launched their shooting spree on Wednesday, Obama faced the challenge of convincing the US public he is doing everything possible to deal with an evolving militant threat.
While cautioning against a “costly ground war” that groups like ISIS desire, Obama said that the US and its allies would continue to disrupt terrorist plots by zeroing in on terrorist financing and infrastructure, as well as pushing for a ceasefire agreement in Syria to proceed with a common goal between USA and Russian Federation in fighting ISIS. Mr. Obama reiterated that while Muslims must take responsibility and confront the radicals, this should not be portrayed as a “war between America and Islam. I know there are some who reject any gun-safety measures, but the fact is that our intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, no matter how effective they are, can not identify every would-be mass shooter, whether that individual was motivated by ISIL or some other hateful ideology”, he said, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“The truth is that the Obama policy against ISIS has failed totally and his speech totally failed to address or correct that failure!” Authorities are investigating the incident as a terrorist attack.
Obama said he has ordered the departments of State and Homeland Security to review the visa process by which the female San Bernardino shooting suspect entered the country. Obama once again asked Congress to take on common-sense reforms to keep guns out of the hands of risky people, including barring people on the government’s no-fly list from acquiring weapons.
“That’s what groups like [ISIS] want”, he said. It’s time, he said, “for Congress to demonstrate that the American people are united and committed in this fight”.
In speaking from the Oval Office, Obama turned to a tool of the presidency that he has used infrequently.
“And that’s why I will urge high-tech and law enforcement leaders to make it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice”, is the sentence used in Obama’s speech to end a paragraph offering conclusions related to America’s strategy to fight ISIS.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Lindsey Graham said the president had been “overwhelmed by radical Islam”, while Donald Trump suggested to the Republican Jewish Coalition Presidential Candidates Forum in Washington last week that “there was something going on” with Obama because he refused to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism”, according to The Hill newspaper.
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He ended by saying that “freedom is more powerful than fear”, and that he was confident America would defeat the terrorist threat.
