The issue of the Second World War was Nazism versus liberal democracy. The United States rose to the challenge and, with its allies, defeated the clearly defined enemy.

The overriding issue that followed that war was Soviet Communism versus liberal democracy. The United States stayed the course and, almost alone, triumphed over that "Evil Empire."

Today we find ourselves in a Third World War whose overriding issue is "Islamism" versus liberal democracy. Today, however, the United States is alone, the enemy has yet to be clearly defined, and it is by no means certain that the U.S. will triumph over this enemy.

Five years ago no one thought, and even today hardly anyone believes, that Iran constitutes an existential threat to the United States. Israel is of course another matter, now that Iran is hell-bent on going nuclear. But that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could threaten to "wipe Israel off the map" and yet be allowed to address the United Nations suggests that "Islamism" is not taken very seriously by the 119 democratic or partly democratic nations represented in that body.

Perhaps this is because the democratic world, steeped in secularism, cannot take religion seriously, not even a militant religion like Islam. Never mind that Islam has almost 1.5 billion believers, that Middle East experts estimate that at least 150 million, and perhaps more than 750 million, support the jihad agenda; and oh yes, more people are converting to Islam than to any other religion.

Returning, however, to Iran: This generator of global jihad is the patron of Hezbollah, which has branches in more than 20 countries including the United States. As Mark Steyn has discerned, Hezbollah enables Iran to commit terrorist acts as far away as Argentina while providing Tehran with "plausible deniability."

Without deniability, Iranian nukes will be able to hit not only Tel Aviv but also London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, and Rome. Given Europe's moral decay and addiction to appeasement, and with Muslims already well-entrenched in these and other European capitals, it will not be difficult for Iran to hasten and complete the Islamization of the Continent without any mushroom cloud.

The loss of Europe to Islam, or rather, the ascendancy of an Islamic Europe, would threaten the survival of the United States. Since UN resolutions and economic sanctions will not stop Iran's nuclear program, we dare not trivialize the religious motives driving Ahmadinejad's regime. It is the sacred duty of President George W. Bush to initiate whatever military actions are necessary to eliminate this nuclear threat to the free world.

This done, the President must then address and galvanize the American people in support of his actions. To gain and sustain their support, he must clearly define the political, cultural and religious nature of the enemy. He must anticipate and disarm his inevitable detractors by naming well-known personalities -- including liberated Muslims -- who have been threatened or murdered or placed under police protection for revealing the truth about the enemy's historic ambition to overrun the world by means of demography, conversion, and technology. Every passing day increases the danger and renders its elimination more difficult.

The President has referred to "Islamofascists." He must go further. He must define the enemy as "Islamic totalitarianism" and show how its denial of the sanctity of human life and of individual freedom makes it the greatest threat to liberal democracy, indeed, to the most cherished values of Western Civilization.

Professor Paul Eidelberg is President of the Foundation For Constitutional Democracy. He can be reached by mail at 244 Madison Avenue, Suite 427, New York, NY 10016, Tel: 212-372-3752, and by email at eidelberg@foundation1.org.

Thanks are due Nathan Shuster for submitting this essay.

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