Trump got under Obama’s skin and Obama finally uttered the phrase “radical Islam”.
“There’s no magic to the phrase ‘radical Islam”. It’s a political talking point. It’s not a strategy.” … “Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away. This is a political distraction”.
Obama completely dismisses the idea that calling your enemy by name has any effect. That you don’t need to call a Nazi a Nazi to shoot him; but is that really the case?
If you are unwilling to name your enemy, then doesn’t it follow that you’re unwilling to examine why they are your enemy? Obama calls them a bunch of other names: thugs, terrorists, dad. But none of them isolate who they are. There’s plenty of thugs in the world; we’re not waging a war on thugs. There’s plenty of terrorists in the world but we only ever seem to be having a problem with the Muslim variety.
Until we name the enemy we’ll never win because the war on terror is ultimately a war of ideas. It’s a war of Western values (freedom, individualism, and yes, homosexuals) vs. Middle Eastern values of theocracy and violence. If the country was willing to acknowledge that Muslims are going to be the ones radicalized to carry out Islamic terror (I’m not too worried about Buddhists shooting up a gay club in the name of Allah, are you?) then maybe one of the FBI investigations of Omar Mateen would have stopped him.
So yes, calling the people who perform Islamic terror by their name is important and will always be important because until we do every solution is going to fail. Once we recognize who our enemy is then our next step is realizing that there are no moderate Muslims.