President Obama addressed the nation Sunday night, seeking to reassure Americans just days after the mass shooting in San Bernardino.
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The poll also showed 60 per cent disapproved of Mr Obama’s handling of terrorism – a record low – and 68 per cent said America’s military response to Isil had not been aggressive enough.
The president urged Muslims in America and around the world to “decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology that groups like ISIL and Al Qaeda promote”.
He detailed a multi-pronged strategy against the jihadists that will rely as much on community action, technology and countering propaganda as military force.
“Well, Obama refused to say (he just can’t say it), that we are at WAR with RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISTS”, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump tweeted after the address.
“The 2001 war authorization now being used by the Obama administration is “ill suited” to defeat global terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant”, the study by the RAND Corporation found. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is the Obama administration’s preferred name for the terrorist organization. Second, he said, the USA will continue to train and equip Syrian and Iraqi troops.
Jens David Ohlin, a law professor at Cornell University who studies war, said Obama is trying to strike a balance between his own cautious nature and what the American people want to hear in time of crises.
Sure, writing a resolution to authorise military force against Islamic State would be fraught: given the war-hungry atmosphere and just how many Republicans (and some Democrats) would want to write it as broadly as possible and leave it in effect for an unlimited amount of time while calling anything less surrendering to the terrorists, a new AUMF could end up giving the administration – or future administrations – more power to wage a broader war, rather than less.
Obama will talk more about his determination that the Islamic State group must be destroyed.
“We’ve got to be more stricter with what they’ve got”.
Obama said the pair “had gone down the dark path of radicalization”.
This denialism was on full display Friday when attorneys for the Farook family – relatives of Syed Rizwan Farook who killed 14 in San Bernardino with his wife, Tashfeen Malik – gave one of the more freaky press conferences in recent history.
Last week, the terror threat drew even closer for Americans when a couple – a 29-year-old woman originally from Pakistan and her 28-year-old American-born husband – launched an attack on a holiday luncheon in San Bernardino. “ISIL does not speak for Islam”.
President Obama’s rhetoric is a familiar punching bag for Republicans running to replace him. “Instead, we will prevail by being strong and smart, resilient and relentless”.
John Hudak, a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution who studies the presidency, said Obama’s “overly cautious” tendency comes from a naturally deliberative personality as well as a rare attitude for politician that if he doesn’t have anything to say then he won’t say anything.
“President Obama is also overselling the successes we are having on the battlefield”.
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Obama repeated his long-standing opposition to an American-led ground war in the Middle East and made no mention of the more aggressive action others have suggested, including enforcing a no-fly zone and safe corridors in Syria. That’s what groups like ISIL are hoping for.
