Obama in the Oval Office on Sunday night. (Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times)
President Obama sought on Sunday to calm a jittery American public after the terrorist attack last week in California, delivering a prime-time address designed to highlight the government’s campaign against an evolving threat.
Speaking from behind a lectern in the Oval Office, Mr. Obama bluntly acknowledged the heightened fears that followed attacks in Paris and in San Bernardino, Calif., which his administration over the weekend called an “act of terrorism” that was inspired, but not directed, by members of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
“The terrorist threat has evolved into a new phase,” Mr. Obama said. “I know that after so much war, many Americans are asking whether we are confronted by a cancer that has no immediate cure.”
He added: “The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it.”
The president’s speech was not intended to announce a shift in strategy, or new policies to combat the terrorist threat at home and overseas. Rather, it was designed to inform Americans of the administration’s continuing efforts, and to urge Americans not to give in to fear.
In the prime-time speech, only his third from the Oval Office, Mr. Obama sought to reassure Americans by ramping up his public response to the massacre in San Bernardino.
The rampage last week, which killed 14 people, was the first time that terrorists inspired by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, had successfully struck in the United States. It came shortly after the Paris attacks; assaults in Beirut, Lebanon; and the takedown of a Russian airliner over Egypt, all attributed to elements of the Islamic State.
For Mr. Obama, the arrival in the United States of successful attacks inspired by the Islamic State underscores urgent questions about the military and diplomatic effort initiated by his administration more than a year ago, when the group surged into Iraq, seizing territory there and in neighboring Syria.
The decision to address the American people from the Oval Office, a venue he has largely shunned during his presidency, reflected the gravity of a subject that has come to define Mr. Obama’s presidency, especially in his second term. And it suggested the importance that the president and his advisers have placed on responding to mounting criticism of his strategy to defeat the group.
The president has relied since the summer of 2014 on a combination of airstrikes, financial sanctions and targeted special operations to counter the growth of the Islamic State, while building a diplomatic coalition of dozens of nations and resisting any call for the reintroduction of large numbers of American ground troops in the Middle East.
But despite thousands of airstrikes since then, the Islamic State militants continue to occupy large areas of land in the region. And a sophisticated social media campaign by the terror network has succeeded in helping it recruit believers across the globe, including, officials have said, in the United States.
After announcing that he would deliver Sunday’s address, Mr. Obama had initially decided to cancel his previously scheduled appearance at the Kennedy Center Honors event, which honors pioneers in the arts, on Sunday evening. But a few hours before the speech, the White House said he had reconsidered and would be going to the Kennedy Center after all.
In the short speech, Mr. Obama did not offer a new strategy or give ground to critics who claim he has been too cautious in the face of a mounting global threat. But the president repeated his call for a more intense effort by the coalition to counter the Islamic State on the ground, and for a renewed attempt to find a diplomatic solution to the civil war in Syria.
Click here to continue reading…
SOURCE: MICHAEL D. SHEAR and GARDINER HARRIS
The New York Times
Comments