Columnist Charles Krauthammer stated that after the president’s address at the White House’s violent extremism summit, “you would think that we are responding to the execution, the beheading of 21 Muslims on behalf of 21 extreme Christians somewhere in the world” on Wednesday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel.
“[President Obama] sounds like a community organizer talking about outreach to communities. If you listen to the president today, and his emphasis on Islamic grievances, on reaching out, on making Muslims feel comfortable and not excluded, you would think that we are responding to the execution, the beheading of 21 Muslims on behalf of 21 extreme Christians somewhere in the world. It is so divorced from reality, as if the problem is the lack of understanding of the Muslim grievances, particularly in the Middle East. We talk about root causes as if that’s going to make any difference whatsoever. There are rich people in ISIS, there are poor, there are educated, there [are] uneducated. The idea that if somehow you can attack — you can eradicate poverty, which, in and of itself is an absurdity, it’s going to make any difference is sort of a fantasy, and it’s a way to avoid the issue, as is the president’s language. He said I don’t want to legitimize these people by using the word ‘Islamist.’ It’s as if you refused to call Nazis ‘Nazis,’ because they were not authentic Socialists and they had a perverted idea of nationalism. You simply have to say, of course they are a branch of Islam, a very important one, they are all over the world, and unless you address the Islamic roots of it, you will get absolutely nowhere in trying to stop the recruiting and to stop their advances” he said
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