Saying dropping more bombs is not the answer, U.S. President Barack Obama made a vigorous defence of his strategy against the Islamic State (ISIS), blaming the opposition Republican Party and the media for contributing to the fear gripping the American public.
In a year-end interview with NPR News, the video and text of which was released on Monday, Obama said he makes "no apologies" for his strategy of precision attacks on ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria which, he said, "is consistent with American values."
Speaking with NPR's Steve Inskeep before departing for a family vacation in Hawaii, Obama conceded that "there is legitimate criticism" of his strategy to defeat the terror group, saying this criticism springs from the fact that his administration has failed to keep the public fully informed about what the U.S. military has been doing in Iraq and Syria which, he said, has contributed to the notion that not enough is being done, Newsmax reported.
"I think that there is a legitimate criticism of what I've been doing and our administration has been doing in the sense that we haven't, you know, on a regular basis I think described all the work that we've been doing for more than a year now to defeat ISIL," Obama said, referring to ISIS by one of its other acronyms.
"So if people haven't seen the fact that in fact 9,000 strikes have been carried out against ISIL, if they don't know that towns like Sinjar that were controlled by ISIL have been taken back, or that a town like Tikrit, that was controlled by ISIL, now has been repopulated by previous residents, then they might feel as if there is not enough of a response," he said.
Obama said he understands the American public's legitimate concern about terrorism but said the fear is fuelled in part by the media. "If you have been watching television for the last month, all you have been seeing, all you have been hearing about is these guys with masks or black flags who are potentially coming to get you," he said.
Obama also responded to the criticism from Republican presidential candidates, some of whom called for carpet-bombing of areas controlled by ISIS, the imposition of a no-fly zone in Syria, and the establishment of a safe zone for refugees.
He said his best advice to his eventual successor on dealing with terrorist threats is "not just to shoot, but to aim," Bloomberg reported.
"Who is it you are going to bomb? Where is it that you are going to bomb?" Obama said.
Obama said his administration is carrying out "precision strikes" on ISIS targets based on intelligence.
"If the suggestion is that we kill tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrians and Iraqis, that is not who we are and that would be a strategy that would have enormous backlash against the United States. It would be terrible for our national security," he said.
On the no-fly zone proposal, which even Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton is supporting, Obama said "the challenge there is that ISIL doesn't have an air force, so the damage done there is not against ISIL, it's against the Syrian regime."
Without a large number of troops on the ground "it's hard to create a safe zone" and "that doesn't solve the ISIL problem," Obama said.
The president singled out Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump for "exploiting" voters' fears.
"There is going to be potential anger, frustration, fear—some of it justified but just misdirected. I think somebody like Mr. Trump is taking advantage of that," Obama said.
He urged Americans to "keep things in perspective" when it comes to ISIS.
"This is not an organisation that can destroy the United States," he said, nor is it a "huge industrial power" that poses great risks to the U.S. "institutionally or in a systemic way."
Obama admitted though that the ISIS "can hurt us, and they can hurt our people and our families."
"The most damage they can do, though, is if they start changing how we live and what our values are, and part of my message over the next 14 months or 13 months that I remain in office is to just make sure that we remember who we are and make sure that our resilience, our values, our unity are maintained.
"If we do that then ISIL will be defeated," Obama said.
