President Obama addressed the nation from the Oval Office about the his plan to defeat ISIS, left, and Middle East graphic, right. (Photo: PPD/AP)
On Sunday, President Obama gave a rare Oval Office address to lay out his four-point plan to deal with the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL) in the wake of a growing threat. Critics immediately pounced on the president for regurgitating the same strategy he laid out over a year ago and refusing to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism.”
“I didn’t hear a strategy,” said counter-terror expert Sebastian Gorka. “I heard 7 minutes of reheated leftovers and a whole list of things we are not going to do.”
But here are the president’s four key points:
First, our military will continue to hunt down terrorist plotters in any country where it is necessary, using air strikes to take out ISIL leaders and their infrastructure in Iraq and Syria. And since the attacks in Paris, our closest allies – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – have ramped up their contributions to our military campaign, which will help us accelerate our effort to destroy ISIL.
Second, we will continue to provide training and equipment to Iraqi and Syrian forces fighting ISIL on the ground so that we take away their safe havens. In both countries, we are deploying Special Operations forces who can accelerate that offensive.
Third, we are leading a coalition of 65 countries to stop ISIL’s operations by disrupting plots, cutting off their financing, and preventing them from recruiting more fighters.
Fourth, with American leadership, the international community has established a process and timeline to pursue cease-fires and a political resolution to the Syrian civil war. Doing so will allow the Syrian people and every country to focus on the common goal of destroying ISIL.
Worth noting, the 4-point plan to deal with the Islamic State is in fact a 5-point plan, with the “dos” coming along with a “do not” list that rivals the former. In a statement emailed to PPD following the speech, the president said:
We should not be drawn once again into a long and costly ground war in Iraq or Syria. That’s what groups like ISIL want. We also cannot turn against one another by letting this fight become a war between America and Islam. That, too, is what groups like ISIL want. ISIL does not speak for Islam. They are thugs and killers, and account for a tiny fraction of more than a billion Muslims around the world who reject their hateful ideology.
If we are to succeed in defeating terrorism, we must enlist Muslim communities as our strongest allies in rooting out misguided ideas that lead to radicalization. It is the responsibility of all Americans — of every faith — to reject discrimination. It is our responsibility to reject religious tests on who we admit into this country. It is our responsibility to reject language that encourages suspicion or hate. Because that kind of divisiveness, that betrayal of our values, plays into the hands of groups like ISIL. We have to remember that.
The GOP presidential field wasn’t buying it, calling the president’s plan nothing more than a regurgitation of the same old tired strategy to pass the problem to the next president. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump was tweeting out his response during the speech in real-time.
Is that all there is? We need a new President – FAST!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2015
Well, Obama refused to say (he just can't say it), that we are at WAR with RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISTS.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2015
In fact, when we counted the time and words we found the president spent more time and used more words to essentially excoriate Americans for being intolerant bigots than laying out his four-point plan or strategy to defeat the Islamic State.
