Finally Someone on the Left Gets It: It’s Not “Violent Extremism,” It’s Radical Islam

Finally, someone on the Left gets it.

You won’t hear me say that often, but when someone is right, they’re right.

Iraq War veteran and current Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (HI-2) didn’t mince words in explaining how she feels about the Obama Administration’s insistence that we only refer to terrorists as “violent extremists” and not radical Islamists.

Secretary of State John Kerry has recently been on a PC trip of late doubling down on the Administration’s preferred euphemistic nomenclature, “violent extremism,” to describe those radical Islamists who are terrorizing, beheading, enslaving, and slaughtering thousands upon thousand around the globe in the name of Islam.  Secretary Kerry recently said groups like ISIS and al Qaeda are “nothing more than a form of criminal anarchy–nihilism, which illegitimately claims an ideological and religious foundation.”

As the Washington Times reports, Representative Gabbard has had enough:

"This is not just about words," the Hawaii Democrat told Fox News' Greta Van Susteren. "It's not about semantics. It's really about having a real, true understanding of who our enemy is and how important that is, that we have to understand what their motivation is and what their ideology is — the radical Islamic ideology that is fueling them."

Ms. Gabbard took umbrage with Secretary of State John Kerry's recent assertion that the criminal conduct of terrorists with the Islamic State and al Qaeda is "rooted in alienation, poverty, thrill-seeking and other factors," which she said is flat-out wrong.

"If that's really the cause, then the solution would be just to give them a trophy, give them a hug, give them a good-paying job, $10,000, and a skateboard so they can go and get their thrills and say, 'OK, great, they are going to be happy and they won't be fighting anymore,'" she said. "That's not the case. … We've got to look at what their ideology is and how that's fueling these tragic attacks that keep on occurring."

Representative Gabbard gets it.

You cannot defeat an enemy that you refuse to name.

We’re no more in some esoteric war against “violent extremism” than we are against pink flying unicorns.  The fact of the matter is that there is a radical Islamic dogma that thousands of terrorists around the globe have committed their lives to.

It’s not “nihilistic,” which ironically means, “Rejecting all religious and moral principles in the belief that life is meaningless.”  Radical Islamic terrorists are exactly the opposite.  Theirs is an unyielding, dogmatic adherence to a particular interpretation of the Islamic religion where there meaning in life is to kill the infidel and bring about an Islamic state here on earth.

Representative Gabbard merely points out the deadly naivety of the Administration’s political correct blindness to the truth about the enemy we face.

Thankfully some on the Left, including Representative Gabbard and Bill Maher, are starting to get this.  But it is going to take more than a handful on the Left to right the ship on this issue before it’s too late for America’s foreign policy and the world.

This article is crossposted on Red State.