President Barack Obama delivered a rare prime-time address from the Oval Office on Sunday to reassure anxious Americans that his administration will protect them from the threat posed by ISIS.
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Sunday’s address was particularly significant because it marked only the third time Obama has spoken to the American public from the Oval Office, which is located in the West Wing of the White House and considered the president’s official office.
Husband and wife Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik carried out the attack and authorities say Malik had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) and its leader in a Facebook post. “The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it. We will destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us”, Obama said, adding, without naming specific countries, “our military will continue to hunt down terrorist plotters in any country where it is necessary”.
Taking note of the fact that Malik had came to the U.S. in 2014 on a fiancee visa, Obama said he had “ordered the Departments of State and Homeland Security to review the visa programme under which the female terrorist in San Bernardino originally came to this country”.
Yet Obama’s speech was likely to leave his critics unsatisfied.
“I will urge high-tech and law enforcement leaders to make it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice”, he said. It was an incredible speech that assuaged the fears of so many worrying about ISIL infiltrating the United States, with the president expressing how we can work together to prevail over the threats. He called for Americans not to turn against one another and demanded that we not let this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam, as ISIL does not speak for Islam.
He vowed to destroy “ISIL” – again using the old name of Islamic State – but offered no new strategy.
But the President’s speech was not meant to announce a dramatic shift in strategy or new policies to combat the terrorist threat at home and overseas.
“Where is there widespread evidence that we have a problem in America with discrimination against Muslims?”
Obama also detailed the ways in which the US has already stepped up its efforts against ISIS, including training moderate Iraqi and Syrian forces, deploying more American special forces to the area and increased intelligence sharing with allies.
The president also called on Congress to pass new authorization for military actions underway against IS in Iraq and Syria and to approve legislation to keep people on the “no-fly list” from buying guns. They know they can’t defeat us on the battlefield.
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The FBI is investigating the paramilitary-style attack in California as inspired by IS, which controls swaths of Syria and Iraq and has shown an expanded reach beyond its Middle East strongholds, including complicity in the recent attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Believing this fallacy, he says, will only playing into their hand.
