2 min readWashingtonJan 21, 2015 09:47 PM IST
First published on: Jan 21, 2015 at 09:47 PM IST
President Barack Obama (Source: AP Photo)
US President Barack Obama Tuesday vowed to hunt down terrorists from “a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris” and called on Congress to approve new war powers against Islamic State militants.
“We stand united with people around the world who’ve been targeted by terrorists — from a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris,” Obama said in the annual State of the Union Address, ahead of his visit to India starting Sunday.
About 40 lawmakers — mainly Democrats — held up and waved yellow pencils during the speech to show solidarity with the victims of the recent Charlie Hebdo attack that killed 17 in Paris and the suicide assault that killed 150, most of them children, at a Peshawar school last month.
“We will continue to hunt down terrorists and dismantle their networks, and we reserve the right to act unilaterally, as we’ve done relentlessly since I took office to take out terrorists who pose a direct threat to us and our allies,” the US President said in the prime-time speech.
Obama said that the US military leadership in Iraq and Syria is stopping the Islamic State’s advance and asked lawmakers to “show the world that we are united in this mission” by passing a resolution to authorise the use of force against the militant group that holds a large swathe of Iraq and Syria under its control as a self-declared caliphate.
He also stressed that “we continue to reject offensive stereotypes of Muslims —- the vast majority of whom share our commitment to peace”.
President Barack Obama (Source: AP Photo)
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