President Offers No New Policy on ISIL

• President Obama’s Oval Office speech offered no new policy to defeat ISIL.

• The president tried to pivot to Congress – calling for an AUMF, visa program strengthening, and increased gun control legislation – none of which addresses the threat.

• The president must be accountable and accurately judge the threat of ISIL, which he has failed to do.

President Obama gave a speech from the Oval Office on Sunday night about the threat posed by ISIL. He offered no new plan for how to stop the terrorists and admitted no shortcomings by his administration. Instead, he tried to pivot to Congress and suggest steps that other people should take. The president continues to misjudge the threat and fails to use the powers he already has to fight this enemy.

“America needs a strategy to destroy ISIL as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, that is not what President Obama described tonight.” – Sen. McCain, 12/6/15

ISIL Strategy Not Failing for Lack of AUMF

In his speech, President Obama outlined steps Congress can take “to defeat the terrorist threat.” One of them was for Congress “to authorize the continued use of military force against these terrorists.” It is not for lack of congressional authorization to use force against ISIL that the president’s strategy is failing. The Obama administration has claimed it has all the authority it needs to combat ISIL. Just last week, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter told the House Armed Services Committee, “We can conduct what we need to do within the law.” 

Under the president’s current strategy, there are homegrown Islamist terrorist attacks taking place domestically, ISIL-directed terrorist attacks taking place in Paris, a terrorist bombing of a Russian airliner, and numerous other attacks while four million Syrian refugees are left to languish outside their homeland. ISIL can conduct and inspire such attacks because its terrorist army still controls large amounts of territory. President Obama offered no change to his strategy where these safe havens remain.

If the president were to take the actual steps necessary to combat ISIL, congressional authorization of these more advanced and serious actions may become necessary. But the president fails to create urgency for congressional action when he says such authorization is not needed at present. Any AUMF that Congress would consider needs to be directed at victory rather than constraining the commander in chief. To this end, when the next president implements a strategy that is actually directed at defeating ISIL – or if this president ever does – the executive will not be hampered in that effort.

President Obama continues to speak about taking on ISIL in terms of a straw man argument no one is making. President Obama devoted time in his speech to things he would not do in the fight against ISIL. He said, “We should not be drawn once more into a long and costly ground war in Iraq or Syria ... [to] occupy foreign lands.” Policymakers should trust the commanders on the ground to recommend initiatives directed at destroying ISIL that do not constitute a long and costly ground war.

Did You Say Visa Waiver Program?

President Obama attempted to further distract from his failed strategy by calling for review of “the visa waiver program under which the female terrorist in San Bernardino originally came to this country.” The problem is, Tashfeen Malik, the female attacker, entered the country under a fiancée visa, not through the visa waiver program.

Regardless of the president’s misunderstanding, Congress is already examining solutions to security weaknesses in the visa waiver program. There are bipartisan proposals in both houses that Congress is reviewing. In the meantime, the president should focus on explaining to Congress and the American people how his administration ended up approving Tashfeen Malik’s visa application. Before Congress can enact solutions, it must know where and how the administration failed.

The Second Amendment Is Not the Cause of Terrorism

In one final effort to obscure his national security failures, the president made a partisan push for his domestic agenda – denying Americans’ Second Amendment rights. This, despite the fact that his proposed “solutions” are irrelevant to the San Bernardino terrorist attacks.

First, he called for legislation barring anyone on the no-fly list from purchasing a gun. The administration was unaware of the couple’s interest in terrorism before the attack, which means the president’s proposal would have done nothing to prevent this tragedy.

The proposal would, however, go a long way toward weakening the Constitution. The Senate rejected this proposal just last week, because it would have empowered the attorney general to deny the Second Amendment rights of a citizen based on suspicion alone and without any duty to disclose the reason for the denial or turn over evidence justifying it. Such a system does not meet the due process requirements of the Constitution.

The president then called for a ban on “assault weapons,” despite the ineffectiveness of such bans in lowering rates of gun violence. According to the Department of Justice, the United States’ decade-long ban on assault weapons had little to no impact on lowering gun violence.

At every turn the president’s address to the nation lacked substance. Following his speech, an Associated Press headline stated, “Obama offers … little policy in speech.” McClatchy’s headline read, “For Obama: … same policy.” And the Wall Street Journal concluded, “Mr. Obama has yet to show that he knows what it takes for the U.S. to win.”