Obama tells fearful America Daesh will be defeated

WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama vowed Sunday that America would destroy the Daesh terror group and hunt down its followers at home or abroad, in a rare address from the Oval Office to a jittery nation.

Facing questions about his leadership and strategy, Obama harnessed the highest trappings of US power to calm a country rattled by a rampage in California that killed 14 people.

"After so much war, many Americans are asking whether we are confronted by a cancer that has no immediate cure," Obama said in a solemn speech, adding that the San Bernardino massacre was evidence of an "evolving" and increasingly homegrown threat.

As a father of two daughters, Obama said, he could imagine himself or his kin in San Bernardino or in Paris, where scores of people were killed last month in attacks claimed by Daesh.

"Here's what I want you to know," he said. "The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it. We will destroy Daesh and any other organisation that tries to harm us," he said.

"Our military will continue to hunt down terrorist plotters in any country where it is necessary."

Obama urged Muslims in America and around the world to "decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology that groups like Daesh and Al Qaeda promote."

He detailed a multi-pronged strategy against the extremists that will rely as much on community action, technology and countering propaganda as military force.

It is just the third time Obama has delivered an Oval Office address — used by presidents since Harry Truman to convey resolve in the face of a national crisis.

A senior administration official said the speech was designed to convey the seriousness with which Obama was taking the shootings, which are being investigated as a terror attack.

On Wednesday, US-born Syed Farook and his Pakistani wife Tashfeen Malik dropped off their six-month-old daughter with her grandmother, donned tactical gear and burst into an office party full of Farook's co-workers, spraying them with bullets.

Obama said the pair "had gone down the dark path of radicalisation."

"They had stockpiled assault weapons, ammunition, and pipe bombs. So this was an act of terrorism." 

But he added that there was "no evidence that the killers were directed by a terrorist organisation overseas or that they were part of a broader conspiracy here at home."

Both shooters died in a hail of police bullets, leaving questions about how, when and why they may have become radicalised.

Daesh has praised the attackers as "soldiers" of its self-proclaimed “caliphate”, while stopping short of claiming outright credit.

In an interview with Italian newspaper La Stampa, Farook's father suggested his son approved of the group's ideas and was fixated with Israel.

But several reports, citing unnamed officials, say investigators are looking into whether Malik radicalised her husband.

In Pakistan, she attended one of the country's most high-profile religious seminaries for women, according to a teacher.
Muslim allies 

Woven throughout Obama's address was a plea for unity.

"We cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam," he said, facing down some of his shrillest critics who have called for a registry of Muslim-Americans.

"Daesh does not speak for Islam. They are thugs and killers. Part of a cult of death" he said.

"If we're to succeed in defeating terrorism, we must enlist Muslim communities as some of our strongest allies rather than push them away through suspicion and hate."

After two decades battling extremism, Americans appear increasingly divided on the nature of the problem and how to respond.

According to a new CNN/ORC poll, 68 percent of Americans say the US military response to Daesh State has not been aggressive enough. Conducted before the shootings, the poll also found that 60 per cent disapprove of Obama's handling of terrorism.

Republicans have demanded that Obama back a full-scale deployment of NATO ground forces to Syria and resume controversial interrogations at the Guantanamo Bay camp, which the president wants to close.

Conservatives have also taken issue with Obama's refusal to use the phrase "radical Islam" which the White House says would confer on terrorists the legitimacy of a faith they have betrayed.

"Well, Obama refused to say [he just can't say it], that we are at war with radical Islamic terrorists," Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump tweeted after the address.

Obama, elected on an anti-war platform, showed little sign of meeting his political foes in the middle as he reiterated calls for gun control and ruled out a ground intervention. 

"Our success won't depend on tough talk or abandoning our values or giving into fear." he said.

"We should not be drawn once more into a long and costly ground war in Iraq and Syria. That's what groups like ISIL want.

"They know they can't defeat us on the battlefield... but they also know that if we occupy foreign lands, they can maintain insurgencies for years, killing thousands of our troops and draining our resources, and using our presence to draw new recruits."