The president tonight denied that the Islamic State is “Islamic”; I’m not sure what presidents think they are achieving when they make this assertion. (Bush did it too, all the time.) The alternative would be to say, “They claim to act in the name of Islam, something peace-loving Muslims say is a perversion of their faith,” or just to say nothing about the point. I can’t imagine that a non-Muslim-American president convinces anyone when he tells the world what true Islam is.
Obama also denied that the Islamic State has “a vision,” which 1) sounds like something you might say about a political candidate you’re up against and 2) is obviously untrue. The group has way too much vision.