DÍAZ-BALART: Some people like Trump and others say, well, the Muslim community needs to be more engaged in fighting against this, you know, radical Islamic terrorism, that the Muslim community is not doing enough.
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“After so much war, many Americans are asking whether we are confronted by a cancer that has no immediate cure”, Obama said in a solemn speech, adding that the San Bernardino massacre was evidence of an “evolving” and increasingly homegrown threat. “They are thugs and killers, part of a cult of death”.
“We don’t want terrorists to have a safe haven in cyberspace”, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at his daily news conference a day after US President Barack Obama made a similar appeal. In the case of ISIS, both the president and Congress are reluctant to declare war on ISIS because it would be seen as legitimatizing the group as a state.
To understand just how tone-deaf Obama’s speech was, compare it with French President Francois Hollande’s.
Obama probably has the best strategy, or at least the most realistic one, though it would certainly help if there were more progress on the ground to show for it. The latest polls, however, show record low public support for his terrorism policies, driving down his overall approval rating.
After Obama’s speech, Florida Sen. If it can not, does that make us more vulnerable to attack?
Obama’s last speech in the Oval Office, a symbol of presidential power, was in August 2010, when he hailed the end of USA combat operations in Iraq, a milestone in his campaign promise to extract the United States from the war there. But it may be remembered by historians as the date the 44th U.S. President tried to allay the growing fears of a nation and talk tough against terror.
The president also said he would call for a review of visa-screening measures after one of the San Bernardino shooters was allowed into the USA on a fiancée visa.
President Obama said tonight he’s anxious about a backlash against American Muslims.
In other words, last week’s terrorists might have considered themselves members of ISIS, they might have received aid or training from ISIS, but so long as some ISIS bigwig in Raqqa didn’t personally direct every aspect of the San Bernardino attack, Obama can keep his eyes closed and his hands over his ears and shout “LALALALALALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”
Americans must not push Muslims away, nor should Muslims ignore the threat of extremism in their communities, he said.
J.M. Berger, co-author of “ISIS: The State of Terror”, has studied the terrorist group’s use of social media. Congress also has been unable to coalesce behind any plan to authorize more force against IS, and the administration’s proposal has languished since February.
Republicans have demanded that Obama back a full-scale deployment of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ground forces to Syria and resume controversial interrogations at the Guantanamo Bay camp, which the president wants to close.
How the nation got to this point obviously isn’t almost as important as developing an effective plan for stopping more attacks here and defeating ISIL in Syria and Iraq.
Seth Jones with the Rand Corporation praised Obama’s remarks on Muslim Americans.
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Still, Obama did begin to acknowledge that there appeared to be some link between their connection with Islamic radicals and their actions, saying, “It is clear that the two of them had gone down the dark path of radicalization, embracing a perverted interpretation of Islam that calls for war against America and the West”.
