I don’t know precisely who should take the blame for deciding to label the conflict that followed 9/11 the “war on terror.” Whoever that is, though, did the nation a great disservice. We were not at war with terror. We were at war with a very radical and very virulent form of Islam. This was – for the enemy at least – an expressly religious conflict. Pretending that it was not set us adrift and had catastrophic consequences.