"Radical Catholic Terrorists!"

Americans can say "Radical Islamic Terrorists" all they want.   Trump won, so the US President says it.  Fox News is triumphant in saying it.

Should they?

A great many Trump supporters consider President Obama's failure to use the term "radical Islamic terrorists" a sign of his unwillingness to "name the enemy."  Trump and the conservative media hammered the point.  Trump appeared firm and resolute compared with Obama and Hillary Clinton on this issue.  Trump said it; they did not.

Yet Donald Trump's own top National Security Advisor, Lt. General McMaster, newly appointed by Trump to replace Michael Flynn, immediately publicly broke with Trump on this issue.  He voiced the same position as Obama, that the phrase was "not helpful" and that he "absolutely does not view Islam as the enemy."

What is going on?   Isn't it a simple fact that religion--in this case Islam--is the key differentiator between one side and the other and isn't it true that the ones doing terror are doing it specifically and intentionally to advance their religion and its political and territorial goals?    Yes.

On the other hand. . . .   So here is a way to think about the problem and why defining jihadi terrorists as "radical Islamic terrorists" is unhelpful and why it alienates some of our allies and strains relations with a billion people.

Catholic Nationalists--Protestant Unionists

In 1969 a Provisional Irish Republican Army formed in Ireland with the intention of forcing the United Kingdom to end inclusion of Northern Ireland from the UK and to return those largely-Protestant counties to a united Ireland.   Their tactics were terror. They published training manuals.  They intended that the guerrilla tactics against the British soldiers and Protestant citizens in Northern Ireland, combined with terror tactics against mostly-Protestant British citizenry generally, would demoralize and exhaust the British citizenry. 

It involved rock throwing between Catholic and Protestant youths along the wall separating Catholic and Protestant districts, hunger strikes, burning of buildings, intimidation, vigilante killings, sectarian killings, assassinations, and especially improvised explosive devices targeting crowds of Protestants, particularly in the London subway.  Some 1,800 people died during the long period of terror  They detonated some 19,000 improvised explosive devices targeting civilians over a 3 decade period, more than one per day. 

In 1997 some Good Friday accords reduced the fighting and in 2005 there was a recognized "cease fire."   Here is a quick Wikipedia reminder:  Click Here

This was terror.   It was carried out by people who self identified as Catholics.  

We did not call the IRA "Radical Catholic Terrorists."   Why?  They were radical, they were Catholic, and they were terrorists, but Americans understood that a Catholic man who laid a bomb where Protestants would congregate in order to expand the map of of a Catholic country was not acting as a "Catholic."   

Click Here for the Article

Some could argue that yes they were indeed acting as Catholic.  One can easily find scriptural basis in the Old Testament for saying that the God worshiped by Catholics commands genocide. (Joshua 6:21, "They destroyed everything in the city, man and woman, young and old"; First Samuel 15:3 "Do not spare them, man and woman, child and infant, cattle and sheep.")    So this would explain radical Catholic terrorism.  Their holy book commands it.

Reagan condemned the violence, not the religion

But Americans knew better.  Terror by Catholic partisans in the Irish Republican Army, even when done for the purpose of the glory and expansion of Catholic Ireland, is not a reflection on Catholicism or Christianity, and certainly not a reflection of the beliefs or behavior of most Catholics.   

Americans did not say "Radical Catholic Terrorists."  The IRA person laying a bomb where it would kill Protestants going to work on a subway was not expressing "Catholicism".   He was acting as a political terrorist, reflecting radical political ideology and tactics.  Americans condemned the tactics, not the religion.

It would have insulted American Catholics and it would have misunderstood Catholicism.  Reagan understood this.  Trump's National Security Advisor understood this.  Obama and the Clintons understood this.   

It is possible that Trump, too, understands this but he also understands that a great many Americans like the nationalist clarity of considering this a war between "us" and "them", and to define the enemy as a caricature easy to dislike.   

It is good politics but it is bad statecraft.  It is not helpful in our war against ISIS.  In the long run good governance is good politics, so the story is not over yet.