Sen. Joe Lieberman takes issue with Obama’s insistence that we not name our foe — “violent Islamist extremism.” As Lieberman points out, unless we are crystal clear about the identity and motivations of our enemy, we’re going to be less than successful in defeating those who wage war on us. He makes a key point: “Al Qaeda” is an insufficient descriptor of our enemy:

Defining the enemy by reference to al Qaeda implies that this war is primarily about destroying an organization, rather than defeating a broader political ideology. This war will not end when al Qaeda has been vanquished—though that, of course, is a critical goal—but only when the ideology of violent Islamist extremism that inspires and predates it is decisively rejected. That ideology motivates many other groups and individuals.

For example, the ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism, Daniel Benjamin, recently warned about the growing danger to the U.S. posed by the Pakistan-based Islamist extremist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was responsible for the devastating 2008 attack in Mumbai, India.

Finally, characterizing this war as being against a specific organization risks distracting our government from important policy questions about how to combat the ideological dimensions of the war that is taking place within Islam. It also may send a message to moderate Muslims that they can and should remain on the sidelines of this fight, while governments use conventional means to defeat al Qaeda.

If the Obama brain trust thinks it is avoiding antagonizing “the Muslim World,” it is dangerously mistaken. “We must encourage and empower the non-violent Muslim majority to raise their voices to condemn the Islamist extremist ideology as a desecration of Islam, responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of innocent Muslims and people of other faiths,” Lieberman writes. “How can we expect those Muslims to have the courage to stand and do that if we are unwilling to define and describe the enemy as dramatically different from them?”

For a president who bragged that he understood the “Muslim World,” it’s quite apparent that his understanding is as faulty as his grasp of market economics and executive leadership.