President Obama blames ‘hateful propaganda’ of Internet for Omar Mateen terrorist attack
Now, if we’re honest with ourselves, if in fact we want to show the best of our humanity, then we’re all going to have to work together at every level of government, across political lines, to do more to stop killers who want to terrorize us. We will continue to be relentless against terrorist groups like ISIL and Al Qaida.
We are going to destroy them. We are going to disrupt their networks and their financing and the flow of fighters in and out of war theaters. We’re going to disrupt their propaganda that poisons so many minds around the world.
photo/Islamic State flag
We’re going to do all that. Our resolve is clear. But given the fact that the last two terrorist attacks on our soil, Orlando and San Bernardino, were home-grown, carried out it appears not by external plotters, not by vast networks, or sophisticated cells, but by deranged individuals warped by the hateful propaganda that they had seen over the Internet, then we’re going to have to do more to prevent these kinds of events from occurring.
It’s going to take more than just our military. It’s going to require more than just our intelligence teams. As good as they are, as dedicated as they are, as focused as they are, if you have lone wolf attacks like this, hatched in the minds of a disturbed person, then we’re going to have to take different kinds of steps in order to prevent something like this from happening.
Now, those who were killed and injured here were gunned down by a single killer with a powerful assault weapon. The motives of this killer may have been different than the mass shooters in Aurora or Newtown. But the instruments of death were so similar. And now another 49 innocent people are dead; another 53 are injured; some are still fighting for their lives; some will have wounds that will last a lifetime.
We can’t anticipate or catch every single deranged person that may wish to do harm to his neighbors or his friends or his coworkers or strangers. But we can do something about the amount of damage that they do. Unfortunately, our politics have conspired to make it as easy as possible for a terrorist or just a disturbed individual like those in Aurora and Newtown to buy extraordinarily powerful weapons, and they can do so legally.
