America is not engaged in a war on terror as much as it is fighting an "ideological war" waged by Islamist "fanatics," Fox News contributor Mike Huckabee said Monday, the 16th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
In his remarks, Huckabee said the war on terror is a label that is too unspecific.
"It's an ideological war, and I think that we have to at least do what we are now starting to do under this president, President [Donald] Trump, and that's at least admit that the war is an ideological one," he said, per The Daily Caller. "And that these are fanatics."
"You have to call them what they are, which is Islamist," he declared.
"That doesn't mean that all the people of Islam are part of it, but it means that the people who would fly airplanes into buildings were, in fact, radical religious people, who thought that their mission in life is to kill the innocent," he said.
Huckabee said the war on terror has dragged out longer than anyone expected, because for each terror group America disables, there is another to replace it.
"I think it's been a lot harder and taken a lot longer. I don't know that I can say that we are winning," he said. "It's like whack-a-mole. Whenever you knock one down there's another one that comes back up, if not two or three."
Yet, Huckabee said he has no doubt America will be able to "do big things."
"The American people are incredibly resilient and when something big happens Americans do big things," he said. "And I'm just reminded that this is still a country where people help their neighbors, their friends, their families."