The arrest of Muslim terrorists planning attacks in Germany and Denmark should remind those who need reminding that highly organized enemies of liberal society stalk the earth. In the German case where American intelligence worked hand-in-hand with Berlin's interior ministry, there was already operative a model of international cooperation that Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has proposed be institutionalized among like-minded societies. It seems a fine idea and is worth examining. But it could also be a setting for cross-country quarrels like those that beset different agencies in the American security apparatus. Cooperation is easier said than done. The recent German case also provoked once again the liberal fetish that we not see the struggle against terrorism as "war." Now, I have no especial fondness for the word. It has been spoiled by its other uses: "war on cancer," "war on drugs," "war on juvenile delinquency," "war on whatever." Wasn't there also a"war on smoking" and about to be a "war on obesity?" Actually, it's a terrible verbal precedent. These wars were especially inchoate and, of course, they were all lost. But that's not the reason for the liberal fetish about the nomenclature of war. My breakfast newspaper, the Boston Globe, is a symptom but only a symptom of these fetishists. On this morning's editorial page it ran an editorial titled, "An antiterrorism lesson," in which it warned that "war is the wrong metaphor for a nation's defense against terrorism." According to the Globe itself, these cell members are "believed to have been at Al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan." They had 1,500 pounds of explosive liquids stored. Does this sound like a diamond heist as in the movies? Indeed, the interior minister has been demanding more and more pre-emptive powers--reasonably, I think. Sort of like the administration. Frankly, I don't care what they call the fight against terrorism. But the model should not be how we fight ordinary crime. We're losing that war, too. Moreover, it is perilous for the Democrats to pick a vernacular conflict with the Republicans. The Democrats, after all, are squishy enough on our xq&# with terror, all too squishy.