Donald Trump has taunted both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for avoiding the term “radical Islam” in describing the motivations for Islamic terrorism; meanwhile, the president has defended his policy, claiming that using a particular term won’t “accomplish” anything. Michael Totten points to the deficiencies of both positions:

Trump says that [President Obama’s stance, and his rhetoric on this subject in general, stem from] political correctness and that it’s killing us, but [the president’s stance in fact stems from] something else. It’s diplomatic correctness. . . .

[During the 2006] Anbar Awakening . . . in Iraq, . . . every tribal leader in the western Anbar province aligned himself with American soldiers and Marines against al-Qaeda. . . . [Much of Anbar is] painfully, even brutally, backward. Not every Muslim who lives there is a fanatic, but virtually none can be described as liberal or cosmopolitan with a straight face. Then there is Saudi Arabia. . . .

So, yes, we have fanatical as well as moderate and liberal Muslim allies, and Obama, like George W. Bush before him, is reluctant to alienate them. . . . [But] people don’t like or trust leaders who appear disconnected from reality. And Obama is far more worried about this than he needs to be. All he needs to do is be honest and reasonable. . . .

Middle Easterners are among the least politically correct people in the entire world. . . . And they know damn well that Islamic State is Islamic. We’re not earning any points with our allies in the Muslim world by denying this, nor would we alienate any of them by acknowledging it.

The United States government surely would alienate our friends and allies over there if we had a bombastic bigoted blowhard in the White House, but calling the Islamic State “Islamic” isn’t even in the same time zone as bigoted or bombastic.

Examining the effects of Iran’s decision to launch nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, Benny Morris takes stock of the Jewish state’s strategic situation:

The massive Iranian attack has turned what began as a local war in and around the Gaza Strip and then expanded into a Hamas–Hizballah–Houthi–Israeli war [into] a regional war with wide and possibly calamitous international repercussions.

Before the Iranians launched their attack, Washington warned Tehran to desist (“don’t,” in President Biden’s phrase), and Israel itself had reportedly cautioned the Iranians secretly that such an attack would trigger a devastating Israeli counterstrike. But a much-humiliated Iran went ahead, nonetheless.

For Israel, the way forward seems to lie in an expansion of the war—in the north or south or both—until the country attains some sort of victory, or a diplomatic settlement is reached. A “victory” would mean forcing Hizballah to cease fire in exchange, say, for a cessation of the IDF bombing campaign and withdrawal to the international border, or forcing Iran, after suffering real pain from IDF attacks, to cease its attacks and rein in its proxies: Hizballah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

At the same time, writes Morris, a victory along such lines would still have its limits:

An IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon and a cessation of Israeli air-force bombing would result in Hizballah’s resurgence and its re-investment of southern Lebanon down to the border. Neither the Americans nor the French nor the UN nor the Lebanese army—many of whose troops are Shiites who support Hizballah—would fight them.