It is relevant to ask why Mumbai was a target, and why now? Mumbai, also known as Bombay, is India's financial capital, its most multi-religious city, and home to "Bollywood" - which produces movies featuring beautiful women, exuberant singing, and often provocative dancing. All of the above infuriate Islamists.

Further, the U.S. has been putting pressure on Pakistan's new president, Asif Ali Zardari, to move aggressively against al-Qaeda and Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan's lawless northwest provinces. Inciting tension between Pakistan and India makes it more difficult for Zadari to move troops from the border with India to the border with Afghanistan.

One hopes that President-Elect Obama is acutely aware that Islamist terrorists around the world are working on ways to do in America what was done in India. Hoping they don't manage it is not a policy. Planning to prosecute the perpetrators after the fact is a policy - a ludicrously ineffective one when dealing with terrorists embarking on suicide missions.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that the assault on Mumbai raises "huge questions about how the world addresses violent extremism." Actually, it answers those questions. It should be more obvious than ever that Islamist terrorists - or even just "violent extremists"- must be fought. That requires such ungentlemanly tactics as aggressive surveillance and rigorous interrogations. We either take the fight to the terrorists or we wait for the terrorists to bring the fight to us - as they did in Mumbai. There's no third option.

The Times of India editorial I quoted above was titled "It's War." Yes, it is - a global war, one that began long before September 11, 2001, and whose end is nowhere in sight. What's puzzling is how that can still come as news to so many people in India, Europe, and America.