Obama fields pointed questions about terrorism, PTSD, Colin Kaepernick at military town hall

President Obama answered questions from a military audience Wednesday night in a town hall in Fort Lee, Virginia, hosted by CNN and moderated by Jake Tapper. The audience — military veterans, families, and service members — asked searing, often personal questions, and Obama did his best to answer them. The questions ranged from delays at Veterans Administration hospitals to PTSD stigmatization to why Obama doesn't use the term "radical Islamic terrorism" to what he thinks about 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick not standing for the national anthem before games, plus broader questions about U.S. military involvement in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Obama said the critique of him not using "radical Islamic terrorist" is a "sort of manufactured" issue, and not helpful. "These are people who've killed children, killed Muslims, take sex slaves, there's no religious rational that would justify in any way any of the things that they do," he said. "When you start calling these organizations Islamic terrorists, the way it is heard, the way it is received by our friends and allies around the world, is that somehow Islam is terroristic.... If you had an organization that was going around killing and blowing people up and said, 'We're on the vanguard of Christianity,' as a Christian, I'm not going to let them claim my religion and say, 'you're killing for Christ.' I would say, that's ridiculous.... Call these folks what they are, which is killers and terrorists."

At another point, Obama told Tapper, "There hasn't been probably a week that has gone by in which I haven't examined some of the underlying premises around how we are dealing with this situation in Syria." As "heartbreaking" as it is to watch the carnage, he added, "there is not a scenario in which, absent us deploying large numbers of troops, we can stop a civil war in which both sides are deeply dug in." When an audience member asked Obama what he would do if daughters Sasha and Malia wanted to enlist in the armed forces, Obama replied, "I'd say, go for it," though he would "be lying if I said I wouldn't sometimes get nervous about possible deployments. Your kids are your kids and you want to keep them tucked in in their pajamas for the rest of your lives if you had the chance." You can watch a 2-minute recap of the town hall below. Peter Weber

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