Just because we have a new president who wants to be especially friendly with the Muslims of the world doesn't mean that the 1400-year war of Islam's true believers against the rest of the world has stopped. Almost every day evidence of the continuing war crops up, though often the national media doesn't report it or put it in the context of the global war that it is.

Syrian-born, but now an American doctor living in California Wafa Sultan appeared on al Jazeera television awhile ago and shocked viewers by saying straight out what is going on between Islam and the West. It isn't a "clash of civilizations" at all: It is a war between civilization and barbarism.

Today's editorial reminds us that among the 1.3 billion Muslims of the world is a significant number (15% is one estimate by a leading Muslim leader, that's 200 million) are following Mohammed's command to wage war to conquer the world for Islam. It is a war on civilization and we ignore that reality at our peril. But this is precisely what the the U.S. is currently doing with its banishment of words such as "terror" and "war on terror" and the refusal to identify who the enemy is. The nation's safety depends on knowing who is waging the war against us and acting accordingly to defend ourselves at home and abroad..

Terror: A Global War

Investor's Business Daily

Posted 12/07/2009 07:30 PM ET

GWOT: The arrest of a Danish cartoon terror plotter for an even more lethal role in 2008's Mumbai terror attack reminds us the war on terror is global. So why is this being treated as a mere law-enforcement matter?

David Copeland Headley, 49, a Pakistani-American resident of the north side of Chicago, was arrested in October for plotting the terror-killings of the editors of Jyllands-Posten, a Copenhagen-based newspaper that ran unflattering cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in 2006.

A month later, the public learned it wasn't his first time. Headley, 49, a failed businessman and convicted drug dealer who'd changed his name from Daood Gilani, was arrested again on Monday, as an agent in the attacks at India's Oberoi and Taj hotels in Mumbai.

Headley was the advance man for the Pakistani terrorists, casing and filming Mumbai along the terror route as well as the hotels for months before they launched their multiday killing spree. The massacre that followed left 166 dead, including six Americans.

What's stunning here is that these incidents have thus far been viewed through a local lens — India's problem, Denmark's affair, America's issue, Pakistan's woe. They shouldn't be.

The same faces with the same Islamofascist motives are turning up no matter where or what sort of attack happens. It points to a ruthless enemy at war with the world, not a string of local crimes.

Yet the Danish cartoon imbroglio was viewed as an issue of civil rights and freedom of speech. The India massacre was dismissed as a function of its Kashmir dispute with Pakistan. The Afghanistan-Pakistan war is viewed as a nation-building venture rather than ground zero in the war on terror — which is what it is.

Remember 2001's shoe bomber Richard Reid? He was seen as a lone misfit from London, until it was revealed that the mosque he attended was part of a Pakistan-based Islamofascist cult. Led by Mubarak Gilani, mosque supporters murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and had links to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind. (The Indian press reports that Gilani is a tribal name, meaning Headley could have links to this group, too.)

And just last October, a German passport belonging to Said Bahaji, a "Hamburg cell" associate of lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, was among documents found by Pakistani forces in a Waziristan town used by the Taliban as a command base.

So much for the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan supposedly being about "nation building," and not about the global war on terror and hate-filled Islamic fundamentalism.

These "coincidences" only make sense when seen in the context of a global war that's centered in the region. But that's been obscured by those politicians all too eager to put their heads in the sand.

Oh, the White House pays lip service to this: "This case serves as a reminder that the terrorist threat is global in nature and requires constant vigilance at home and abroad," said David Kris, assistant attorney general for national security, in an official statement.

But why doesn't this come from a national leader? Even Attorney General Eric Holder would be a better choice to reinforce the global nature of the threat we face.

The real voice that should be heard recognizing of the fact that we are in fact at war against an implacable enemy is President Obama.

Our president will, by happy coincidence, soon be in Copenhagen, the very city where the Danish newspaper is published. He'll miss an important opportunity if he doesn't explicitly highlight the arrest in Chicago as part of a war on civilization — not a police matter.