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Donald Rumsfeld: 'The President's Unwillingness To Characterize The Enemy As Radical Islamists & Jihadists Is To Misunderstand The Problem'

By Dom Giordano

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Dom Giordano talked with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Talk Radio 1210 about President Obama's handling of the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

 

Rumsfeld was critical of the President for not coming out and saying we are at war with extremist Muslims.

"Words matter and the President's unwillingness to characterize the enemy as radical Islamists and Jihadists is to misunderstand the problem. You have to know what the problem is and that is the problem and it happens to be part of the Muslim faith, elements withing the Muslim faith, which are not a majority, but they're vicious. They're killers. To pretend they're random or to pretend it's workplace violence is utter nonsense."

He believes the battle will take time to win and that the White House is currently on the wrong path to achieve a successful outcome.

"It's gonna be a long hard slog and the reason I say that is it's more like the Cold War than a hot war, than World War I or II. To develop the kind of perseverance you have be honest, and you have to call it what it is, and you have to enlist the support of other countries. If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there is the old saying. These people in executing branch of the federal government seem unwilling to set out a strategic direction because they are unwilling to identify the enemy."

Rumsfeld said terrorist groups like ISIS are a threat to the entire international political system.

"We call them a state and we shouldn't because they're not a state. Their goal is to establish a caliphate and they're striking at the very heart of the nation-state concept. The thing that orders the world is the nation-state concept. They're whole goal is to eliminate state borders, national borders and to impose their will."

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