President Barack Obama on Tuesday used his final address on global terror to defend his approach to the fight, calling for coalition-building to continue battlefield successes while rejecting the use of torture.<\/p>\n
Highlighting the lines drawn during his eight years as commander in chief, Obama did not mention Donald Trump by name, but he clearly addressed his successor, who has yet to spell out his own counterterrorism strategy.<\/p>\n
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\u2018Rather than offer false promises that we can eliminate terrorism by dropping more bombs or deploying more and more troops or fencing ourselves off from the rest of the world, we have to take a long view of the terrorist threat,\u2019 Obama said.<\/p>\n
\u2018And we have to pursue a smart strategy that can be sustained.\u2019<\/p>\n
Obama claimed a clear break from the strategy under former president George W. Bush, highlighting the withdrawal of most US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, from 180,000 to about 15,000 today. That number also includes advisors in Syria.<\/p>\n
\u2018Instead of pushing all of the burden onto American ground troops, instead of trying to mount invasions wherever terrorists appear, we\u2019ve built a network of partners,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
Obama also defended his approach to fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, much of it centered around an intense air strike campaign directed from MacDill Air Force Base.<\/p>\n
The installation, where the president gave his speech, houses the headquarters of US Special Operations Command and CENTCOM, the US military\u2019s command for operations stretching from the Gulf to Central Asia.<\/p>\n
The jihadist group that wants to establish a \u2018caliphate\u2019 straddling the two countries has lost \u2018more than half\u2019 its territory, Obama said.<\/p>\n
\u2018ISIL has lost control of major population centers. Its morale is plummeting. Its recruitment is drying up. Its commanders and external plotters are being taken out, and local populations are turning against it.\u2019<\/p>\n
Obama, who authorized the strike to take out Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, said that the group was now \u2018a shadow of its former self.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Barack Obama on Tuesday used his final address on global terror to defend his approach to the fight, calling for coalition-building to continue battlefield successes while rejecting the use of torture. Highlighting the lines drawn during his eight years as commander in chief, Obama did not mention Donald Trump by name, but he clearly addressed his successor, who has yet to spell out his own counterterrorism strategy. Advertisement ‘Rather than offer false promises that we can eliminate terrorism by dropping more bombs or deploying more and more troops<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4463,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4462"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4462"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4464,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4462\/revisions\/4464"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}