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Obama, at Counterterrorism Center, Offers Assurances on Safety Under Fire From G.O.P., Obama Defends Response to Terror Attacks
(about 1 hour later)
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Thursday tried to reassure a jittery nation that the nation’s military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies will be working around the clock through the holidays to keep the country safe from any more terrorist attacks. WASHINGTON — President Obama told a group of news columnists this week that he now realizes he was slow to respond to public fears after terrorist attacks in Paris and California, acknowledging that his low-key approach led Americans to worry that he was not doing enough to keep the country safe.
Mr. Obama said there was not now any “specific and credible information about an attack on the homeland.” But he said his refusal to send large numbers of ground forces back to the Middle East was rooted in the grim assumption that the casualties and costs would rival the worst of the Iraq war. A major recommitment of troops could result every month in the deaths of 100 Americans and $10 billion spent, the president said.
“That said, we have to vigilant,” he added. “As I indicated in my address to the nation last week, we are in a new phase of terrorism.” Mr. Obama said that if he did send troops to Syria, as some Republicans have urged, he feared a slippery slope that would eventually require similar deployments to other terrorist strongholds like Libya and Yemen, effectively putting him in charge of governing much of the region. He told the columnists that he envisioned sending significant ground forces to the Middle East only in the case of a catastrophic terrorist attack that disrupted the normal functioning of the United States.
With a group of top intelligence and law enforcement officials behind him, Mr. Obama spoke at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Va., trying to once again reassure a nation rattled by attacks in Paris that killed 130 people and San Bernardino, Calif., that killed 14. Mr. Obama’s defense of his approach came as Republican presidential candidates have been branding him as weak and competing in their calls for more robust action to combat the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. In Tuesday night’s Republican debate, Donald J. Trump said even the families of terrorists should be killed, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas proposed to “carpet bomb” Islamic State holdouts despite the risk of civilian casualties, and Ben Carson argued for sending ground troops.
The president said the nation’s counterterrorism officials were ever-vigilant and had already thwarted countless attacks. “Our folks are the best,” he said. Mr. Obama made his comments during a nearly two-hour meeting with about 10 columnists and writers on Tuesday afternoon, just hours before the debate and when his frustration with Republican criticism was evident. He appeared especially exasperated with Mr. Trump, who has called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States. Mr. Obama told the columnists that Mr. Trump’s comments on Muslims did not make him an outlier in the presidential field, but instead represented the culmination of 30 years of Republican evolution toward radicalism.
But as the threat of terrorism has evolved from large, complex attacks to the kind of self-motivated lone-wolf threats seen in San Bernardino, the nation’s counterterrorism officials have had to evolve as well, he said. He outlined a series of steps that his administration has taken to go after the Islamic State, which in recent months has displaced Al Qaeda as the prime terrorist threat to the United States. Those steps include attacking Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, changing visa rules to prevent their fighters from entering the United States, and coordinating with state and local police to ensure that no attacks occur within the United States, he said. The session was off the record, but the president’s remarks were recounted on Thursday by several people in the room after one of the writers, David Ignatius of The Washington Post, described some of the president’s thinking in a column without quoting or attributing it directly to Mr. Obama.
“So we’re sending a message: If you target Americans, you will have no safe haven,” Mr. Obama said. The people in the room who described the president’s comments asked for anonymity because of the ground rules of the meeting. Among those attending the session in the Roosevelt Room of the White House were an opinion columnist and editorial writer for The New York Times, but they were not sources for this article.
Mr. Obama is struggling to fashion a message that reassures Americans that he is serious about battling the threat of the Islamic State while also avoiding the alarmism that he sees emanating from some Republican presidential candidates. Polls suggest that many Americans believe he is not taking the threat from the Islamic State seriously enough. Mr. Obama is struggling to fashion a message that reassures Americans that he is serious about battling the threat of the Islamic State while also avoiding what he considers the alarmism voiced by some Republican presidential candidates. Polls suggest that many Americans believe he is not taking the threat from the Islamic State seriously enough.
To counter this, Mr. Obama gave a speech to the nation from the Oval Office on Dec. 6, visited the Pentagon on Monday and on Thursday visited the counterterrorism Center, all to make the case that his administration is succeeding in its fight against terrorism and the Islamic State. But Mr. Obama has yet to offer a new strategy, leaving even members of his own party grumbling. To counter that, Mr. Obama visited the National Counterterrorism Center on Thursday, following a similar trip to the Pentagon earlier in the week and an Oval Office address to the nation last week. He is trying to make the case that his administration is succeeding in its fight against terrorism and the Islamic State, but even some members of his own party are grumbling that he needs a new strategy.
Mr. Obama, who is set to leave on Friday to go to Hawaii for two weeks, Mr. Obama is asking for vigilance against terrorism even as he reassures people that they are safe. On his way to Hawaii, he will stop in San Bernardino to meet privately with the families of the 14 victims of the mass shooting there. With a phalanx of top intelligence and law enforcement officials behind him, Mr. Obama said that it was “understandable” that Americans were concerned, but said they should be reassured. “Here’s what I want every American to know — since 9/11 we’ve taken extraordinary steps to strengthen our homeland security,” he said.
Nearly all of Mr. Obama’s top military, intelligence and security officials were present at the briefing, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Secretary of State John Kerry, F.B.I. Director James B. Comey and the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr.. Mr. Obama emphasized again that vigilance against terror should not lead Americans to sacrifice values that define the nation — a direct response to remarks from the Republican campaigns.
Mr. Obama emphasized again that vigilance against terror should not lead Americans to sacrifice values that define the nation – a direct response to calls by some Republican presidential candidates to bar Muslims from entering the United States.
“We have to remind ourselves that when we stay true to our values, nothing can defeat us,” Mr. Obama said, adding: “We’ve prevailed over much greater threats than this. We will prevail again.”“We have to remind ourselves that when we stay true to our values, nothing can defeat us,” Mr. Obama said, adding: “We’ve prevailed over much greater threats than this. We will prevail again.”
Nearly all of Mr. Obama’s top military, intelligence and security officials were at the briefing, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.; Secretary of State John Kerry; Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch; James B. Comey, the director of the F.B.I.; and James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence. The president generally receives such updates in the Situation Room in the White House, but wanted to send a message by visiting the counterterrorism center in person.
Mr. Obama said that presently there is no “specific and credible information about an attack on the homeland,” although he added that Americans should remain vigilant.
He claimed progress in pushing back the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL, through a strategy of airstrikes combined with Special Operations raids and support for local forces on the ground. He noted that airstrikes have killed Islamic State leaders as far away as Libya while shrinking the territory the group controls in Syria and Iraq. Addressing the homegrown threat, as seen in San Bernardino, Calif., he said the United States was changing visa rules and stepping up coordination with state and local police.
“So we’re sending a message: If you target Americans, you will have no safe haven,” Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Obama is set to leave on Friday for two weeks in Hawaii and will stop on the way in San Bernardino to meet privately with the families of the 14 victims of the attack there on Dec. 2.
In Mr. Obama’s absence, White House officials are concerned by the void that is likely to be filled by his critics and by what they call the overheated claims of Republicans who can afford to be bellicose without the responsibilities of the commander in chief.
Mr. Cruz, for example, has said that the United States should “carpet bomb ISIS into oblivion,” testing whether “sand can glow in the dark.” In this week’s debate, he explained that he did not intend for civilians to be targeted in carpet bombing, a rarely used strategy that can lead to mass civilian casualties.
“You would carpet bomb where ISIS is, not a city, but the location of the troops,” Mr. Cruz said, although the group has few if any uniformed or organized troops. “You use air power directed — and you have embedded special forces to direction the air power. But the object isn’t to level a city. The object is to kill the ISIS terrorists.”
Military experts argue about the ethics and legality of carpet-bombing, but the notion of doing so with precision, as Mr. Cruz suggests, is widely seen as paradoxical.
In his meeting with the columnists, Mr. Obama indicated that he did not see enough cable television to fully appreciate the anxiety after the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, and made clear that he plans to step up his public arguments. Republicans were telling Americans that he is not doing anything when he is doing a lot, he said.
Mr. Obama argued that the Islamic State does not pose an existential threat to the United States and therefore the American response should be measured. The United States needs to take on the group, in part to defend allies in the region, but this should not be an all-out war, he said. A sustained military campaign may be slow and politically unsatisfying but ultimately will be more successful, he added.
More broadly, Mr. Obama told the columnists that he sees the Middle East in the midst of a tumultuous, generational transformation that will take years to play out, one that the United States cannot control, at least not without enormous cost.
He spent much of the conversation expressing pique at Republicans. Mr. Trump may have gone further than the rest with his proposed ban on Muslims, Mr. Obama said, but it is a difference mainly in presentation, not ideology. “Forty-one percent of Republicans believe I’m a Muslim,” he said with a tone of exasperation, according to participants.