Krauthammer: Obama's Refusal to Label Bombers Is 'Comical' and 'Embarrassing'

Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer is taking President Barack Obama to task for his refusal to label the Boston bombers “jihadist” or “Islamist.”

 “The lengths to which he will go to avoid telling us the truth about the enemy is becoming comical and certainly embarrassing,” Krauthammer said Tuesday on Fox News, Politico reports.

 “Forget about use the word jihadist — he will never use that -- but he refuses to use the word Islamist, which is used throughout the Muslim world. It’s used by journalists, by authors, on the street, in parliament, in Egypt. It’s used in Lebanon. It’s used everywhere by Muslims.”

 Obama wants to avoid making any connection between terrorism and radical Islam, “which as anybody who is over the age of 9 knows is the single greatest cause of terror in the world today,” Krauthammer said.

 “You have to be able to be honest with the people if you are going to get any support. Otherwise, you get an event here, an event there and you say, ‘We can’t jump to any conclusions?’ Within three days everybody understands that these brothers were jihadists.”

 Other historic figures had no problem defining their enemies in stark terms, he said.

 “Churchill did not speak about German extremists. He talked about the Nazi menace . . . FDR didn’t speak about extremists in Tokyo. He talked about the Japanese imperialism and its threat to the whole region.”