If Obama wanted to start WWIII he would take Trump's lead and call 1.4 billion Muslims evil.
Rather than treating terrorism like an isolated action whereby we hunt down and kill the evil terrorist cells, he would inflate this conflict into a grand war for civilization, enjoining entire nations and whole cultures, and running constant television adds scaring people into thinking that the entire nation is under attack.
He would get people to be afraid not just of isolated groups but world powers, like the entire Arab world.
The key to the Republican War on Terror is that it must be a full-fledged military war against a great power - it must be conducted against nations not merely terrorist cells. It must be the kind of threat that we faced during WWII so that they can use national security to get elected. And once elected, the war allows them to control the headlines, and use the fog of war to pass unpopular policies and grow the surveillance powers of Washington.
ISIS needs the American right to inflate their power,
ISIS needs the American right to constantly broadcast fear, to make ISIS seem stronger and larger than they actually are.
ISIS wants to be considered as an equivalent power to the USA, and the Republicans oblige because terrorism benefits the GOP politically. The more the GOO can talk about terrorism, the greater their chances of getting elected. This is why the backward, tottering Soviet Union was so useful.
By fabricating ISIS into a great power, the Republicans enable ISIS to intimidate Muslim moderates and THUS consolidate their regional power.
The biggest danger for ISIS and the Republican Party is if the current friction between the USA and radical Islam can't be turned into a Big War. Radicals on both sides require the fear of a Big Enemy to gain and maintain power.
This is why they call terrorism a WAR - because only then can they turn it into a big government event that implicates whole nations.
God help us. We have a political party whose actual survival depends on terrorism. We have a political party that would actually benefit if we got attacked again. This is beyond scary.