Consider that on the one hand, you have the chilling new tape of the Charlie Hebdo attackers declaring, "We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad," and on the other, you have the tortured assurances of White House spokesman Josh Earnest. Which are you going to believe?
The Obama administration's mind-bogglingly determined refusal to say that we are at war with "radical Islam," together with the left's evasions about Islamic terrorism, means that there has been a haze of euphemism around what should be a galvanizing event in the West's fight against terror.
In the aftermath of the attack, Howard Dean opined on "Morning Joe" that the Muslims who had killed the staff of Charlie Hebdo aren't Muslims. Not usually known as a leading Orientalist, the former Vermont governor shared his interpretation of one of the world's leading Islamic terror groups: "I think ISIS is a cult. Not an Islamic cult. I think it's a cult."
Dean didn't specify what kind of cult ISIS is, if not Islamic. Or what otherwise accounts for its strange obsession with taking over territory in Syria and Iraq to establish a caliphate and to impose a harsh version of Islamic law. » | Rich Lowry | Monday, January 19, 2015
