ISIS an existential threat to the West

The Europeans have - it's not news - tended to be snooty about the Americans. Especially the French, but the attitude is ingrained even in the "special relationship" with the UK.

In interviews with intelligence service people, mostly retired, for a project for the Reuters Institute, I often heard that senior British officers had thought the phrase "War on Terror" to be a stupid one, and that they never used it. It was not a war, they believed. The struggle was not "existential." It was a serious challenge from serious militants: hard, vicious but finite.