Editorial: Trump isn’t the only Republican to play word games with terrorism

After Sunday’s terrorist attack at an Orlando nightclub, presumptive Republican nominee Donald J. Trump issued a statement saying that President Obama should resign because he “disgracefully refused to even say the words ‘radical Islam’” in condemning the violence.

Trump’s comments were cynical, tasteless and served to politicize the tragic events. But he isn’t alone in believing that it is an excessive fealty to political correctness that has left the president unwilling to utter those two magic words – “radical Islam.” The idea that Obama won’t “name the enemy,” as Sen. Ted Cruz put it, is a popular applause line for Republicans. The underlying assumption is that unless the I-word is insistently uttered, success is impossible in the military campaign against Islamic State.

On Tuesday, Obama heaped appropriate scorn on that notion. “What exactly would using this language accomplish?” he asked. “What exactly would it change? Would it make [Islamic State] less committed to try and kill Americans? Would it bring in more allies? Is there a military strategy that is served by this? The answer is none of the above. Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away.”

Hillary Clinton, whom Trump had also faulted for not using the term “radical Islam” had a similar reaction. The presumptive Democratic nominee said on Monday that she had no problem using the term “radical Islamism” to characterize the ideology behind the atrocity in Orlando. But she emphasized that “it matters what we do, not what we say.”

Obama’s Republican critics – perhaps with the exception of the obtuse Trump – know perfectly well why the president has been careful with his language. True, Islamic State and those it inspires are “Islamic” in the sense that they find their inspiration in their intolerant interpretation of that religion. At the same time, the vast majority of the world’s Muslims are not violent extremists.

If Obama has sometimes erred on the side of sensitivity – for example, with his comment in a 2014 speech that Islamic State “is not Islamic” – it’s because, like President George W. Bush before him, he recognizes that a worse evil would be seeming to tar millions of peaceful Muslims as terrorists. (He also realizes, we suspect, that some of those who clamor for him to modify every reference to terrorism with the word “Islamic” regard all Muslims as the enemy. Isn’t that, after all, the message of Trump’s proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States?)

It’s unlikely that Trump will be chastened by Obama’s powerful rebuke Tuesday. But if other Republicans who have raised this non-issue are honest with themselves, they will distance themselves from Trump’s nonsensical insistence on “magic words.”

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook