Eli Lake, Columnist

Why Obama Can't Say 'Radical Islam'

U.S. allies in the war on terrorism have to appease citizens who share ideas with the fundamentalists.

January 19, 2015 at 1:31 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

These Pakistanis aren't Charlie.
Photographer: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images

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Following the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris this month, White House spokesman Josh Earnest briefly became an Islamic theologian. At issue was why U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, unlike the leadership of France, wouldn't describe the murderers as adherents to “radical Islam.”

Pressed by NPR's Mara Liasson, Earnest explained to reporters that the terrorists tried to “invoke their own deviant, distorted view of Islam in order to justify” the attacks.