It wasn't holy, it wasn't Roman, and it wasn't even an Empire.

Your war isn't global, isn't really a war, and we can't really define terror as anything other than the acts of someone we don't like that's done to us, or to our friends. Perhaps you relish the glory of elevating criminal acts into something that makes opposition more glamorous, but in the end you are talking about the equivalence of the "War on Drugs", "War Against Poverty", "War against Organized Crime", etc.

You elevate the deed of religious fanatics into something more than the hooliganism it is and give it a sense of being it doesn't deserve. Vicious criminal acts are just that. Whether performed by the Mafia, Taliban or whatever. Perps should be hunted down an punished-end of story--not used as an excuse to go to war to secure oil fields, or enoble executive leadership into a "hail Caesar" mentality amongst an electorate.

Publius