“As we’ve become better at preventing complex multifaceted attacks like 9/11, terrorists turn to less complicated acts of violence like the mass shootings that are all too common in our society”.
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He says a more forceful command of how to go after ISIS would have been more effective in reaching the American people. “He lives in the world as he wishes it were, not the world as it really is”, said Christie.
This was not a speech about how the Obama administration is going to do anything differently in the future.
But just as it is the responsibility of Muslims around the world to root out misguided ideas that lead to radicalization, it is the responsibility of all Americans – of every faith – to reject discrimination. Would he take a position on gun control? The merits of keeping guns away from “terrorist suspects” aside, they argue that membership on the no-fly list is a poor measure of who should face such restrictions.
Republican Ben Carson called Obama’s speech “strange”.
After reviewing the report’s sober conclusions, Obama sought options from Sec. of Defense Ash Carter and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford concerning how to more effectively prosecute the fight against ISIS. “Strange that it took four days from the attack to respond and even more odd that somehow the attack on our soil is proof his policies are working”. There are so many guns already in circulation that anyone who wants one can get one.
The president also spent part of his speech calling for stricter gun control laws, which Republican lawmakers are saying politicizes the San Bernardino attack and the need to focus on terrorism.
“Putting aside the absurdity that numerous ordinary, law-abiding Americans are mistakenly included in the no-fly list, we should not that both of the terrorists had a clean record and would not have been affected by the President’s proposals to outlaw gun purchases by those on the list. And I will shut down the broken immigration system that is letting jihadists into our country”. “Nothing President Obama said tonight will assist in either case”. And it’s been ten months since Obama requested an additional AUMF for the country’s war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush called for a “war-time Commander-in-chief”: “President Obama has finally been forced to abandon the political fantasy he has perpetuated for years that the threat of terrorism was receding”. “Moreover, the vast majority of terrorist victims around the world are Muslim”, Obama had said. “I think there have been times where there has not been enough pushback against extremism”. “We were founded upon a belief in human dignity that no matter who you are, or where you come from, or what you look like or what religion you practice, you are equal in the eyes of God and equal in the eyes of the law”, the President said. “We must arm our allies, the Kurds, and insist on Arab boots on the ground for our allies in the region”.
But will Obama’s strategy destroy ISIS? Our rights aren’t the problem, our unwillingness to act to defeat extremists is the problem. “We are not scared of (Islamic State)”. But Wajahat Ali, an Al Jazeera journalist and author of a groundbreaking study of American Islamophobia, “Fear Inc.”, thinks that’s a good thing. “I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out”.
Obama said, “When we travel down that road, we lose“. There has been a continuing mismatch between the president’s goal of destroying ISIL and the means he has committed. True to form, Obama also used this supposedly serious address – it was only the third from the Oval Office since he took office in 2009 – to promote a gun control gimmick.
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Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus also blasted Obama’s speech. “He declared: “[ISIL] know[s] they can’t defeat us on the battlefield. “The path laid out by President Obama and supported by Hillary Clinton has not worked, and ISIS has only gained in strength”, Priebus said in a statement. A Facebook official said the post came about the time the couple stormed the San Bernardino social services center.
