President Obama said on Monday “we are hitting ISIL” harder than ever, referring to the battle against the Islamic State, during an appearance at the Pentagon.
Obama, using harsher language than normal to describe the military campaign and referring to Islamic State leaders as as “thugs, thieves and killers,” announced that he was dispatching Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who was already heading to the Middle East for the annual pre-planned holiday visit to troops, to encourage more regional allies to join or step up their efforts against the terror group.
He said that last month, coalition forces dropped more bombs since the campaign began. “We are taking out leaders one-by-one,” Obama said. “ISIL leaders cannot hide and our message to them is simple: You are next.”
Republicans criticized the speech, during which the president did not announce any changes in strategy, as a “politically motivated photo-op” that will not keep Americans safer or prevent another attack.
“We need a new strategy to defeat ISIS and keep America safe from radical Islamic terrorists, not a new public relations campaign to protect President Obama and Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers,” Michael Short, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said in a statement.
Obama listed several leaders who have already been killed and said the group has lost 40 percent of the territory it once held in Iraq.
“Our strategy is moving forward with a great sense of urgency on four fronts: Hunting down and taking out these terrorists, training and equipping Iraqi and Syrian forces to fight ISIL on the ground, stopping ISIL operations by disrupting their recruiting, financing and propaganda, and [using] persistent diplomacy to end the Syrian civil war so that everyone can focus on destroying ISIL.”
Iraqi forces regained control of the Baiji oil refinery in Iraq this year and are making progress in the effort to retake Ramadi, which fell into terrorist control seven months ago, though officials have stressed efforts to clear the city are going slowly since the Islamic State had ample time to reinforce their fighting positions, especially with car bombs.
While the president stressed that the U.S. is fighting a strong battle against the Islamic State, he also said it also must not strike indiscriminately to avoid collateral damage while targeting a group that often uses civilians as shields in urban areas.
“Even as we’re relentless, we have to be smart,” the president said during the eight-minute speech, after which he took no questions.
Pilots and lawmakers have long complained about the strict rules of engagement aimed at avoiding civilian casualties. While critics say the rules prevent the military from striking the terrorist group when there are opportunities to do so, administration officials have defended the rules as necessary.
The president made his remarks after a private briefing with top national security and administration officials, including Carter, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Treasure Secretary Jack Lew and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford. He also met with two of the top commanders leading the fight on the ground, Gen. Lloyd Austin, commander of U.S. Central Command, and Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command.
The visit to the Pentagon is the first of two events this week to reassure the American people that the administration is taking the fight against the Islamic State seriously as concerns increase following the shooting in San Bernardino, California.
On Thursday, Obama will receive his annual pre-holiday briefing at the National Counterterrorism Center before addressing the press, according to an Associated Press report.
A CNN/ORC poll released this month found that fear of a terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland is growing. Eighty-one percent of those polled believe that terrorists associated with the Islamic State are already in the U.S. and have the “resources to launch a major terrorist attack against the U.S. at any time.” That’s up from 76 percent in May and 71 percent in September 2014.
More than 60 percent believe an attack is “very” or “somewhat” likely in the next several weeks, the poll said.
Obama previously tried to tamp down these fears with a prime time address to the nation Dec. 6.
“The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it,” he said during the speech from the Oval Office. “We will destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us.”
Critics, however, said the speech, which did not roll out any changes in strategy, was uninspired and ineffective.
“This isn’t a business-as-usual moment and too much of what he’s doing, including last night, even using the Oval Office, was business as usual,” Mark Halperin, an NBC contributor and reporter for Bloomberg Politics, said. “Repeating basically what he thinks the right policy is, with nothing new and no sense of urgency, which is what a lot of Americans are feeling.”
More Americans are also supporting a major shift in policy to send more U.S. ground troops to the fight against the Islamic State. Fifty-three percent said that they favored sending combat troops to Iraq or Syria, the highest number since the CNN poll began asking the question in September 2014. A recent poll from the Harvard Institute of Politics also found that 60 percent of millenials support committing U.S. ground troops to the anti-Islamic State fight.
The overwhelming majority of Americans, 68 percent, believe that the U.S. military response has not been aggressive enough and 60 percent say the U.S. military action against the Islamic State has been going moderately or very badly, the CNN poll found.
