Obama: ISIS no threat to US existence

US Prez’s last State of Union speech calls for end to Cuba embargo

President Barack Obama told Americans nervous about terror and a changing economy that they should not fear the future, in a farewell State of the Union address on Tuesday that drew sharp contrast with Republicans.

In a primetime address that bubbled with 2016 election politics, Mr Obama assailed Republicans for talking up the threat posed by the ISIS group and talking down the American economy.

A self-assured and optimistic Mr Obama cast himself as the foil of foes who warn the country is going in the wrong direction because of his seven years in office.

Hailing an epoch of “extraordinary change” laden with risk and opportunity, Mr Obama called for a new “moonshot” to cure cancer, a shift away from dirty energy to power the world’s biggest economy and for a thaw in the last remnants of the Cold War by ending the embargo on Cuba.

Mr Obama insisted “America has been through big changes before,” as he took thinly veiled shots at Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and other leading Republican presidential candidates.

“Each time, there have been those who told us to fear the future, who claimed we could slam the brakes on change, promising to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control. And each time, we overcame those fears.”

Comparing the scale of the challenge of curing cancer to the successful US mission to put an astronaut on the moon, Mr Obama said the drive would receive the same effort as clean energy research.

“For the loved ones we’ve all lost, for the family we can still save, let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all.”

Mr Obama put vice-president Joe Biden in charge of leading the effort.

With less than three weeks until the Iowa caucuses — the first votes cast in the process to replace him — Mr Obama berated Republican economic rhetoric, saying “anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction”.

But some of his toughest words were for Republican statements over the rise of the ISIS group.

He painted the jihadists as “masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks, twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages”.

He admitted that the extremists, who have overrun large areas of Syria and Iraq, pose an “enormous danger,” but made clear: “They do not threaten our national existence.”

“Our answer needs to be more than tough talk or calls to carpet-bomb civilians. That may work as a TV sound bite, but it doesn’t pass muster on the world’s stage,” he said pointedly.

“Over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands.”

And in a volley clearly aimed at Mr Trump, Mr Obama warned that “when politicians insult Muslims... that’s not telling it like it is. It’s just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world.”

Tuesday’s address was arguably Mr Obama’s last big opportunity to sway a national audience and frame the 2016 White House race.

Around 30 million viewers were expected to watch live, a nationwide audience that may only be matched in political terms during the Democratic nominating convention later in 2016.