Pussyfooting

The New York Times' Tom Friedman is nobody's idea of a conservative. Yet here he is endorsing the following quote by very conservative Rich Lowry from a Politico article:

The administration has lapsed into unselfconscious ridiculousness. Asked why the administration won’t say [after the Paris attacks] we are at war with radical Islam, Earnest on Tuesday explained the administration’s first concern ‘is accuracy. We want to describe exactly what happened. These are individuals who carried out an act of terrorism, and they later tried to justify that act of terrorism by invoking the religion of Islam and their own deviant view of it.’

This makes it sound as if the Charlie Hebdo terrorists set out to commit a random act of violent extremism and only subsequently, when they realized that they needed some justification, did they reach for Islam.

The day before, Earnest had conceded that there are lists of recent ‘examples of individuals who have cited Islam as they’ve carried out acts of violence.’ Cited Islam? According to the Earnest theory ... purposeless violent extremists rummage through the scriptures of great faiths, looking for some verses to cite to support their mayhem and often happen to settle on the holy texts of Islam.

Friedman concludes by criticizing President Obama for being unwilling to call militant Islam by that name. So Obama knows (or knew) Muslims who were nice people. So what, so do I. It butters no parsnips. Ugly things are being done in their names and they aren't protesting enough.