President stresses urgency in fight with ISIS

Obama, who leaves Friday for his annual vacation in Hawaii, had to interrupt that trip in 2009 when a would-be attacker tried to blow up a plane on Christmas Day.

Obama announced no change in strategy but said coalition forces will continue to search for and kill terrorist leaders, and train and equip Iraqi forces and some of the opposition fighters in Syria who are battling Islamic State militants.

“As we squeeze its heart we’ll make it harder for ISIL to sell its propaganda to the world”, Obama said, after a meeting with the National Security Council at the Pentagon, reports abc News.

“Iraq syndrome is still hanging there”, he said, referring to a hangover from the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, “and the public doesn’t really think that war is going to solve the ISIS problem”.

OBAMA: The point is ISIL leaders can not hide, and our next message to them is simple: You are next.

The pace of airstrikes against IS targets had accelerated, Obama said, with more bombs dropped in November than in any month since the first worldwide action began in August 2014. Holes along these borders continue to allow ISIL’s economy to thrive.Obama says ISIL has largely been pushed back from nearly all of the border region and has lost 40 percent of the populated areas it used to control in Iraq.

In his eight-minute address from Pentagon, the American president insisted the anti-Isis operations have been “harder than ever”.

Mr Carter will fly to Turkey, which is serving as a platform for numerous US-led strikes against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

That strategy, based an worldwide coalition made up of 65 countries and the decision to avoid another military intervention like the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, for some time has faced criticism that has only grown harsher following the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California. “Meanwhile, more people are seeing ISIL for the thugs, and the thieves, and the killers that they are”. “And that is why I have asked Secretary Carter to go to the Middle East – he’ll depart right after this press briefing – to work with our coalition partners on securing more military contributions to this fight”.

The speech at the Pentagon came after Obama met with his top national security advisers, part of a weeklong push to explain his strategy for stopping militants overseas and their sympathizers in the U.S.

In recent weeks, U.S. fears of a terror attack have swelled, with about 70 percent of Americans saying the risk of an attack in the United States is at least “somewhat high”. Obama’s aides were holding meetings at the White House with Muslim leaders and Sikh leaders.

As national security takes center stage in the presidential race, Obama is hoping to counter Donald Trump and his inflammatory remarks about Muslims, which the president believes endangers national security. The move comes after a rare Sunday address from the Oval Office meant to reassure Americans about his strategy fell flat, along with the president’s poll numbers.