This is a global war

A commenter in a recent post here said the following:

What do you mean by "war"? Are you referring to the "war on terror" that's supposed to go on pretty much everywhere for an indefinite period?
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This "war" is different in that the government has no clear objective or time-frame. (Ridding the world of evil and terror is something that sounds better in a Joan Baez song that it does from coming from our cynical commander in chief.)
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Myself, I don't think we need a decades-long conflict in which we send the world's most advanced army through every third world ghettto in the name of democracy simply to deal with a handful of idiots armed with mace and box-cutters.

My reply was this:

Clausewitz's classic definitions are a good place to start.

"War therefore is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfil our will" and "War is a mere continuation of policy by other means".

The terrorists use violence to force us to do their will. (whatever that is, get out of Saudi Arabia, abandon Israel, etc...)

They use violence to achieve an end. (The domination of their ideology)

It is not the kind of war that Caesar or Napolean would have known, where armies march out to some empty field, in uniform, bash each other for a bit, and then retire.

There are no classic front lines in this war.

The enemy plans to kill people. Bombs on trains, planes flying into buildings, those are not accidents. They are conscious acts to murder civilians. They saw people's heads off with knives. They would do far worse if they could. They have said in no uncertain terms they want us dead. They cannot be reasoned with. Violence is the only thing they understand.

If this isn't war, I don't know what it is.

I've been a coauthor along with Mixed Humor of The Security Watchtower since October of the Monday Winds of War Briefing. The Briefing is part of Winds of Change, but I crosspost it here as well. Our Briefing focuses generally on the events between Thursday and Sunday. There is another briefing on Thursday that generally covers the Monday-Thursday time frame. (Here is today's briefing, in fact.)

Our briefing doesn't address events specific to Iraq, as there is another briefing that focuses on Iraq. (Here is the one from Monday.)

Here are links to all the Briefings I've been involved with. Just glance through them, and take in all the acts of terrorism, arrests of terrorists, and terrorism-related stories etc... worldwide in this time frame. And keep in mind most of these items, but not all, were just from the Thursday-Sunday time frame of those weeks, certainly no later than the preceding week.

Radical Islam is worldwide. It is a violent ideology. It cannot be reasoned with. We are not facing a small gang of punks armed with mace and boxcutters. There are forces as bent on domination as the Nazis and Communists were. They may not send a uniformed military across borders to achieve their goals, but they use terror as their weapon. They are motivated by religion, by hate.

October 24 Briefing
October 31 Briefing
November 7 Briefing
November 14 Briefing
November 21 Briefing
November 28 Briefing
December 5 Briefing
December 12 Briefing

Michael Ledeen has a great column today pointing out the adherents to this murderous ideology are everywhere, and among us. You'll find most, if not all, of the specific events he talks about in the Briefings linked to above.

Add up the sum total of terrorism-related events just since October. This is what goes on from week to week. Every week. Imagine the sum total of such events since 9/11. Since 1990. Since 1980. Since 1979.

Is this a war? If we think it isn't, we're already part way to surrender.