AUSTIN BAY: Je Suis Charles Martel: Obama’s Crusade Talk Benefits Islamic State.

ATTENTION WHITE HOUSE STAFF: Your boss could have stigmatized Christian killers and provided a history lesson relevant to the challenge presented by Islamist terrorists. During The Thirty Years War, Protestants hacked Catholics and Catholics hacked back. In the process, they devastated Europe. The war ended with the Treaties of Westphalia. The “Westphalian system” separated political and ecclesiastical power. Twenty-first-century culturally Islamic nations need this, desperately — the separation of mosque and state.

Though invoking The (singular) Inquisition invites debate, Obama might be able to defend an Inquisition analogy. As Dark Age centuries became Medieval then, the Renaissance re-birthed, inquisitors with various inquiring courts waxed and waned. They were fundamentally intra-European affairs, and harsh theologies justified “terrible deeds.” Islamic terrorists murder Muslim “apostates” by the tens of thousands. That’s intra-Islamic murder. The president may have something here.

But our Provocateur in Chief went guilt trip, equating the Crusades with IS depredations. In so doing, he handed every Middle Eastern Islamo-fascist terrorist organization on the planet a propaganda weapon.

Plus, Ross Douthat on Obama’s historical illiteracy. Well, Obama is a historical illiterate.