What Obama said in Oval Office address on terrorism

In the Oval Office address Sunday night, President Barack Obama said he would seek cooperation from tech and law enforcement leaders to thwart terrorists in their use of communications technology to hatch plots. Particularly when the president said, “Muslim Americans are our friends and our co-workers, our sports heroes…they are our men and women in uniform who are willing to die in defense of our country”. Dispensing with the fuzzy rhetoric of “degrading” terrorist groups, Obama last night vowed to “destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us”.

In a swipe at Republicans, he said beating Islamic State would not depend on “tough talk or abandoning our values, or giving into fear”.

Obama stressed that the security of the nation remains strong, despite the real threat of terrorism. Obama noted new contributions from France, the United Kingdom, and Germany, more us special forces and training for local ground forces. He announced no significant shift in US strategy and offered no new policy prescriptions for defeating IS, underscoring both his confidence in his current approach and the lack of easy options for countering the extremist group.

He underscored that the USA and its allies have increased their bombing of Islamic State oil infrastructure and would continue to train and equip moderate rebels in Iraq and Syria.

As for Obama’s calls for gun control, he said that “the president didn’t bring it up because of his interest in politics; he brought it up because of his interest in national security”.

Woven throughout Obama’s address was a plea for unity.

Obama is caught between, Brand says, “to sound the alarm but not sound alarmist”.

GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that the president should have outlined a “strategy that was much more comprehensive” and been more persuasive “that we’re at war with Islamic radical terrorism”. Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts to forge a cease-fire in the Syrian civil war are making slow progress, Obama said.

A senior administration official said the speech was created to convey the seriousness with which Mr. Obama was taking the shootings in San Bernardino, which are being investigated as a terror attack.

In 1981 and again in 1993, the United Nations General Assembly passed declarations on religious freedom that are flagrantly violated by a number of Islamic states – most notably Saudi Arabia – from which the ideology of ISIS et al. derives.

To understand just how tone-deaf Obama’s speech was, compare it with French President Francois Hollande’s. One is changing the visa-waiver program, which allows people coming to the USA from certain European countries enter the US, through an expedited process with less stringent background checks. “Moreover, the vast majority of terrorist victims around the world are Muslim”, Obama had said. In his address, the president urged Congress to pass legislation to prevent people on the no-fly list from buying guns.

“Ultimately it’s free American’s that are being put on it, not terrorists so being put on that list and having that list used against you to exercise your rights as an American is a problem”.