But the speech – meant to reassure a nervous nation – didn’t announce an overhaul of a policy that critics have branded insufficient to take on the evolving threat. While Clinton has been supportive of Obama’s foreign policy, given that she served as his secretary of state, she also has called for a more robust approach to defeating IS, including setting up a no-fly zone.
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In a new CNN/ORC poll released on Sunday, 60% of Americans disapproved of Obama’s handling of terrorism – up nine points since May.
The survey was conducted before the attacks in San Bernardino and also showed a shift in public opinion on how to tackle the group with a majority – 53% – for the first time saying the USA should send ground troops to fight ISIS. “And they account for a tiny fraction of a more than a billion Muslims around the world, including millions of patriotic Muslim-Americans who reject their hateful ideology”, he said.
The new law, a result mainly of the Edward Snowden disclosures, was backed by senior members of the intelligence community, and replaced a system that two independent review boards appointed by Obama concluded was ineffective.
After the speech, fellow Democrats largely praised Obama’s address, in which he expressed confidence in defeating the Islamic State.
“That’s what groups like ISIL want”, Obama said in a rare televised address from the Oval Office following the California mass shooting.
Facing doubts about his leadership, Obama harnessed the highest trappings of U.S. power to calm a nation put on edge by a rampage in California that killed 14 Americans.
However, he didn’t go so far to call it an act of “Islamic” terrorism, cautioning that even as a Muslim employee and his wife carried out the deadly attacks, there was “no evidence that the killers were directed by a terrorist organization overseas or that they were part of a broader conspiracy here at home”.
“When I hear folks say that maybe we should just admit the Christians but not the Muslims”, Obama said, “when I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which person who is fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted, when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution, that’s shameful. We will prevail by being strong and smart, resilient and relentless”.
“It will take time and success will not be linear”, National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice said Sunday on CNN.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said in a statement: “If I am elected President, I will direct the Department of Defense to destroy ISIS”. Marco Rubio, a Republican presidential candidate, said on Fox News.
“We should not be drawn once more into a long and costly ground war in Iraq and Syria”.
Obama also detailed the ways in which the USA 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 one thing we do know is that we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world”, Obama told CBS Wednesday.
“They had stockpiled assault weapons, ammunition and pipe bombs”.
Since that attack, Republicans have criticized various aspects of the strategy he trumpeted during Sunday’s prime time address from the Oval Office.
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Supporters of the USA Freedom Act, which was approved six months ago and forced the NSA to adopt a more targeted phone spying program, dispute Rubio’s interpretation of it.
