The Republican National Committee slammed Obama’s visit as a “politically motivated photo-op” that “won’t do a thing to protect the American people from another attack”.
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While the U.S. works to disrupt ISIS financing and recruiting across the world, Obama said the USA is chiefly focused on hitting the group at its base of power in Iraq and Syria.
Obama usually meets the National Security Council at the White House, and the last time he had travelled to the Pentagon was on July 6.
“Iraq syndrome is still hanging there”, he said, referring to a hangover from the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, “and the public doesn’t really think that war is going to solve the ISIS problem”. “Our message is simple: you are next”, said Obama. “Even as were relentless we need to be smart, targeting ISIL surgically and with precision”, he said.
And in a reversal from a few years ago, 55 percent now say they’re more anxious that the United States won’t go far enough in monitoring the activities and communications of potential terrorists, compared to 40 percent who are more anxious the government will go too far.
Since the spring, the US has taken out one of the terrorist group’s top leaders, Abu Sayyaf, as well as Mohammed Emwazi, better known as “Jihadi John”, “who brutally murdered Americans and others”, the president said.
“All this said, we recognize that progress needs to keep coming faster”, he stressed.
This was the sort of warlike rhetoric – and sense of urgency – that many found lacking in his brief address to the nation on the Islamic State from the Oval Office last Sunday, a 13-minute speech made to a nation made jittery by the IS attack in Paris and the IS-inspired massacre in San Bernardino.
Obama’s recent assurances about having “contained” ISIS geographically, voiced during an interview prior to the San Bernardino shooting deaths of 14 people, were amended to address public anxieties head-on.
A large majority wanted to see a clearer explanation from President Barack Obama about his strategy to defeat the group.
Obama said Monday that U.S. special forces “are playing a vital role in this fight”. He announced during the meeting the Defense Secretary Ashton Carter would soon depart on a trip to the Middle East to further examine the anti-ISIS military strategy.
The President should direct the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other organizations in protecting Americans at home to encourage rabbis, priests, ministers, and imams should preach to their congregations that Muslim Americans are part of American society and that extremists terrorizing Americans are not Muslims.
Obama has tried to use his bully pulpit as a counterpoint to Trump and his widely condemned proposal to bar Muslims from entering the U.S. The White House scheduled a conference call Monday with religious leaders about ways to fight discrimination and promote religious tolerance.
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If optics alone could win wars, the Islamic State would indeed be on the run.
