Barack Obama Quotes

What we have done is when the threat has been directed at the United States, i.e., the terrorist threat from ISIL or Al-Qaeda in Syria, is to go after them.

For our country to be safe from terrorists we must stabilize Iraq and show that it can be done and take out these terrorist organizations who would harm Americans. Our freedom is at stake here.

We need a president who understands the first obligation of the commander-in-chief is to keep America safe. If I am elected president, we will hunt down and kill the terrorists. We will utterly destroy ISIS.

Our priority is to go after ISIL. And so what we have said is that we are not engaging in a military action against the Syrian regime. We are going after ISIL facilities and personnel who are using Syria as a safe haven, in service of our strategy in Iraq.

ISIL presents a growing threat not only in Syria and Iraq, but throughout the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and now in the United States as well. Terrorists and their enablers will continue to receive the unwavering attention of law enforcement and the intelligence community.

We all know what we mean by fighting terrorism. In reality, there is total cooperation between the countries north and south of the Mediterranean against terrorism.

Defeating ISIS. If we do not defeat them abroad, we will be facing more and more of a threat at home. This does not require an occupation or an enduring ground operation.

I just want to say that we are going to hit ISIS hard, and I mean really hard, but I do think this.

We knew that al-Qaida was a threat to our country. We knew that the Clinton administration understood this and was working against al-Qaida We did not ignore al-Qaida. We spent a lot of our time thinking about terrorism, what should we do about it.

I think our nation's at war with radical Islam. The primary goal of these groups is to attack our nation. Washington's a prime target.

[Hillary] Clinton, we are not where we need to be in the fight against ISIS.

You listen to the intelligence community, they say, listen, maybe it's ISIS today, it's somebody else tomorrow. We'll deal with the caliphate, but it's going to take years to be able to handle this.

I will take a backseat to no one in keeping America safe. I have a very clear set of proposals about how we defeat ISIS.

For me, 9/11 was a game changer. It altered my perception of the security threat we faced. I took the position that Britain should be shoulder to shoulder with the U.S. It was a big decision; I didn't take it lightly, or in ignorance of its consequences. It's a big commitment for a country to give, but I believed it was the right thing to do.

We face now an era where we're going to be fighting the terrorist threat. I mean, that's simply a reality we are going to have to address that one.

The biggest problem I have with the stupidity of our foreign policy, we have Mosul. They think a lot of the ISIS leaders are in Mosul. So we have announcements coming out of Washington and coming out of Iraq, we will be attacking Mosul in three weeks or four weeks. Well, all of these bad leaders from ISIS are leaving Mosul. Why can't they do it quietly?

When I am the president of the United States of America, we don't know who you are, and we don't know why you're trying to come to the United States, you are not going to get in, because the radical threat that we now face from ISIS is extraordinary and unprecedented and when I'm president, we are keeping ISIS out of America.

There is no doubt ISIS poses a clear, direct threat to the United States, and decisive action is badly needed.

If I had been in President Obama's shoes, I would have acted more decisively and strongly against ISIS.

We are in a war on terrorism. We need to conduct that war and take it to the terrorists, not here at home.

Abroad, our most important policy is to support our troops and continue forward-thinking foreign policy in the war on terror - keeping our enemies on the run and hitting them before they hit us.

The administration asserts that two thirds or three quarters of al-Qaeda’s managers have been captured or killed, and that al-Qaeda must therefore be on the ropes. Why spend vast sums defending against it?

Terrorist infiltration should be resisted not at the national level, but at the international policies level.

President-elect Donald Trump has a host of national security challenges to deal with as he assumes office, from the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan to the grinding Syrian civil war to the flexing of Russian muscles under President Vladimir Putin to how to deal with ISIS as the terrorist army retreats in Iraq.

If we have intelligence on the location of terrorist training centers, it is insane not to act.