President Barack Obama spoke from the Oval Office for the third time during his presidency on Sunday evening. Obama: 'The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it' The president tells Americans that terrorism has evolved since 9/11 but it can be beaten if the country stays united.

President Barack Obama urged Americans to stay calm and vigilant, using a rare Oval Office address Sunday night to reassure the nation that his approach to fighting Islamic extremism is working both at home and abroad.

In the wake of deadly attacks in Paris and California, Obama offered no new strategy for eliminating terror threats from ISIL and those the group inspires. Instead, he presented a broad survey of counter-terror tactics put in place since 9/11 and reviewed his administration’s multifaceted approach to managing the chaos in Iraq and Syria that has allowed ISIL to thrive.


In recent years, extremist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIL have shifted their focus, he said, from complicated attacks on symbolic targets to simple shooting rampages in public spaces.

“I know that after so much war, many Americans are asking whether we are confronted by a cancer that has no immediate cure,” Obama said. "Well, here’s what I want you to know: The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it.”

He also called on mainstream Muslims, in unusually pointed terms, to help root out radicalism in their midst. And repeatedly, Obama urged all Americans to make decisions based on reason, not fear.

“Our success won’t depend on tough talk, or abandoning our values, or giving into fear. That’s what groups like ISIL are hoping for,” Obama said, standing at a podium set up in front of his desk with red-draped windows as a backdrop. "Instead, we will prevail by being strong and smart, resilient and relentless, and by drawing upon every aspect of American power."

He insisted that the threats come from those following a "perverted" brand of Islam and insisted "Muslim-Americans are our friends and neighbors" and important allies in the fight against extremism.

"We cannot turn against one another,'' he said.

At the same time, Obama -- who has faced criticism from Republicans who say he should speak more specifically about "Islamic" terrorism -- said Muslims have a responsibility to tackle extremism in their ranks.

There's no "denying the fact that an extremist ideology has spread within some Muslim communities. That’s a real problem that Muslims must confront without excuse," Obama said. "Muslim leaders here and around the globe have to continue working with us to decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology that groups like ISIL and Al Qaeda promote; to speak out against not just acts of violence, but also those interpretations of Islam that are incompatible with the values of religious tolerance, mutual respect, and human dignity."



While the venue for the speech was rare — it was only the third time Obama made a primetime address from the Oval Office — his message was the same he has used for the last several weeks: He called on Americans not to reject their values by demonizing Muslims and refugees using words that echoed his remarks after an ISIL-organized shooting in Paris left 129 dead. He exhorted Congress to pass more gun restrictions after an apparently radicalized couple, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people last week in San Bernardino, pleas that echoed so many other speeches after mass shootings. And he insisted that sending large numbers of American troops to fight on the ground in Iraq or Syria would be a disastrous mistake, an assertion familiar to anyone who was watching his first campaign for president.

In fact, the last time Obama gave a prime time address from the Oval Office, he was making good on that early campaign promise, announcing the end of the American combat operation in Iraq in August of 2010.

The setting seemed like a symbolic book end: as Obama noted, former President George W. Bush was sitting at the same desk seven and a half years earlier when he announced the start of the war.

But it turns out ending that war didn’t end America’s involvement in the region, or all the threats of terror, as Obama tried to explain on Sunday night. The nature of the conflict is different: it’s more complicated, for one thing, and it’s not likely to come to a speedy close, he said. Nor will it be solved by sending in U.S. troops, as several 2016 presidential candidates have urged.

Obama has consistently derided such "tough talk" coming from the campaign trail, which has only intensified in recent days, particularly after the San Bernardino shootings. For instance, in an interview with Fox News shortly after the speech, Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio called for a "substantial ground army" saying, "You can't just defeat them from an air perspective."

Obama also called, as he repeatedly, for Congress to formally authorize the use of force against terrorists in the region.

The president is still struggling to show the American public that he is taking the ISIL threat seriously after saying the group was "contained" just days before the Paris attacks. On Sunday, Obama pointed to various ways his administration is stepping up its efforts against ISIL. In recent weeks, officials announced moves to tighten a waiver program that lets Europeans visit the United States without a visa, and talks are underway in Vienna with the goal of ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad through a political process, a key to ultimately overpowering ISIL and stabilizing the region. Obama praised America’s allies for stepping up their efforts.

After Paris, administration officials repeatedly insisted that there were no credible threats of an ISIL attack in the United States. And that’s still true, they say. But when reports that Malik had pledged allegiance to ISIL on Facebook shortly before opening fire on a holiday party at the Inland Regional Center, officials rushed to clarify that they hadn’t ruled out lone wolf-style attacks motivated by ISIL’s social media campaigns or Al Qaeda’s online magazine, Inspire.

“The terrorist threat has evolved into a new phase” in recent years, Obama said, citing attacks on military personnel at Fort Hood in Texas in 2010 and in Chattanooga earlier this year as other examples of independent, small-scale attacks.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) agreed with Obama's assessment of an evolving terror threat, but not the president's response.

"That will require the president to produce a comprehensive strategy to confront and defeat ISIS. The enemy is adapting, and we must too," Ryan said in a statement. "That’s why what we heard tonight was so disappointing: no new plan, just a half-hearted attempt to defend and distract from a failing policy."

The Obama administration’s bid to short-circuit radicalization at home had come under fire even before the San Bernardino shooting, with independent investigators reportedly panning the State Department’s social media counterprogramming effort. Obama repeated his call to the nation’s Muslims to help authorities catch extremists before they act even as the federal authorities have alienated those communities with invasive tactics, including in Southern California.

The White House had to send out a corrected transcript because Obama misspoke when he said he'd ordered his administration "to review the visa waiver program under which the female terrorist in San Bernardino originally came to this country." In fact, Malik had a K-1 "fiancé visa."

A senior administration official said that Obama had decided to give the speech on Friday, and he was still putting the finishing touches on it as he wrapped up a White House reception for the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony.

“We felt that the Oval Office was a familiar and appropriate venue” to illustrate the seriousness of the situation, the official said, adding that Obama would be speaking “from the place where he makes his decisions.”

After the attacks not only in Paris and San Bernardino, but also in Beirut and in a Russian passenger jet over Egypt, the official said, “we recognized that there are very real and legitimate fears in the United States and around the world.”

In France, those fears appear to be playing out in the political sphere: The Front National, a right-wing, nationalist party, made big gains in regional elections on Sunday.