Obama Addresses the ISIL Crisis

On Wednesday September 10th, President Barack Obama announced his plans for reacting to the terrorist group ISIL. He introduced a four-step plan to strike down ISIL and to keep the security of America in tact. As always, he approached the stand with poise and spoke in a clear and crisp tone. To begin, he used examples of our accomplishments with eliminating other terrorists, for example, Osama Bin Laden. He then addressed that this plan will not resemble the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan and the troops that were there have decreased drastically. Similar to 9/11, ISIL is a small terrorist group, but he relates back to this life-changing event to remind the American people that only a few terrorists can do a lot of damage.

Later, Obama describes the awful actions that ISIL has taken, and he stresses that they are like no other terrorist group we have seen before. They have killed innocent children and there have been multiple events of genocide against Christians and other religions. ISIL has taken advantage of sectarian strife and civil war in order to get territory on both side of the Iraq-Syrian border, so they are slowly expanding. Obama says that even though there have not been any legitimate attacks on America from ISIL, they have still threatened our country and we need to meet them “with strength and resolve”. His plan is to operate air strikes exactly where ISIL is located or detected and he hopes to slowly degrade and destroy ISIL.

In order to tame impatient citizens, he emphasizes that this operation will take time, and we need all the time we can get. The first part he introduces is to operate air strike and to work with the Iraq government to pinpoint the hideouts and meeting places of ISIL. Part two is to increase the support for on-ground service fighters, and to send in 475 more service members. After introducing this part of the plan, Obama is sure to tell the American people that this fighting will not resemble the bad wars that we have just recently pulled out of. The third part is to cut off ISIL’s funding and to learn more about their strategies and their methods. Lastly, he is planning on providing humanitarian assistance to innocent civilians who need our help. He does a great job of explaining how brutal ISIL really is, and he continuously says the phrase “men, women and children” because he knows that Americans and people in general feel very strongly about the killing of women and children.

He then says that we will be joined by allies and to rap it all up, he gets into a pro-America rant, to amp up the citizens and get the people excited about protecting their country. I’ve always thought that Obama is a wonderful speaker, and he never fails to speak in a clear and strong voice. The structure of this speech was well laid out and he was able to explain what ISIL was while also filling the Americans with hope and excitement for pinpointing this terrorist group and eliminating them.