Muslim Americans called to fight extremism

Although the underlying motivation of the attackers has not been identified yet, Mr. Obama defined last week’s incident as “an act of terrorism created to kill innocent people”.

Obama has delivered formal remarks to the nation from the Oval Office twice before -in the summer of 2010, as oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico from a broken well, and a few months later, as he announced the end of combat operations in Iraq, declaring that he had made good on a central promise.

The White House on Monday hit back at the criticism calling it divisive, political rhetoric aimed at propelling campaigns.

“He did not have a great deal new to say about strategy and policy, but he was trying to tell Americans that our strategy is working”. Nothing the president said “will assuage people’s fears”, the Florida senator said. Republican presidential candidates make crushing ISIL sound easy, but this is a massively hard problem that involves fighting not just a physical enemy, but also an extremist ideology. He also urged Congress to pass new force authorization for military actions underway against IS in Iraq and Syria, and also to approve legislation to bar guns from being sold to people prohibited from flying on planes in the US for terrorist concerns.

However, while Obama was speaking about the Islamic State, the fact is other Muslim countries besides the Islamic State explicitly reject “religious tolerance, mutual respect, and human dignity”. Rather than banning Muslims from coming to the US, an emphasis should be placed on preventing terrorists from ever entering.

One of the striking things about this speech was that Obama tried to reassure Americans, while also talking tough against terrorism, Brands says.

“It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency”, it said. Appearing on Fox and Friends, Huckabee wondered, “Could you imagine FDR going before Congress and saying, ‘We were attacked yesterday on Pearl Harbor”. The no-fly list is maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Terrorist Screening Center (TSC), and contains people who are not allowed to board a commercial aircraft to fly in or out of the country. “… We will prevail by being strong and smart, resilient and relentless”. Republican critics were not swayed by the president’s speech. “It won’t require us sending in a new generation of Americans overseas to fight and die for another decade of foreign soil”, said the president. Research by Pew and the Council on American-Islamic Relations has shown that the rise in apprehension about Islam in the U.S. has coincided with the emergence and success of the IS. However, the group has set its sights elsewhere in the world, launching attacks in Lebanon and Turkey and downing a Russian Federation airliner over Egypt. The Nov. 13 attacks in Paris marked the group’s most aggressive actions in Europe, a coordinated effort that left 130 people dead and wounded hundreds more.

SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: President Obama had kept a relatively low profile in the days immediately following the San Bernardino shooting. He refuses to use the term radical Islamic terrorism. The woman pledged allegiance to IS and its leader in a Facebook post, according to USA official who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.