ANALYSIS: Did Obama Succeed To Reassure Americans Over ISIS Threat After CA massacre?
On Sunday, during a rare Oval Office address to the nation, President Obama tried to reassure Americans on his anti-Islamic State policies in the aftermath of the San Bernardino massacre.
The President now admitted that the San Bernardino shooting was the work of radicalized Muslims who had “perverted Islam” but tried to play down the overall threat to the United States.
Obama emphasized that there was “no evidence that the killers were directed by a terror network overseas or that they were part of a broader conspiracy at home.”
The President also repeatedly said that the United States was under threat of ‘terror’ and that he realized how grave the danger form this terrorism is.
He vowed to destroy “ISIL” – again using the old name of Islamic State – but offered no new strategy. Instead, he said the U.S. and her allies will ‘step up their efforts and will continue to invest more in approaches that are working on the ground.’
He especially mentioned the cooperation with Turkey that, according to Obama, is now sealing off its border with Syria to cut off supple routes to ISIS.
The President also mainly focused on the war effort against Islamic State in Syria while omitting recent developments in Libya, Yemen and Egypt where the jihadist organization has succeeded to set up camp and expand its operations.
During the second part of the speech, Obama emphasized the need for greater control measures as a means to prevent mass shootings like the one that took place in San Bernardino last week and a better screening of U.S. citizens who travel to war zones.
In the final part of his address, Obama called upon Americans not to turn to one another and not to define this war as a battle between America and Islam. But he did concede that the source of the terror threat to the U.S. is an “extreme ideology that has been spread through some Muslim communities.” At the same time, he insisted that this ideology is “incompatible with the religious values” (of Islam), and claimed that these values are “mutual respect, religious tolerance, and human dignity.”
There are a number of problems with Obama’s arguments.
First, while it might be true that the couple that murdered fourteen U.S. citizens in San Bernardino was not acting on orders of ‘an overseas terror network’ that doesn’t mean the overall threat to the United States is less than during the war against Al Qaeda after 9/11.
A new study by George Washington University shows that the direct threat by ISIS to the United States comes from individuals who are strongly influenced by online indoctrination.
Some of them are Muslim converts who ended up traveling to Syria to join ISIS after which they return to the United States. But others, like the San Bernardino shooters, are living like normal citizens until one day they decide to carry out a terrorist attack against the society they have been indoctrinated to hate.
Secondly, when the President consequently uses the name ISIL – meaning Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant – he indicates he understands Islamic State’s overall plan in the Middle East and elsewhere. The Levant encompasses not only Syria and Lebanon but Israel and Jordan as well.
Obama, however, has always played down the threat that Islamic State presents to other countries in the Middle East and the world as a whole. He called the group a Junior Varsity team while ISIS was conquering northern Iraq and more recently referred to the Paris massacre as a “setback” and said that Islamic State is a handful of people that is in the possession of “not wildly sophisticated weapons.”
During his speech, Obama omitted recent developments that indicate that Islamic State has ambitions beyond the conquest of Syria and Iraq and didn’t speak the truth when he said that Turkey is sealing its border with Syria to cut off ISIS supply lines.
In fact, last week Russia delivered evidence that Ankara is still allowing oil exports from Islamic State into Turkey. Earlier this year, Turkish journalist Burak Bekdil exposed that Erdogan’s government was delivering missiles, rockets and ammunition to Islamic State in Syria.
Third, when Obama called upon Americans not to define the current war as a war between the U.S. and Islam, he ignored again that the current battle between more than 70 countries and Islamic State is a continuation of a war that started on September 11, 2001, when Al Qaeda attacked the United States.
In 2014, 32,000 people died in this war as a result of attacks by terrorists that were almost all members of Islamist groups. More than 18,000 people were killed by Islamic State and its affiliate Boko Haram alone last year. The number of deaths went up 80 percent compared to 2013 and a further rise in the death toll is expected over 2015.
All this happened under the banner of Islam.
Islamic State was originally the Al-Qaeda branch in Iraq until Obama pulled out the U.S. Army in 2011. The organization now controls territory larger than England and is reportedly preparing a new attack on a Western country. According to Israeli media “intelligence agencies in Europe have warned that the Islamic State may be planning a large-scale attack in London, as hundreds of British ISIS activists have recently returned to the UK from the Syrian battle zones.”