Facing what President Barack Obama has called a new phase of terrorism, USA officials appealed to Muslim Americans on Monday to fight harder against extremist ideology.
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There were no new policy prescriptions, no fresh military strategies and no timelines.
The reason partly being, the rest of the White House is now getting embellished for the next week’s parties that President Obama will be throwing for the members of Congress and other staff teams.
More important, the speech reflected Obama’s seemingly unhurried approach to the battle against Islamic State since the group roared out of the Syrian desert in 2014: cautious, incremental, and only now escalating to meet the growing scope of the threat. “We will destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us”. “We must enlist Muslim communities as some of our strongest allies, rather than pushing them away through suspicion and hate”. “And by drawing upon every aspect of American power”.
Obama decided to make the address on Friday and worked on his remarks throughout the weekend, according to an administration official.
In his address, the first from the Oval Office in a number of years, the president also said the nation must “reject proposals” that Muslim Americans should be treated differently – a comment that comes almost two weeks after presidential hopeful Donald Trump indicated he wanted a registry for all Muslims in the country. His preferred venue for such remarks has traditionally been the East Room of the White House.
The FBI is investigating the massacre as a homegrown terrorist attack by individuals inspired by ISIS, a type of strike officials admit is extremely hard to prevent.
He said there’s no evidence linking the San Bernardino shooters to ISIS, but that the attack still constitutes a terrorist threat to regular citizens. But judging by the immediate response after the speech, Obama did little to bridge the partisan divide.
“Our vulnerability is the visa-waiver program”, Warner said.
Obama did call for cooperation between private companies and law enforcement to ensure potential attackers can’t use technology to evade detection. He believes it’s a law enforcement exercise.
Obama, elected on an anti-war platform, showed little sign of meeting his political foes in the middle as he reiterated calls for gun control and ruled out a ground intervention.
“And if so, it would underscore a threat we’ve been focused on for years – the danger of people succumbing to violent extremist ideologies”. “Nothing President Obama said tonight will assist in either case”. “Once a K-1 visa is issued, as per general procedure, the person has to marry the fiancee within 90 days of the arrival in the US”, State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner had said last Friday. “This is not a time for ideological silliness, this is a time for serious action because the future security of our country is at stake”. Presidential candidates such as Sen. Lawmakers have refused to formally authorize use of force against IS.
When Obama spoke of the danger of our being “drawn once more into a long and costly ground war in Iraq or Syria”, that was yet another fantasy, that wars are optional.
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The spread of radical Islam into American communities, he said, is “a real problem that Muslims must confront without excuse”. “President Obama took time from Americans last night to double down on a failed strategy”.
