President Barack Obama thinks terror is "senseless," but the terrorists disagree. 

Terrorists think terror works, that it makes perfect sense.  As President Obama has droned on that terror has been defeated or that terror is "senseless," terrorism has risen to new heights across the world. 

"The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms this senseless act of terror against innocent youth," said a prepared statement released by President Obama about the kidnap-murder of three Israeli teenage students 16 to 19 years old. 

"I also urge all parties to refrain from steps that could further destabilize the situation," Obama added, seeming to warn Israel about striking back at terror.  Obama did not mention the Hamas terror group that murdered the unarmed Israeli students, perhaps because the president is willing to do business with Hamas.

Obama administration officials have made such remarks about other acts of "senseless" terror committed throughout the world and in the United States, often demanding restraint from the victim of the terror, while patronizing the terrorist or the terrorists as misguided, demented, or "senseless."

There are common threads to the "senseless violence," if one is willing to look, especially if one examines the Islamist ideology that fuels the "senseless" attacks, be they committed by Boko Haram, ISIS, al-Qaeda, or Hamas.

President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton try hard not to look.  Their actions and statements prove it.

"What did we do to make them hate us so much?" cried then-Senator Kerry in the Senate chamber in September 2001 after the attacks on New York and Washington by Arab-Islamic terrorists of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization.

President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden brag about beating bin Laden, but the al-Qaeda copycat groups, with their many names and initials, have multiplied.

When the "senseless violence" did not end with bin Laden's death, Obama, Clinton, and Ambassador Susan Rice pretended that someone had made "them hate us" by producing a video making fun of Muslims.  This was not true. 

It was an artful dodge, to hide the sad fact that many Western policy-makers – particularly of a certain progressive brand – do not even want to look at the problem.

Obama and his aides can scarcely say the words "terror" and "Islamic."  They call the murders in Fort Hood "workplace violence," and they call the almost catastrophic attack over Detroit on Christmas the act of "a lone gunman."

There are none so blind as those who refuse to see, who close their eyes, hiding under the covers, hoping that the nightmare will go away.  Few are as blind as Obama.

But the nightmare is real, and just like on the eve of 9-11, some top officials prefer to pretend there is no problem rather than combat the problem.

There is a common theme to the "senseless terror," be it a policeman beheaded in London; Christians beaten or banished in Iran or Pakistan; Jewish children murdered in Israel or France; a U.S. diplomat sodomized and assassinated in Libya; or schoolgirls abducted, raped, and sold into slavery in Nigeria. 

Arab-Islamic terrorists are pursuing goals that make sense to them, and they have no restraint regarding the tactics they will employ.

Terrorists want to chase Christians, Jews, Americans, and basically anyone not "Arab enough" or "Muslim enough" out of certain areas.  They try to force non-Muslims to adopt Islam or Islamic customs or Shiite Muslims to become Sunni Muslims, or Sunni Muslims to become Shiite Muslims.

"Be like us," they say – become part of our religion or tribe – "or else."

"Or else" means leaving or dying.  It's that simple. 

Of course, leaving is only a temporary solution.  The forces of "senseless violence" will not be satisfied with "cleansing" Nigeria of Christians or Israel of Jews or the Mid-East of Americans.  The violent Muslims want to move to America, France, and Britain and impose Islamic law – sharia.

Leaders of Egypt 's Muslim Brotherhood attacked the World Trade Center in 1993 – an attack that could have been prevented.  A member of the terror cell was discovered in an attack on a rabbi in New York in 1990, but authorities did not did not look too closely, ignoring proof of an Islamist conspiracy.  So the terror cell remained.

Al-Qaeda, which carried out the World Trade Center attack of 2001, is a child of the Muslim Brotherhood, its ideology, and its personnel.  Barack Obama invited the Brothers for a dialogue in Egypt in 2009, and they soon took over Egypt .

Since Obama went to Egypt in 2009, the situation in the Middle East has collapsed into a series of wars, as Obama, Kerry, and their mouthpieces regularly condemn "senseless violence" and "call on all parties to show restraint."

It is time for us to stop showing restraint and to open our eyes.

Dr.  Michael Widlanski is the author of Battle for Our Minds: Western Elites and the Terror Threat, published by Threshold/ Simon and Schuster.  He teaches at Bar-Ilan University , was strategic affairs advisor in Israel ’s Ministry of Public Security, and was the Schusterman visiting professor at University of California , Irvine for 2013-14.