Obama in November visited the sites of coordinated attacks in Paris at a theater and restaurants.
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He’s said it before, and he said it again on Wednesday in a joint press conference in Buenos Aires with Argentine President Mauricio Macri: Groups like ISIL, which claimed responsibility for the attacks on the Belgian capital that killed at least 31, “are not an existential threat to us”. “But the president of the United States always says ‘ISIL.’ Everyone else says ‘ISIS.’ And I actually think he does it to bother people”. He projected resolve, insisting “we can and will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world”.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) declared the attacks were “sadly predictable” considering that the Obama administration had “allow[ed] the ISIL threat to grow and strengthen for years”.
“It’s not because we don’t have the best and the brightest working on it”, he said. “That’s not a smart strategy”, Obama said Wednesday. “The United States will continue to offer any assistance that we can to help investigate these attacks and bring attackers to justice”. “I’m still confused as to what your complaint is” he said, given the recent successes of the anti-ISIS campaign, which has included sizable reductions in territory controlled by the group.
“It is the top priority of my national security team. Cruz escaped for America, the land of the free”, Obama said, referring to Cuba, where he had traveled from following a historic trip. In the near term, this nightmare scenario could lead Obama to deploy more US Special Operations forces to track and destroy the Isis cells involved in planning terror attacks in Europe and North America. And as our strategy evolves and we see additional opportunities, we will go after it. But what we don’t do and what we should not do is take approaches that are going to be counterproductive.
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton also slammed Cruz.
Up until now, Obama’s instincts have told him to avoid such moves, which he has cast as unnecessary and the beginning of a slide towards a much larger American commitment of forces.
He said the U.S.is making gains in Iraq and Syria but stopping attacks like the one in Brussels is “difficult work”. And it scares the American people.
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Administration officials, meanwhile, said there was no plan to change the president’s itinerary and return to Washington, D.C., as the hunt for those responsible for the Brussels attacks intensifies. “While we are doing that, we’re also extraordinarily vigilant about preventing attacks in our homeland and working with our allies to prevent attacks in Europe”.
