Finally we notice there is a war on

WE are at war. This period is rather like the time of the "phoney" war early in 1940. But then we knew with whom we were at war, though it all seemed rather unreal. This time, many people don't quite see who the enemy is.

There are even moments of humour: those of us watching the televised press conferences of American officials began to do a countdown until the familiar face of the lone reporter from India popped up with his inevitable (and hopeful) question about when the Administration was going to turn its full wrath on Pakistan. It reminded me of Henry Kissinger's remark that, whenever he became nostalgic about being secretary of state, he remembered the Greeks and the Turks.

The future scenarios are not happy, but the first thing to do is get rid of the myths. We are not at war with Islam. As Tony Blair said: "The vast majority of Muslims are decent, upright people who share our horror at what has happened." Indeed, among America's strongest allies in the fighting to come are likely to figure such countries as Turkey, which was staunch during the Gulf War. Others might include Indonesia, Morocco, Tunisia and the Gulf states - so long as they are confident that America's heart and will are committed to the battle.

The strikes against the World Trade Centre were not the beginning of the war, though they were of sufficient severity to have finally "awakened the sleeping giant", as Admiral Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet, said after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. One hopes that the rest of his sentence - ". . . and filled it with a terrible resolve that will shortly be turned upon us" - is also true.

America has been under attack, as has the West, for more than a decade now. Colonel Gaddafi blew up a nightclub in Germany in 1986. The original assault on the World Trade Centre was in 1993. The attack on US barracks in Saudi Arabia was in 1996. Two American embassies in Africa were bombed in 1998, and USS Cole was attacked in Aden last year.

The bombing of New York this time, for bombing is what it is when aircraft are turned into 130-ton bombs, filled with explosive fuel, that destroy the greatest landmark of Manhattan's skyline, is something that no enemy of America and the West has come close to doing. If this is not a declaration of total war, one is at a loss to know what is.

The enemy is primarily those extremist Islamic groups that operate in the mentality of the seventh or eighth century, though the network also includes the remnants of darkest Stalinism such as Cuba and North Korea. They are filled with hatred and envy of the West, its institutions and values, and wish to defeat it. Just as Christianity had its over-zealous period, with inquisitions and crusades, so these people - like the Taliban in Afghanistan - are lodged obdurately in the very dark ages.

Unfortunately, they have contemporary weapons to hand. If they do not have a fully fledged state behind them such as Afghanistan, they have safe haven in countries whose leaders are perfectly contemporary, but use the primitive mentality of this approach to shore up and maintain their power. Other states that harbour terrorists include Libya, Sudan, Iran and Iraq. Their purpose is to undermine the legitimacy of the West and, if possible, to destroy it. We are Satan. Syria, for example, is headquarters to at least 10 terrorist groups, including Sa'iqa Ba'ath, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Arab Liberation Front, Palestinian Struggle Front, Fatah Intifadah.

While there is no doubt that the struggle between the Jews and Palestinians has inflamed many of the groups involved, that conflict is a figleaf for the real battle. Emerging evidence shows that Tuesday's outrage had been planned for at least two years - at the height of Oslo's hopes. If Israel were to be removed from the equation, the war would continue. Syria and North Korea, Libya and Iraq, would continue to hate us. It did not require the existence of Israel for Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait. Nor did it require Israel for Bashar al-Assad's father to kill 20,000 of his own people one afternoon, after they had demonstrated against his tyranny.

Though so far America's allies in Europe have been firm, softness is already apparent from such as the Guardian and the BBC, warning America not to over-react or advocating unanimity from the UN before any aggressive action is taken. The difficulty we will face always faces decent people. In war, surgical counterstrikes against the enemy are not always possible.

A great many people in "enemy" countries do not support the tyrant or his methods - a fact that, in the past, we have confronted without hesitation. We cannot immunise the dissenters from the actions of their rulers. It is quite possible that not all Japanese supported the militaristic rulers of wartime Japan. We did not send out a questionnaire. We were at war. Only one out of three Germans supported Hitler at their last free election, but that did not prevent us from regarding those countries as enemies. Even as recently as the Gulf, we did not take a poll to see how many Iraqis, deep in their hearts, supported Saddam.

Terrorist states may well have populations that would not emotionally support terrorism, but, if that prevents us from dealing with the population as our enemy, it is at our own peril. That peril is very great. Our civilian populations are so vulnerable, our water supplies prey to contamination, our nuclear fuel stations open to the skies.

Britain is also a safe haven for some of the most dangerous of terrorists. Washington is currently trying to extradite from London several terrorists deeply implicated in both the embassy bombings in Africa and the millennium attempts to blow up sites in America. Britain probably has more extreme Islamic terrorists than any other country in the West. (This may be a lesser problem than that the Foreign Office has the largest number of Islamic sympathisers in the world.)

It is clearly easier to extradite a Milosevic to The Hague or house-arrest General Pinochet - men who, whatever they are, do not pose a threat to the West - than it is to get hold of Osama bin Laden's lieutenants once they make it to Britain. Indeed, if one needs any illustration of both our failure to deal with terrorism and the politicisation of justice in such empty concepts as the UN's International Criminal Court, it is this mockery of justice.

There are many ways to wage war and it is not for a journalist to decide how to do it. The purpose of any action, though, is clear. We must give effect to President Bush's statement that we will not tolerate a distinction between terrorists and those states that subsidise or harbour them. Such states must cease to do so in a convincing way and hand over designated terrorists and their apparatus, or join the list of the enemies that have tried to destroy us and will themselves have to be destroyed.

For a start, the UN ought to expel any country that harbours terrorists and, if it will not do so, then America should expel the UN. (The building might be used for "reparations" to the former tenants of the World Trade Centre.) Of equal importance is the need to demonise the culture of jihad. Jihad is not one of the five pillars of Islam: those are the profession of faith, ritual prayer, alms for the needy, fasting during Ramadan and haj-pilgrimage to Mecca.

Jihad should probably be banned legally and certainly condemned verbally by the Muslim councils, elders and clergy. The glorification of jihad in schoolbooks and mosques must end. When radical or hardline mullahs talk to the West, they pretend that jihad is power in devotion. The root of the word, they will say, is "an exerted effort". But its meaning today is clear: it is holy war against unbelievers, for which those who die commit shahada (active martyrdom) and are rewarded with heavenly delights.

Wars can eliminate bad regimes, but ideas are resilient and jihad is a deadly idea. The notion that the pilots were flying "suicide" missions against America is misleading. What seems not to be understood in the West is that going to one's death fighting Satan is to leave an imperfect, unhappy world and enter Paradise, together with one's chosen family members and friends.

Shahada is not suicide in the Western secular sense of despair, but rather an act of supreme hope and deep conviction. This sort of Islam is not like Christianity or Judaism, except perhaps as they were practised 2,000 years ago. It is as if the Mayans were talking about human sacrifice.

Just before Yasser Arafat gave blood for the injured Americans and a photo-op, and all the countries of the UN stood at attention as they condemned the bombings in America, this was the comment of one of those same countries in its government press. Al-Akhbar in Egypt said on August 28: "The Statue of Liberty in New York harbour must be destroyed . . . The age of the American collapse has begun."

On Palestinian Authority television in a Friday sermon last October, Zayed bin Sultan Aal Nahyan told his worshippers: "Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them . . ." The lawyer of the Egyptian sheikh held in America for involvement in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre was reported last April in Al-Quds Al-Arabi (London): "We warn and warn . . . the USA will reap a bitter harvest if it continues to insult Dr Amar Abd Al-Rahman."

Now the UN and some of those countries are worried. The West may finally hit back. And we must strike while the iron is hot. It is not me or Right-wing senators who consider these outrages acts of war: they are acts of war according to virtually all the leaders of the West. The ritual of enemy countries wrapped in the flag of the UN, standing up to condemn their own actions, cannot and should not save them. If it does, we are mad. And we will deserve everything coming to us.