War against Islamism

Mark Steyn is uncomfortable with the phrase "War on Terror". As I pointed out last year, so was Donald Rumsfeld. And as I said then:

We are at war with Al Quaeda and various other Islamist groups, some of whom are sheltered by or connected with specific overseas governments, some of whom live in countries that are our allies. We should say so, identify them, identify objectives and most important of all identify what we would consider a victory. If we don't, we face an unending intensification of erosions of civil liberties in the name of a civil emergency, appropriate only to time of war, but with no conceivable end in sight.

That still stands.