I agree. Challenging moderate Muslims to step up should be more common place among world leaders. Great of Obama to do that. Other world leaders should follow. As for reaction to the terrorists attack, it's great to have a leader that isn't so reactionary and calm. Emotion can ride hide and wanting to strike back is quite natural. Overreaction is exactly what we should not do. We all know the stats, but it's worth repeating. Since 911, there are ~45 deaths in the USA due to Islamic Terrorism. In 2013, there are ~11,000 gun homicides in the USA. Add up for a span of ~14 years since 911 and we have about ~45 deaths due to Islamic Terrorists to 154,000 deaths due to gun homicides in the USA. On that pure number, we should be putting more of our resources toward solving our gun homicides issues. (this doesn't even touch on the topic of suicides with gun, which is almost double the number of homicides per year).
txtony, if terrorism deaths are so low since 9/11 why does the gun conversation happen after every "small" terror attack? why relate two obvious unrelated issues?
I'm as much of an Obama basher as anyone, but when it comes to boots on the ground, I have to agree with Obama in being extremely cautious now. In order to make a military option work you either have to go in with EVERYTHING and be willing to hurt innocents in the process of killing the bad guys AND be prepared to stay for potentially decades...or....stay out completely. Redeploying troops would probably end up in a year or 2 with another Vietnam type situation with the public swiftly moving in disfavor and wanting to pull out before the job was finished. We had our opportunity to secure Iraq and get a more positive regime in Syria in 2011. It would have been difficult with no guarantees of success, but the opportunity was there. Obama simply didn't have the foresight (or the stomach?) to do what needed to be done and now we have ISIL. This country will NEVER be willing to do what it takes to win the war over there by using overwhelming force and occupying for decades. It's unfortunate, but its true.
Because emotion. People fear terrorists attack since it's not that often and so it's a shock when it happen, it's widely reported and it's personal (you can relate to just sitting around and get gunned down), whereas daily death by gun violence is simply local news reporting and usually non-personal (I'm not going to be one to get into violence activity). Suicide from guns doesn't get reported, unless it's a famous person. The gun conversation does GET to happen for the daily, almost norm activities. It get to happen when you have something that shock the nation, however rare.
The problem with Obama's speech is that his strategy against ISIS is not working. Hillary Clinton even admitted that yesterday. Obama then regurgitated a "more of the same" strategy, and then took the opportunity to lecture us on gun control yet again.
here's what Obama should have said <iframe width="500" height="280" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/x44EREtI7uY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Spoiler Asking America to reaffirm who we are as a country is leadership that might lead us to a place of strength where right and left are not at each other's throats trying to be right all the time. If we are united we are strong. I do not believe that Obama is looking for anything like that to happen.
http://www.neimanmarcus.com/The-Mans-Store/Accessories/Ties-Pocket-Squares/cat40450753_cat21150736_cat000470/c.cat
This one would have gotten positive feedback, had I been more generous in spreading the lettuce lately...
As measured against what metric? what other alternative offers hope of success? We've invaded a Muslim country with 100,000 troop, occupied it for a decade, and spend a trillion dollars there and have little to show for it in gained allies or a stability in the region. This situation is even more complex since it's not within the boundaries of any one country, there are so many competing interests and 'sides' you can't tell the players with a scorecard, including the proxies of our main competitor nations and even our erstwhile allies. Just lay me out a vision of how US troops are going to secure this region as infidels, what would be the endgame of boots on the ground?Because I don't see one. And, what taxes are we going to raise to pay for the war, reconstruction and veteran care?
I remember Obama trying exactly this at the beginning of his presidency, but the GOP was too interested in making him a one term president to even consider uniting under him.
For starters, how about we actually take out ISIS' oil production infrastructure, which Obama has been unwilling to do since there could be god damn environmental impacts? Insane! He'd rather see innocents slaughtered than blow up an oil storage location.
You are believing bullsh!t artists again, we have been bombing the oil infrastructure, but there are other ways to get oil to market. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ith-putin-on-bombing-islamic-state-oil-riches Yes, you are. And you'd rather see anything but Obama getting credit for anything positive at all. You're a biased partisan who has earned the moniker "bigpuffery."
I'm not a fan of this president or most of his policies, but I couldn't disagree with anything that he said last night. The speech was very well written. I think most anyone who is overly critical of what he said is probably picking just to pick. I thought he'd go harder at gun control but glad he didn't....not the time or the place. He also wasn't as divisive as he is in most speeches; again, probably due to the forum being a presidential address. I thought the speech was a good one and it stayed above the fray IMO.
Would not be surprised whatsoever if internment camps for Muslims are next on this crazy lunatic's list. I love it though because he's ultimately doing so much damage to the GOP while having no shot at winning the general election.
We're over a year into this and ISIS is still profiting off oil, and that article you posted was dated November 19th of this year! Why the delay? It just shows that Obama was putting constraints on our troops to get the job done. Unacceptable. And Gladiato - take a step back. You're defending Obama's strategy on ISIS? It hasn't worked! Even Hillary said so yesterday.
