Obama Seeks to Calm a Nervous Nation

While the president rarely uses the term “war on terror”- a phrase coined by former President George W. Bush after the attacks in 2011- Obama said on Sunday night that the USA has been “at war with terrorists since Al Qaeda killed almost 3,000 people on 9/11”. “The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it. We will destroy ISIS and any other organisation that tries to harm us”.

“If Congress believes, as I do, that we are at war with ISIL, it should go ahead and vote to authorize the continued use of military force against these terrorists”, he said. He said Americans can not give into fear.

More important, the speech reflected Obama’s seemingly unhurried approach to the battle against Islamic State since the group roared out of the Syrian desert in 2014: cautious, incremental, and only now escalating to meet the growing scope of the threat.

The president’s decision to speak from the Oval Office on USA prime-time television reflected the White House’s concern that his message on the recent attacks has not broken through, particularly in the midst of a heated presidential
campaign.

“We also need to make it harder for people to buy powerful assault weapons like the ones that were used in San Bernardino”, the President said.

Obama cautioned Americans against singling out Muslims, arguing that framing the fight against ISIS as a war between Islam and the West feeds into the terror network’s propaganda.

Well, Obama refused to say (he just can’t say it), that we are at WAR with RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISTS.

The truth is, however, even though Obama rejects profiling – or doing things like keeping a database of Muslims, as Donald Trump suggests – this president has put the onus on Muslim leaders and Muslim communities to fight attempts at radicalization.

I talked with @FoxNews last night in response to President Obama’s Oval Office address.

But he also said San Bernardino showed that “the terrorist threat has evolved into a new phase” as IS used the internet to “poison the minds” of potential assailants. A woman held responsible for last week’s shooting California had, under a Facebook alias, pledged allegiance to IS and its leader, according to US official who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“This was an act of terrorism created to kill innocent people”, Obama said of the attack.

On Sunday, December 6th at 8:00PM EST, President Obama will address the nation from the Oval Office about the steps our government is taking to fulfill his highest priority: keeping the American people safe.

Obama has insisted that the Islamic State is contained in Iraq and Syria.

“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.

In those remarks, he said IS and other terrorist groups are “actively encouraging people – around the world and in our country – to commit bad acts of violence, often times as lone-wolf actors”.

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”.