The newspaper said, “Obama revealed no new ideas or plans for dismantling Islamic State, and he again ruled out sending a large force of US ground troops to fight in the Middle East. The strategy he did present – more drone strikes, more special forces, more FBI investigations – pointed to a long-term struggle rather than a decisive victory anytime soon”.
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Yet he acknowledged that the fight against the group in Syria in and Iraq “continues to be a hard fight” and “progress needs to keep coming faster”.
The US strategy of hunting down ISIL leaders in Iraq and Syria, training local forces, and stopping ISIL’s financing and propaganda is progressing, he said.
“Every day, we destroy as well more of ISIL’s forces – their fighting positions, bunkers, and staging areas”, President Obama said.
Obama’s defense secretary, Ash Carter, departed for Turkey and the Middle East to seek more coalition military contributions to the counter-IS campaign on Monday, while he sent his Secretary of State John Kerry to Moscow to try to narrow gaps with Russian Federation over a political transition to end Syria’s civil war.
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.
“The point is, ISIL leaders can not hide”.
Obama said ISIL leaders are being killed off one-by-one.
The pace of airstrikes against IS targets had accelerated, Obama said, with more bombs dropped in November than in any month since the first global action began in August 2014. In addition, US and coalition airstrikes against Islamic State-held areas in Syria have been complicated by Russia’s entry into the air campaign there.
Holt went onto report that “for the second time in just over a week, President Obama argued that his strategy against ISIS is working…in a rare appearance at the Pentagon”. Obama is scheduled to attend a briefing at the National Counterterrorism Center on Thursday.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s office (R-Calif.) said in a statement that the real question of Obama’s Pentagon visit is if anything will really change as a result.
President Obama’s job approval has sunk to its lowest level in more than a year in a new poll as terrorism and national security emerge as top concerns for Americans.
Before the Republican candidate’s call to ban Muslims from the country, the White House was pushing back on efforts to curb refugee entry into the USA following the terror attacks in Paris. That’s up 31-percent.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told Congress last week that US troops stand ready to advise the Iraqi army and provide Apache attack helicopters to help retake the strategic city of Ramadi from Islamic State militants if the Iraqi government requests it.
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Terrorism has been a major focus since the Paris attacks last month and the deadly shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., earlier this month.
