In the worldwide uproar over the brutal massacre of 17 journalists, police and others that began with an attack on Paris' Charlie Hebdo magazine, the Obama administration, unlike that of French President Francois Hollande, still can't seem to bring itself to blame radical Islamic terrorism.
Appearing on Fox News'
"The Kelly File" with guest host Martha MacCallum, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, following the lead of Obama, White House spokesman Josh Earnest and Attorney General Eric Holder, hemmed and hawed when pressed on the issue before saying: "Islamic extremism is not the only kind of extremism we face."
But when pressed further about what other kinds of extremism pose a threat, Harf couldn't name a single one.
"Well, look, there are people out there who want to kill other people in the name of a variety of causes," Harf said. "Of course, Martha, we are most focused on people doing this in the name of Islam.
"As we’ve talked about with ISIL (also known as the Islamic State or ISIS), part of our strategy to counter this extremism is to have other moderate Muslim voices stand up and say, 'They don’t represent our religion.' They speak for their religion more than we do, certainly, and we need those voices to stand up in addition to all the other efforts we’re undertaking."
MacCallum countered: "There's a common threat here of radical Islamic extremism, and until President Obama or John Kerry or someone else in their position stands up and says, 'We know we're facing a global threat of radical Islamic extremism, we must band together and fight it,' that's what everybody is longing to hear."
Appearing on "Meet The Press," Holder said: "I would say that we are at war with terrorists who commit these heinous acts and who use Islam. They use a corrupted version of Islam to justify their actions,"
Town Hall reported.
Earnest told reporters: "Violent extremism is something that we want to be focused on and it's not just Islamic violent extremism that we want to counter, there are others," Fox News reported.
"We’re going to focus on all the different kinds of extremism with a heavy focus on people who do this in the name of Islam, we would say falsely in the name of Islam, but there are other forms of extremism that are also important," Harf told Fox News.
Both Obama and Kerry carefully avoided the "Islamic terrorism" phrase in statements following the Charlie Hebdo killings,
WND reported.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, however, bluntly stated: "We are at war … It’s a war against terrorism and radical Islamism, against everything that would break our solidarity, our liberty, our fraternity,"
the New York Post reported.
Former U.S. attorney and author Andrew C. McCarthy,
writing in PJMedia, said: "Notwithstanding the incontrovertible, seemingly undeniable evidence that the terrorist attack against Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris was a terrorist attack, the Obama White House initially engaged in its maddening practice of refusing to state the obvious for fear of offending Muslims."
He blasted the Obama administration for practicing "the shenanigans that … gave us 'workplace violence' after the jihadist murder of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood."
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