Step by bloody step, it should be coming clear to even the most casual of observers that there’s more than a criminal conspiracy behind the outbreaks of violence that periodically splatter the globe.

Most recently, while Americans were eating Thanksgiving turkey, the world’s largest democracy, India, was paralyzed by a slow-motion suicide attack in Mumbai, better known as Bombay, that fell well short of its advertised goal of 5,000 slayings, but nonetheless was considered a rousing success.

To be sure, the death toll ran about 200, and Muslim authorities declined to bury the killers among the Islamic faithful, but after that, it was all gravy for the terrorists bent on their twisted jihad.

The attacks strangled commerce, spotlighted the incompetence of standing governments to deal with carefully planned and coordinated attacks by well-armed and insouciant marauders who put on a well-orchestrated show by refraining from shooting photographers as they sauntered through their killing and torturing fields.

Physicians who examined the victims’ bodies said the torture was excruciating, and the worst treatment was reserved for Jews.

Lots of blood and even more ink. From a terrorist perspective, what’s not to like?

We should consider it a stroke of providence that more haven’t died in the flood of terror attacks since the seminal attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The toll, however, has been plenty high.

Bombay/Mumbai was struck before last week’s attack.

In 2006, a series of bombings set off within 11 minutes killed 209. The same al-Qaida-related crowd responsible for that attack pulled off the most recent one.

Two years to the day after an attack on the USS Cole killed 17 Americans, bombs killed 202 on the island of Bali.

In 2005, bombs went off in three London Underground cars and a double-decker bus, killing 56.

Middle-class jihadi terrorists were blamed in the attack.

Continuing with our globetrotting of the grotesque, jihadis with regional grudges seized a school in Beslan, Russia, in 2004, gunned down children and eventually killed more than 300.

We can’t forget the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, Spain, which killed 191 just three days before national elections.

Sure enough, the hand of al-Qaida was found to be dripping with Spanish blood in that bombing.

We’ve grown tired, supposedly, of prosecuting a global war on terror focused particularly on Islamic extremists, with some suggesting that if the United States would just stop acting as though there were a war on, then it would simply go away, and we all would get along.

If only.

Osama bin Laden — remember him? — likes to call his movement the “International Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders,” which is a pretty good catch-all for everyone he doesn’t like.

Of late, Hindus and Buddhists seem to have been added to the list, but no one has been taken off it.

Jihadi terror has reached out to foil travel, despoil tropical paradise and foul national landmarks from Great Britain to India and back again.

We might not like the idea of waging a global war on terror, but that ignores the undeniable fact that Islamist terrorists are waging a global war on everyone else.

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Gary.Harmon@gjsentinel.com