December 6, 2015 6:35 am
San Bernardino shootings polarise US politics
The mass shooting in southern California last week has quickly become a divisive partisan issue with Republicans calling for tougher action against Islamist extremism and Democrats urging stronger gun control.
Republican presidential candidates stepped up their criticism of the Obama administration on Saturday, accusing it of not doing enough to defeat Isis and of leaving the US vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
At the same time, President Barack Obama, who will address the nation on Sunday evening about the threat of terrorism, doubled down on Saturday on his calls for restrictions on the sale of assault weapons.
The FBI has labelled the killing of 14 people in San Bernardino as an act of terrorism after one of the suspects posted a message on Facebook shortly before the attack in support of Isis. However, investigators have said they are only beginning to understand the motivations that led Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik to open fire at a holiday party at a government building.
Even with the tentative nature of the investigators’ conclusions, the attack has quickly become a divisive political issue that is unlikely to shift the country’s longstanding debate about gun control but which could have an impact on the treatment of refugees, visas for visitors and the National Security Agency.
The apparent Isis connection in the San Bernardino attack has given new energy to claims by Republican candidates that Mr Obama has been too passive in the military campaign against the group over the past year.
“We will utterly destroy Isis,” Texas senator Ted Cruz said on Saturday at a campaign event in Iowa. “We will carpet bomb them into oblivion. I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out!”
He criticised Mr Obama and Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton for seeking to link the attack to gun control. “The left’s immediate reaction to radical Islamic terrorists, like kittens with their eyes closed, is not to go after the bad guys, but to immediately try to seize the guns of law-abiding citizens,” he said.
Mrs Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, insisted on Sunday that it was not contradictory to both step up the battle against terrorists abroad and tighten gun control laws in the US.
“We should be able to approach both of these with some sense of . . . unity about how we prevent terrorist attacks and how we prevent the wrong people from getting a hold of guns,” she argued.
Mrs Clinton said she expected Mr Obama to announce an intensification of the campaign against Isis, saying the US clearly needed a more robust air campaign against its leaders and oil infrastructure.
“I think you’ll hear that from the president,” she said on ABC’s This Week. “Part of what I have been arguing for, for quite some time now, is that we’ve got to do a better job of getting back the Sunnis on the ground, along with the Kurds, who can be the fighters who will actually take back territory with air cover and with targeted attacks on Isis infrastructure.”
Republican candidates predicted that the terrorism link in San Bernardino would provide fresh impetus to proposals in Congress to stop new refugees coming from Syria and to tighten the procedures for visa-free travel to the US.
Comment
Donald Trump is firing with both barrels
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gives a national security speech aboard the World War II Battleship USS Iowa, September 15, 2015, in San Pedro, California.
Many Republicans fear for their party should the billionaire win the presidential nomination
In his weekly radio address on Saturday, Mr Obama said it was possible the two suspects “were radicalised to commit an act of terror”. But he also called on the Republican-controlled Congress to pass a law that prevented people on the non-fly list from buying weapons.
“If you’re too dangerous to board a plane, you’re too dangerous, by definition, to buy a gun,” he said. The San Bernardino attack was “another tragic reminder that here in America it’s way too easy for dangerous people to get their hands on a gun.”
There is little indication yet, however, that the San Bernardino attack or the mass shooting in Colorado Springs last week are likely to break the political stalemate in Congress over new gun control measures, which are strongly opposed by most Republicans and some Democrats.
The California shooting has reopened the debate within the Republican party about the National Security Agency, whose controversial programme to collect the phone records of millions of Americans was shut down earlier this month following the approval over the summer of reform legislation that was supported by Mr Cruz and Kentucky senator Rand Paul. Jeb Bush and Mr Christie called on Saturday to restore the powers to the NSA to collect the call data.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c8e6e034-9be0-11e5-8ce1-f6219b685d74.html#axzz3tdAcVjdC
