In the June 14 presser, Obama knocked down straw "persons" and then missed the point about Islam. 

He lectured us, as follows:

So there's no magic to the phrase "radical Islam."  It's a political talking point; it's not a strategy.  And the reason I am careful about how I describe this threat has nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with actually defeating extremism.  Groups like ISIL and al Qaeda want to make this war a war between Islam and America, or between Islam and the West.  They want to claim that they are the true leaders of over a billion Muslims around the world who reject their crazy notions.  

No one believes that the phrase "radical Islam" is magical or is a strategy (even though Obama sent a clear message in his 2009 speeches in Cairo and Turkey that his words are magical and that it was Bush's fault, but the new administration would fix things.  His middle name, after all, is Arabic.).  What we deny, Mr. Obama, is that ISIS and al-Qaeda are the only groups in Islam who intend to make this a war between Islam and the West. All throughout the Islamic world, calls go forth from mosques that America is decadent and must be taken down by the will of Allah.  This sort of ideology is what motivated Islamic jihad during Muhammad's lifetime and continued for four hundred years before the Church finally called for a Crusade to stop Islamic aggression.  Islam declared war first.  This same aggressive impulse is still powerful today.

But if Islamic armies can't conquer us through military might, then how can they take down the West?

What Obama misses are sharia and an Islamic legal system and government.  Call it their version of mission creep.  Let's use six hallmarks of civilization and stay within the confines of the USA, though Europe closely parallels us.

1. We keep government and religion separate and distinct; that is, religious law like sharia does not control our government. Islamic civilizations fuse together mosque and state in a mishmash. 

2. Free speech is honored over here, even if citizens criticize religion.  In Islamic civilizations, such criticisms can land the critic in jail and getting lashes on the back, and possibly execution.

3. Freedom of religion is allowed over here, but in Islamic countries such freedom is suppressed, and religious minorities are barely tolerated. 

4. Womankind can express themselves in whatever ways they deem appropriate.  In Islamic civilization, womankind is oppressed, even to the point of domestic violence, permitted in the Quran itself.

5. Punishments here in America differ and are superior.  We treat private behavior as just that – private.  Gays can even go to night clubs if they choose the public square or hold pride parades.  In Islam, sexual misconduct is treated as criminal, leading to lashes, prison, and maybe even death.

6. In the USA, there is no forced religion tax, but in Islamic civilizations the jizyah for religious minorities, under threat of death from the Muslim military, and zakat or charity tax are imposed.

Mr. Obama is confused about the nature of the struggle.  He thinks the Orlando massacre and ISIS are all that he has to oppose.  But it goes much deeper than that.  The struggle is in fact with Islam as a religion and civilization, "con-fused" together.  With a weak military, Islam is aggressive in slow motion, as Muslims refuse to assimilate in the "dirty" West and open up sharia courts in the U.K., for example.  All of those six points flow from Islamic law.

But this is the Second Hundred Years War – a slow-grinding, gradual war with occasional flare-ups as we saw in the Paris and Orlando massacres.  It will last past 2100.

The real war is ideological and fought in the minds of our citizens.  It's an open question whether we'll win it.

James Arlandson's website is Live As Free People, where he has posted Thirty shariah laws, Why shariah is incompatible with American values, Time to reform Islam (if it's possible), and How the left misreads world affairs.