Did you know there's been four days of nontroversy over the term "radical jihadist"? Me either, but apparently Faux News has been right on top of it, day in and day out. Because they haven't managed to force the President and his staff to bow to their commands, BillO ramped up the rhetoric on Wednesday night, lecturing the President and David Ignatius on their "naive and frightening" approach to radicals in other countries, which is basically to pressure those countries to deal with their extremists.
To O'Reilly, the "real reason the Obama administration avoids the Islamic jihad label" is because they're naive wimps who imagine the world differently than it is. O'Reilly's world is a dark and threatening place, where it is absolutely necessary to assume radical extremists abroad are an existential threat to western world domination United States national security.
Lecturing the President from behind his Billo desk, O'Reilly declared, "So let’s stop the nonsense. Radical jihadists threaten the world, much like the Nazis did in the 1930s. Responsible nations, not individuals, must confront and destroy the jihadists in a methodical worldwide campaign."
Am I wrong to hear a call for World War III in those marching orders? I don't think so. Equating radical Muslims to Nazis just before demanding that responsible nations should confront and destroy the jihadists is pretty clear to me.
There are many things BillO left out of his rant. Like the fact that the Cheney/Bush invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan spawned desperation and radicals far worse than Bin Laden in that region of the world. Yet he has the nerve to say we're the "responsible nation"?
There is no "Radical Islamist" controversy, despite Fox News' best effort to make one. Tommy Christopher:
That’s “radical Islamism,” not “radical Islam,” and it refers to political Islam, not the personal religious practice of Islam. So, to review, Fox News and NPR have busted the Obama administration for not saying something they don’t refuse to say, and for not going along with something that the president and/or prime minister of France didn’t say, and which would not have been accurate to say in the first place. In the process, though, they revealed plenty about themselves.
Yes, they sure did. Anyone who thinks World War III is a great idea should be the first in line to sign up and fight it. It's easy to sit back and pretend wars don't involve death, maiming, and further destruction.
Also, Bill? Until we've dealt with the radical extremists in our own back yard, I'm pretty sure we don't need to organize our own jihad on those abroad.
