Democratic Congresswoman and Iraq War veteran Tulsi Gabbard recently criticized President Barack Obama for his avoidance of the term “radical Islam.”

Speaking last Thursday on CNN’s The Situation Room, the Hawaii Representative told host Wolf Blitzer “it’s important that you identify your enemy, you know who they are, you call them by their name, and you understand the ideology that’s driving them.”

Gabbard is one the few Democrats who has joined in holding the primarily Republican position. Liberals say they don’t want to give legitimacy to Islamic terrorists, or stigmatize American Muslims. Obama took that position in his first statements about last week’s shooting by a suspected ISIS loyalist at a gay bar in Orlando that left 50 dead and more than 50 wounded, including the shooter.

It was Obama’s silence on addressing radical Islam that led to Gabbard’s comments, and intense political pressure from top Republicans, including presumed GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Obama finally responded during a press briefing last Tuesday by saying the term multiple times. At a particularly sardonic point in his speech, Obama said, “That’s the key, they tell us — we can’t beat ISIL unless we call them ‘radical Islamists.’ What exactly would using this label accomplish?”

Gabbard addressed this during her visit to CNN. She said:

You know, I understand and appreciate the president’s concern which is he doesn’t want all Muslims to be cast with the same targeting or the same look at this handful of radical jihadists, and I agree with that. No one wants that to happen, but that’s why I think it is important that we make the distinction between the vast majority of Muslims who are practicing their spiritual path, who appreciate and support a pluralistic society and government that’s free, versus the small handful of people who like ISIS and al-Qaeda, who believe that unless you abide by their caliphate and their theocracy, you should be killed. And obviously that’s something we need to be able to identify in order to defeat this threat.

Gabbard’s comments echo those made on the Senate floor last September by Nebraska’s freshman Republican Senator Ben Sasse. According to Sasse, “I share this fear” of harming peaceful Muslims, “and I believe that telling the truth about who is, and who is not, our enemy is actually the only sure pathway to avoiding that danger.”

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