Despite crediting the Pakistani Taliban with fostering the recent failed car bombing in Times Square, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was reluctant Thursday to say radical Islam was part of the cause of that and other recent attacks.
Mr. Holder, testifying to the House Judiciary Committee, repeatedly balked at a half-dozen questions from Rep. Lamar Smith, the ranking Republican on the committee, about whether "radical Islam" was behind the attempted car bombing, last year's so-called "underpants bomber" or the killings at Fort Hood in Texas.
"There are a variety of reasons why people do these things. Some of them are potentially religious," Mr. Holder told the committee Thursday, though he would not go further than saying people who hold radical views may have "had an ability to have an impact" on Faisal Shahzad, the man the Justice Department says tried to detonate a car bomb in Times Square.
The exchange comes as President Obama and Republicans spar over whether the administration is taking a tough-enough approach to the war on terrorism. Critics want the president to hone his criticism, while he and his advisers have sought to avoid painting the conflict as a battle against a religious belief or its adherents.
"I don't know why the administration has such difficulty acknowledging the obvious, which is that radical Islam might have incited these individuals," Mr. Smith, Texas Republican, said after the hearing. "If you can't name the enemy, then you're going to have a hard time trying to respond to them."