PRESIDENT OBAMA: Priority number one is protecting the American people and going after terrorist
networks.
(Applause.)
Both al Qaeda and now ISIL pose a direct threat to our people, because in today’s world,
even a handful of terrorists who place no value on human life, including their own,
can do a lot of damage.
They use the Internet to poison the minds of individuals inside our country.
Their actions undermine and destabilize our allies.
We have to take them out.
But as we focus on destroying ISIL, over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play
into their hands.
Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks, twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages
-- they pose an enormous danger to civilians; they have to be stopped.
But they do not threaten our national existence.
(Applause.)
That is the story ISIL wants to tell.
That’s the kind of propaganda they use to recruit.
We don’t need to build them up to show that we’re serious, and we sure don't need to
push away vital allies in this fight by echoing the lie that ISIL is somehow representative
of one of the world’s largest religions.
(Applause.)
We just need to call them what they are -- killers and fanatics who have to be rooted out, hunted
down, and destroyed.
(Applause.)
And that’s exactly what we’re doing.
For more than a year, America has led a coalition of more than 60 countries to cut off ISIL’s
financing, disrupt their plots, stop the flow of terrorist fighters, and stamp out their
vicious ideology.
With nearly 10,000 air strikes, we’re taking out their leadership, their oil, their training
camps, their weapons.
We’re training, arming, and supporting forces who are steadily reclaiming territory in Iraq
and Syria.
If this Congress is serious about winning this war, and wants to send a message to our
troops and the world, authorize the use of military force against ISIL.
Take a vote.
(Applause.)
Take a vote.
But the American people should know that with or without congressional action, ISIL will
learn the same lessons as terrorists before them.
If you doubt America’s commitment -- or mine -- to see that justice is done, just
ask Osama bin Laden.
(Applause.)
Ask the leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, who was taken out last year, or the perpetrator of
the Benghazi attacks, who sits in a prison cell.
When you come after Americans, we go after you.
(Applause.)
And it may take time, but we have long memories, and our reach has no limits.
(Applause.)