On any day you see one of the Republican members of congress and these days candidates for President talking about the problems with our current President. Today I watched Ted Cruz talking about how President Obama refuses to say Radical Islamic Terrorist as if those words would change the world and dangers across it. If our President would just say those words and not talk about Islamophobia we would somehow just be safe. Usually this is followed by something about overwhelming force and maybe carpet bombing. It includes some assumption that nothing much is being done in the international arena, that no one in the world respects us and that if only there was someone else in charge everything would be different.

The problem with all of that is that President Obama understand the reality of terrorism – the terrorists want us to respect them, they want us to fear them, they want us to condemn an entire religion and people, 1.6 B people in the world. By not giving them the respect that they want by calling them by the least respectful name possible, rather than the most, our President is fighting them on all fronts. Our country is in better standing now then it has been since before before the Bush administration. We don’t need to develop new coalitions to fight the “war on terror” we already have them.

By being calm and cool the President is showing that he isn’t afraid, he won’t do the bidding of the terrorists, he won’t descend to their levels. Substance over theatrics.