“President Obama is a wartime president who doesn’t seem to realize it”, said Sen.
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Other Republicans echoed those comments, saying that Obama’s strategy – air strikes against Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria, and training local ground forces – is inadequate to the threat. The Democratic candidate referred to San Bernardino suspect Tashfeen Malik’s Facebook allegiance pledge to ISIS and ISIS leader al-Baghdadi before the massacre.
“The threat from terrorism is real but we will overcome it”, Obama said. They know they can’t defeat us on the battlefield. I don’t mean merely that Obama waited nearly five days after the terrorist attack in San Bernardino to brand the incident an act of terrorism; the Federal Bureau of Investigation had made that announcement already. 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.
One of the president’s primary opponents taking the immediate opportunity to slam his remarks was Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who insisted that Obama himself is in fact part of the problem, rather than the solution.
“I am confident we will succeed in this mission because we are on the right side of history”, the president said.
He continued his speech by urging the U.S. Congress “to make sure that no one on a No Fly List is able to buy a gun”.
But Mr Obama recognized that the killers had gone down “the dark path of radicalization, embracing a perverted interpretation of Islam that calls for war against America and the West”.
Obama’s address amounted to a reassertion of his counterterrorism strategy with the public, more than a year since the Islamic State seized control of large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria. “The President made clear, as his predecessor did, that it would only serve ISIL’s interest to leave people with the impression that, somehow, the West or the United States or the entire world is at war with Islam”, he argued.
“He also called on Muslims in America to confront the hateful ideology espoused by that minority and speak out for religious tolerance, mutual respect and human dignity”. He called it a matter of national security to prevent potential killers from getting guns. That’s why what we heard tonight was so disappointing: “no new plan, just a half-hearted attempt to defend and distract from a failing policy”, Ryan said in a statement.
Trump live-tweeted during Obama’ speech – and wasn’t impressed with the brevity of the president’s 13-minute address. This is the most direct admission by the US President that the shooting in California that killed as many as 14 people was not a simple criminal act, but a terrorist act indeed.
It’s only the third time in his presidency that U.S. President Barack Obama used an oval office televised speech to communicate to the American people. Muslim Americans are our friends and our neighbors, our co-workers, our sports heroes – and, yes, they are our men and women in uniform who are willing to die in defense of our country.
A year ago, then-House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, declared, “I would urge the president to submit a new Authorization for Use of Military Force regarding our efforts to defeat and to destroy ISIL”.
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This past February, President Obama has sought to equate violent Islamic extremism today with the violence of the Christian world during the Crusades, several centuries ago.
