In his final speech on national security, President Obama defended his refusal to single out radical Islam as the primary terror threat to the United States.
“We are fighting terrorists who claim to fight on behalf of Islam,” Obama said at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla.
“But they do not speak for a billion Muslims around the world. They do not speak for American Muslims, including many who wear the uniform of the United States of America’s military. If we stigmatize good patriotic Muslims, that just feeds the terrorist narrative.”
Obama praised the military for “breaking the back” of ISIS and for keeping America safe, effectively patting his own administration on the back.
“Over the last eight years . . . no foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland,” he said.