On Tuesday, in a remarkable display of arrogance and tone-deaf rhetoric, President Obama, in an angry rant about why he doesn’t use the phrase “radical Islam,” asked the question: “What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change?”

And although he called the whole issue a “political distraction”, his question deserves a serious answer.

Frankly, at this stage, it is alarming that the answer is not obvious to the President and those around him. The difference is that calling these terrorists what they are — radical Islamists — would be reassuring to those Americans who have doubts about Obama’s proficiency as commander-in-chief.

By using the phrase, it would help to build confidence that he actually understands the problem and therefore has a viable plan to defeat the enemy.

After all, he is the one who used the term “jayvee team” to describe Islamic State. He is the one who declared Iraq “sovereign, stable and self-reliant”. He is the one who announced an absurd withdrawal date from Afghanistan. He is the one who took six years to declare the Fort Hood shooting a terrorist attack and not an incident of “workplace violence”. So, to be clear, using the phrase “radical Islam” is not about trying to make Islamic State “less committed to trying to kill Americans”.

Mr President, it is not about Islamic State; it’s about you. Your specific refusal to use the term rattles Americans and increases doubts about your grasp of the threat that Islamic State presents.

Islam has a problem, and Obama needs to say so. He needs to help the world to come together and to work this out — and admitting the problem out loud is an essential step.

Obama’s enablers like to boast that our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president ended two wars. The fact is, this president has neither won nor ended any wars. At the end of his eight years in office, the United States will be facing more grinding conflicts than existed when he won the presidency.

Donald Trump, for all his faults, has forced Hillary Clinton to cross the threshold and to acknowledge the obvious: that “radical Islam” is a dangerous threat to our country.

Trump-speak has become an infection in the political discourse, but he should not be used as a straw man for Obama to hide behind.

Somehow pretending that this is about Trump, or that he is the only one who cares about using clear labels to describe our national security threats, is disingenuous.

Again, this is not about Trump, or Republicans, or about a military strategy to defeat Islamic State.

This is about the President being honest with the American people and assuring them that he understands the threats against us.

• Ed Rogers is a contributor to the PostPartisan blog, a political consultant and a veteran of the White House and several national campaigns